"We Did Not Want Him To Know He Was Wanted"

So apparently the Pakistanis captured one smally fry terrorist, but then Bush told us that he was actually a "3rd in command of Al Queda"-league terrorist, and when someone pointed out that the guy we captured couldn't have been that big because he wasn't on any of Bush's terrorism most wanted lists, the response is that he wasn't on the list because "we did not want him to know he was wanted." Ridiculous.

Just so this post won't have zero literary value:

• This interview with Steve Martin in The Believer must be pretty damn good. Why? It actually makes me want to read his books.
• Mad props to the San Francisco Chronicle. A 2,600-word feature on three underappreciated Bay Area poets
• I may be embarking on a totally ill-conceived and slightly psycho literary escapade. Details to come.

Lastly, when I saw the Village Voice's review of Adrienne Miller's The Coast of Akron, I got pretty excited. This review gives me reason for pause.

Like other contemporary writers, including Heidi Julavits, Sam Lipsyte and Gary Shteyngart, Miller uses inventive absurdism as an abrasive, scrubbing any trace of sentimentality from her story and undercutting her characters' dignity with the ridiculousness of their situations.

I'm not sure if the reviewer meant this as praise or not, but in my book this is a huge negative. I like dignified characters, and if they have to be subjected to indignities, I don't want it to be cartoonish to the point that it is without sentiment. (Pynchon  may be the only author i give a pass to on this.)

If this lack of dignity is meant to cover up a lack of substance, as the reviewer implies, then I'm very disappointed.

It's hard to know what Miller is up to  --  if she intends "The Coast of Akron" as an argument for a new brand of outre realism, or as a counterpoint to the dutifully observed, uninspired domestic dramas that must cross her desk at Esquire. One fears that all the tinsel and feathers in the book may be an attempt to camouflage a lack of confidence in the worthiness of her story

Comments

[Lauren Baratz-Logsted]

Bleagh! Whatever book that reviewer is talking about, it certainly is not the same book I read last week. Or maybe the reviewer has an agenda. Or an ax. I suspect Ms. Miller is being backlashed here more for who she is - a powerful editor working for a men's magazine - than for what she's written. In truth, The Coast of Akron is neither All That nor is it All That Bad. Rather, like The Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr, it is an ambitious, occasionally wonderful and nearly always capable first novel, the kind that make readers think, "Yeah, I'd try another one by you."

[the happy booker]

Color me curious: ill-conceived literary escapade? Why so parsimonious with the details? do tell...

[Scott Esposito]

happy booker,

details will be forthcoming if and when i convince myself of the wisdom of said dubious enterprise