The new issue of TOC is out, and I again slacked off by not writing much beyond an extended caption for the Tony Hoagland reading next week. But I did write a small piece about Oprah’s newfound love of Bloodsport here, and have begun a series of posts about fantasy baseball (called Fan Interference) here. I’m actually pretty excited about Fan Interference. I plan to take it away from the advice genre and into exploring the ethics of fantasy baseball. I know you’re now excited, too.
And speaking of Hoagland, here’s one of my favorites.
Cynthia Ozick has a piece in the April edition of Harper’s, entering the argument between Marcus and Franzen about the importance of maintaining readership in a digital age. Ozick’s solution? A new culture of criticism. I wish I was making that up.
She admits that more critics (distinguished from reviewers) cut from the mold of Lionel Trilling and James Wood wouldn’t change anything: “Readers would continue to drift away, seduced and socialized by the ever-breeding pixels.” So really, it’s not that a new “infrastructuer comprising critics,” would improve the reading of literature, just magazines like Harper’s.
I sat on a panel a couple weeks back on the topic of small press-publishing and publicity. The premise was a solid one: If you’re a writer with a small press the odds are stacked against you that you’ll attract a lot of readers. There were panelists staked on various sides, one writer of dense fiction who was happily resigned to his small audience and a heroic publisher of a small press who works her ass off to get attention for her books through the same system everyone uses (mainstream press, a bit of touring, etc.).
After the panel, I kept thinking that the problem isn’t the “dwindling readership,” it’s that publishers aren’t trying to reach and create new readers. At the forefront of our mission with featherproof has always been a desire to reach people who, perhaps, don’t read as often as the normal target audience for publishers (as an example: getting music fans to be as interested in literature—as both an art form and an entertainment medium—as they are in music). It seems to me that literature doesn’t need more 7,000-word Harper’s essays, it needs more writers and publishers willing to look at everyone as a potential reader, not as a high-and-mighty soldier martyring herself for the losing side. Everyone who can read is a reader, we just have to show them why.
Got a couple of publications coming up to set you calendars by. The new issue of Punk Planet just went to the printer, and my story “Not Even the Zookeeper Can Keep Control” is contained therein. I’ll put up another post when it’s on newsstands.
And just turned in an essay for the new online magazine, Please Don’t, which goes live in early May. It’s about two topics near and dear to my heart: kung fu and wolves.
I just realized I could embed the video right here, for your viewing pleasure. Holy cow:
Of the TOC Books section is up. I don’t have any reviews this week, as the past few weeks have been consumed by working on the book and a few other projects.
I recommend everyone read Ira Brooker’s piece on Faking It, the new book from Chicago writer Yuval Taylor. It’s about authenticity in music, the goal that’s so rarely attained, but so often claimed.
The great Carey Rohrbacher has made a short documentary about The Dollar Store. It’s up right now on Current.TV, Al Gore’s sweet sweet baby. If it gets enough positive votes, it then gets aired on Current TV, the actual television channel, available on Comcast.
Take a second, if you like, and vote for us. We’re a convenient truth! We’re Comcastic!
