Pinky's Paperhaus

iTunes a-plenty

This week iTunes launched its podcast service, and I'm proud to say Pinky's Paperhaus is included. As are 2,999 other fabulous straight-to-you talk and music shows. All for free.

If you've been hearing about this podcast thing but not quite sure how to get one for yourself, iTunes just made it easier.

First, install the latest issue of iTunes, 4.9.
Open iTunes and go to the music store.
Click on the big graphic that says podcasts. It's purple.
You'll know you're in the right spot if the whole page is purple.
Scroll down a bit to the "Categories" section in the left column.
Click on "Arts & Entertainment," the first category.
There are three columns of text across the top. In the right column, click on "Books."
Aha, Pinky's Paperhaus!
Don't see it? It's right after KCRW's Bookworm, artist Michael Silverblatt.
To subscribe to Pinky's podcast (or Michael's), click on the "subscribe" button at the right.

Now new shows will be delivered right into your iTunes music folder when you open iTunes (apple has the whole story). I make sure my podcasts are nice little 10-15 minute excerpts of the 90-minute shows, so they don't take forever to download.

The next Pinky's Paperhaus podcast will be Tod Goldberg, followed by Swink's Samantha Marlow. You just missed Meghan Daum (damn!). Oh, don't worry, all the old shows are here.

killradio makes the gray lady

If an organization you're in gets into the NY Times, should it matter that your mention is parenthetical (it is) and buried within an article about someone you find tepid at best? It took another member of the Killradio to catch our name-drop in the NY Times Sunday magazine article on Nic Harcourt; the station is offhandedly called a "scrappy DIY internet-only operation," which is both apt and, well, not enough about us. I suppose that's what the collective gets for having no PR committee to extend warm welcomes to the press. So here we go:

Dear Jaime Wolfe and the NY Times: drop in sometime and see the scruffy setup that is killradio! We'll buy you a beverage at the bodega and let you hang out right in the studio. I'm sure any of the writers coming to visit Pinky's Paperhaus wouldn't mind you sitting in as they DJ and talk about their latest book (or litblog or magazine or TV show or poem or short story or literary event).

Maud is smart

Maud Newton, who hopefully will forgive me for referring to her as if I actually know her, points out that Dave Eggers was unenthusiastic about Neal Pollack's NY Times piece. Instead he writes that his hope is for a literay world "of community, of mutual support, of spirited but nonviolent discourse." What is so excellent about Maud is that she reads this as a kind of bourgeois, be-nice muzzling.

Meanwhile, bourgeois living is on the mind of Ed Champion too (hopefully he will also forgive my familiarity). He thinks that Pollack has settled into  "yuppified complacency." Since I'm no longer skateboarding around the city with spraypaint in my backpack, I try not to cast the "complacent" stone. But Pollack still has some fight left in him, I'd wager.

NYTBR: the Pollack version

One-time Pinky guest Neal Pollack has the back page of the NY Times Book Review today, where he tries to do away with his half-alter ego Neal Pollack once and for all. I imagine you would get sick of yourself, or the attention-grabbing, obnoxious, oversize version of yourself, after getting some of the negative response he has.

Me, I quite enjoyed Never Mind the Pollacks, which took the piss out of the punk canon and rock criticism. I don't know if I got more of a kick out of his not-serious worshipping at The Altar of Iggy or the raw take on critics like Greil Marcus. I was still cranky about the ex-boyfriend who had kept a photo of one of his ex-girlfriends on our fridge for months after I moved in; months later, as we were visiting my family for a holiday during which my parents were decidedly un-charming, did the then-boyfriend happen to mention that his ex-girlfriend's father happened to be Greil Marcus (brilliant/pretentious rock critic, one of the "idealistic friends" who helped Alice Waters open Chez Panisse). Which I could have forgiven if we never talked about music, or music criticism, but being as I was employed as a music journalist there had been, oh, only hundreds of times he could have mentioned it. Instead he saved it up for a moment when it could be wielded as a weapon, meant to make me and my family small by comparison. So I was cranky, and Neal Pollack let me snicker beside him, tasting revenge.

