Author: Don

Get This Now!

Drop what you’re doing and buy this now! Now, I tell you!

Why should you, you ask? Let me, as the kids say, break it down for you. Stories by, among others, Aimee Bender, Rikki Ducornet, Shelley Jackson, Miranda July, and Kelly Link. To say nothing about the poetry and the fact that the “Special Advisory Editor” is Rick Moody.

Believe me, I’ve read the first set of poems and the first three stories. I wanted to dry my tears with my torn-up manuscripts, caught between feelings of jumping for joy and jumping into a gorge because of the subconscious fear that I’ll never, ever write anything that good.

Now, go on, get it. I’ll be fine. Just go ;).

Ouch

Something I read in The American Scholar at the bookstore. I regretted not buying it until I found it online…

…certain writers produce Brooklyn Books of Wonder. Take mawkish self-indulgence, add a heavy dollop of creamy nostalgia, season with magic realism, stir in a complacency of faith, and you’ve got wondrousness.

Makes me feel good to be a Jonathan Lethem fan–in sort of the way you do when you hide out during a scuffle long enough to read the writing on the wall, and then throw the last two punches for the winning side once all the hard work’s done. Well, not really. I mean, I’ve read both of Lethem’s short story collections, and I have both Gun, With Occassional Music and Motherless Brooklyn on tap.

But, I also have You Shall Know Our Velocity and McSweeney’s 14, too.

Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy

…is it, James?

I heard this alluded to on the Bat Segundo Show podcast interview with James Lipton, but my jaw dropped when I looked it up.

Actors Studio host Lipton was a pimp in France
Last Update: 10/22 5:04 pm

James Lipton, the host of U.S. talk show, Inside the Actors’ Studio, once worked as a pimp in Paris, France.

The revered TV presenter, who has sat down with Hollywood’s biggest names for in-depth chats about their life and work over the last 13 years, has revealed he once procured clients for French hookers.

He says, “This was when I was very very young, living in Paris, penniless, unable to get any kind of working permit… I had a friend who worked in what is called the Milieu, which is that world and she suggested to me one night, `Look, you’ll be my mec… We would translate it perhaps… as pimp.”

The Reading List

Yes, this one’s overdue, just like all my other entries. Deal :). So, two weeks ago, I read some cool stuff, mostly from The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and a couple of old issues of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

  • Geoffrey H. Goodwin, “Stoddy Awchaw”
  • Theodora Goss, “The Rapid Advance of Sorrow”
  • Sarah Monette, “Three Letters From the Queen of Elfland”
  • Gigi Vernon, “Solomon’s Wedding”
  • Gigi Vernon, “The Maidservant’s Letter”
  • Janice Law, “The Girl Watcher”

Yeah, I said I was gonna read Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn. Sue me. I’ll get to it this week ;).