Pinky's Paperhaus

80 degrees and sunny

Today is an amazing LA day, the kind that makes me wonder why the entire country hasn't moved here. No snow, no transit strike, clean(sih) air, bright blue sky and brilliant, but not baking, sun.

My hands have been full at LAist but I am starting to see how this will all work. I am starting to be able to read other blogs again. I am starting to have time to read books again. And Paperhaus -- oh, it's cooking! A few more tasks at hand before the next Papaerhaus arrives on your doorstep with a thwap!

Merry and merry and merry. Time to go outside.

My little feet

Today we announced that over at LAist I am stepping up as editor. It's a great blog about our fair city with a dozen contributors, part of the Gothamist network. I will be writing tons and doing all that other stuff editors do: keeping track of things, making plans, putting my feet up on the desk.

I'm excited! But I must duck back under the transom now.

The Crying of Our Ecstatic Days

The cool new MetaxuCafe, all-litblogs, all-the-time, has decided to let me post about literary podcasts. I should post there very soon. I should also post a new literary podcast in this very spot very soon.

However, I am working on an enormous paper, luckily about books I love. It's my last bit of undergraduate work ever, and it would be fun if it weren't 35 pages long. I mean, on its way to being 35 pages long.

I am extraordinarily grateful to the professor who has just given me an extension until Monday.  But if she were answering the door here, she might say, we're sorry, but Carolyn can't come out and play.

To MFA or not to MFA

Sam Sacks glancingly reviews Best New American Voices 2006 and quite reasonably takes MFA programs to the mat. Some, like The Elegant Variation, call these programs meatgrinders. The Literary Saloon snips the salient points. Which I'll summarize:

MFA programs churn out middling, formulaic writers.

Maybe MFA programs in writing are a little like studying jazz performance. You'll get a lot of practice, and with practice you get better. If you get really good, you'll be able to play in the backing band for just about anybody. You probably realize, as a jazz musician, that greatness comes from a crazy alchemy of risk and timing and the artistic dialogue you have with other musicians. Maybe you'll get lucky and be a long-lived legend, like Louis Armstrong; maybe you'll be mainstream and respectable like Winton Marsalis; maybe you'll be known by your peers and have some odd popculture breakthrough, like Herbie Hancock. But you know that you'll only be the next Charlie Parker or Miles Davis with a lot of luck and probably a lot of damage to your internal organs. Chance are, though, most everybody -- even some of the most talented -- will end up on the backline.

MFA programs help writers be pretty good but not great. Lincoln says they don't seem to affect the greatness to shit ratio you'd find anywhere. Who can expect them to do better? It's the writers who bear the responsibility to take the risks (both personal and artistic) that make their work interesting.

As many flaws as MFA programs have, they're part of a system that is somewhat functional. It's up to the wrtiters to use them for what they're good fort: contacts. And practice.

Slouching towards Broadway

The Year of Magical Thinking has jumped the shark: the New York Times reports that Joan Didion's memoir is going to be a Broadway show.

"I think that the book is not a narrative; it's about a state of mind, and I think that will work well," she said of the stage possibilities.

My theater experience is limited, but I think narrative kind of works on stage. "The Producers" is a happy narrative; "The Elephant Man," a tragic narrative. Both won Tonys. Spalding Gray's one man shows -- neurotic narrative. Now picture non-narrativeTYOMT sandwiched between "Spamalot" and "Mamma Mia!"

Don't get me wrong: I admire Joan Didion immeasurably. I adore her writing.  I've read just about everything she's written, including the way-stinky script of Up Close & Personal.  And I will gladly be the 200,001st person to buy her new book, and I'll enjoy it.

But Broadway? Oh god, it'll star Meryl Streep. I can see it now.

LA Times litblogs

The good ol' LA Times is trying to get into the litblog game with a starter set of commentaries on Los Angeles literature from anti-fucktard crusader Tod Goldberg, memoirist & salsa dancer Samantha Dunn, and Gary Phillips, all of whom wrote fairly interesting posts. Comments so far are dominated by Brady (found the link on his site last night).