In any case, my own obnoxious, oversize ego aside, Neal Pollack can compose some clean, clever prose, and he hopes to  push the Pollack Persona into the shadows in time for the 2006 release of his next book.

Elsewhere in the review, Philip Caputo's fictional story of aid workers in Sudan, Acts of Faith, is apparently a tome but has its high points: be tempted by hearing him read from it on the Times' site. Lord Byron's Novel by John Crowley gets a mixed review from Christopher Benfy.

In reviewing Imagined Cities by Robert Alter, Jed Perl can't seem to crawl out of a quagmire of acadmic language: "city life offers modes of experience from which it is possible to forge analytical tools or stylistic principles." OK, take out the word "city." Is the sentence any less true? So if the point is about cities, what exactly is the point?

I am indeed cranky. Maybe the well-reviewed Linda Ellerbee (!) memoir Taking Big Bites will cheer me up.

Kevin Smokler on his way

The editor of Bookmark Now will be on Pinky's Paperhaus today at 4:30pm. He has repeatedly threated to bring bad heavy and/or hair metal, and I believe he may not be kidding. Which would be kind of awesome. Ratt! Poison!

In the back of his book, which extolls the virtues of writing in our non-literary age, he lists many web sites. Here are his favorite book-related magazines:

The Believer
Bookmarks Magazine
Rain Taxi
Three Penny Review
Women's Review

Take a gander and tune in today at 4:30pm at www.killradio.org to hear more happy hints from Kevin.

The incredible shortage of first fiction 2005

For reasons known only to David Remnick and his kind, the New Yorker first fiction issue -- a double issue -- features precisely 3 stories by new authors.

Three.

It also features a chap with a self-depricating, funny piece: look for this David Sedaris fellow. He might go far. Another guy, Edmund White, reminisces about women. His memories go back a ways -- even before his first novel was published, 22 years ago.

Thank goodness the New Yorker has stepped out into the vast wasteland of American letters and managed to find three whole publishable new authors, including one from, of all places, Iowa! How brave that they went to print with a first fiction issue, despite emaciated pickings, filling in the gaps where they had to with more established writers.

I love the New Yorker. I really do. But right now, I feel kind of sorry for the people over there.

Three.

Back in the saddle

Despite a new job that requires regular, focused attention, changes are afoot. Here. I mean this. The complete switch from old to new blog should happen very soon, but there are obstacles in my path. Like all of these durn readings:

Friday 6/10: Lisa Glatt at Skylight Books.

Saturday 6/11: Skylight again: Joy Nicholson

Sunday 6/12: (shaking fist at sky) Skylight! First Kevin Smokler at 5pm, then the Cocaine Chronicles crew starring Jerry Stahl*

Monday 6/13: MediaBistro is doing another literary LA thingy at the OH MY GAWD Friar's Club. Wangle a plus one and say hi to me. I'll be the one studying the old photos.

Tuesday 6/14: Kevin Smokler on Pinky's Paperhaus, live on killradio.org from 4:30-6pm, followed by the LA Weekly music awards at the Fonda Theater

Wednesday 6/15: Just kidding, I'm not going to the LA Weekly music awards. I've seen X play. I even saw them play their last show ever, and then their reuinion show a few years later.

Thursday, 6/16: Nick Hornby at Vroman's, assorted Bloomsday events (I want to know where Hornsby is heading).

This must-do string of literary roadbocks comes to a screeching halt with the LA appearance of Heather King, the author of Parched, a story of quitting drinking, which is described as "poignant." Nothing screams red flag like poignant. Finally, a night to stay home.

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* Correction: the Cocaine Chronicles reading will be on Friday 6/17 at Sylight; not sure how I got the date confused.  Coincidentally, though, Jerry Stahl was at Skylight around 7 on Sunday.