Today the thoughtful DJ Waldie and author Jervey Tervalon joined the lineup. Tervalon contributed one whole, lame-o sentence:

It seems as though the polyglot/ethnic stew aspect of life in Los Angeles is finally starting to supplant the idea that LA is some uncouth outpost of NYC.

"Finally"? Since when? Was there a marker that indicates the change? A trend? Something specific? Or how about "the idea" of LA's inferiority. Whose idea? Represented where? Samantha Dunn writes about LA authors not getting much attention from the NY publishing establishment; now there's some specificity, whether or not you agree with it.

Dear LA Times: please knock off this fellow and add someone who'll write something worth reading. And if you're listening, fixing the fonts so Waldie's post is the same format as the rest might be nice, too.

The LA Times and me

Steve Erickson's Our Ecstatic Days deservedly makes the LA Times' 2005 best books list. 

Number of fiction books on the list: 20
I've read: 1
Have on deck: 1

sigh.

Special accolades for local Salvador Placencia for making the list with his first novel, The People of Paper. He'll be reading next month at Vermin on the Mount, where there might also be a few nervous bloggers.
 

NYT and me

Sunday's New York Times Book Review will include their list of 100 notable books from 2005.

Fiction books (excluding poetry): 34
I have read: 1
I have in my to-be-read bookshelf: 1
Authors I've met whose book appears, but I do not own: 1

Obviously, I am a failure as a reader. At least I'm not the only one.

The fiction authors are overwhelming from (surprise!) New York, with jolly olde England following up a close second. This is my (approimate) writers' residence tally:
NY: 7.5
England: 7
CA: 2.5
Australia: 2
MA: 2
1 each: CT, NJ, Washington DC, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Japan, Ireland, Latin America, Albania
1/2 each: Maine and Florida

As an Angeleno, I am disturbed by the fact that the only LA writer splits his time with NY: Bret Easton Ellis. But I'm sure the LA Times list will be equally costally prejudiced.

Nonfiction books on the list by people employed by the NY Times: 7
(includes former executive editor Joseph Lelyveld's memoir)

Friday morning sweep

Segundo podcasto! The latest Bat Segundo podcast is with Octavia Butler. Vampires. Ficiton as prophecy. Typewriters.

Tonight Jared Diamond is in conversation with a bunch of smart dudes at LA's Natural History Museum, which currently has his Collapse exhibit. Followed by music by Japanese drummers, Dublab and more.

Also tonight: Long Beach's Portfolio Coffeehouse hosts a reading of contributors to Like Water Burning, including Jim Ruland (via The Elegant Variation).

Tod and Lee Goldberg will be doing their duo reading thing (twice) in Seattle on Saturday. Bring Tod an extra scarf -- he's weather averse.

Soon you'll be able to read Laila Lalami's Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits in Italian, Spanish, French and Dutch.

The Simpsons episode with Franzen, Chabon, Wolfe and Vidal was previewed in Wednesday's LA Times.  Thomas Pynchon got to Springfield first, appearing with the emaciated Olson twins in January of 2004 and returning later that year with James Caan.

MetaxuCafe is putting litbloggers all in one place, as noted by many. I covet its cool programming.

Squirrels Gone Wild

This is not about books.

This is about squirrels.

Today Boing Boing said that a pack of treed squirrels skittered down to gut the dog that was barking at them. This happened, ostensibly, in Russia. As a former Weekly World News subscriber, I know that suspect stories are often sited east of Europe (you know, aliens, BatBoy, Marilyn Monroe's ghost). But this is not the only mad squirrel incident of the fall.

Early in October, squirrels in South London were spotted cracked out of their little furry skulls, according to the Guardian. They may have dug up buried stashes, or nibbled at discarded pipes. The Brits paint the squirrels on crack scene so well:

If they are not launching themselves at you in drug-fuelled desperation, their bloodshot eyes are searching for their next fix, pink paws scrabbling in the ground.

I was hoping that these mad squirrel stories might be fiction. Alas, a fairly diligent google search seems to show that the little guys are indeed working though some anger -- pretty destructive ways. Poor little dog-icidal crack squirrels.

This non-literary message was brought to you by someone plowing through Writing and Sexual Difference, with The Derrida Reader on deck. Aren't crack squirrels more fun?