'Mystery man'

Those who have been desultorily following George Orwell's diary for the last year or so as it has been posted on a website get the payoff this week and next, as Orwell reports the events leading up to the beginning of World War II. The entries are accompanied by photostats of newspapers of the day. Those accompanying today's entry are fascinating, as several pages from several newspapers are reprinted. Among them was this weird article from the Daily Mirror (from this page), a passage worthy of Graham Greene:

MYSTERY MAN AT EMBASSY

A mystery man who arrived in England by air yesterday spent three hours at the German Embassy in Carlton House-terrace, London. -- and is thought to have flown to Germany last night.

He arrived at the Embassy in a Diplomatic Corps car. All he would say when he left after three hours was: "I don't know who I am."

He said it rather sadly and shook his head. He spoke in good English, with the track of a foreign accent. Then he was driven away.

An hour later three men arrived in a car at Heston Airport. One was seen off in a German plane understood to be bound for Amsterdam and Berlin. The airport officials would not say who he was.

The visitor to the Embassy was a tall, sunburned man, in a grey striped suit and black Homburg hat, carrying gloves and an umbrella.

He jumped out of the Diplomatic Corps car shortly before 3 p.m.

He did not appear to know by which door to enter the Embassy.

After his three hours' visit, he left by the car in which he had arrived.

Having refused to tell his name, he was pressed to say if he had arrived by air from Croydon or elsewhere. He waved his hand in a gesture that might have meant agreement or denial and the car sped away.

He Watched Crowds

The car was driven into Belgravia by a roundabout route which included Pall Mall, The Mall Horse Guards-parade (where there were crowds of sightseers), Birdcage-walk and past Buckingham Palace where there were also a number of spectators.

The car slowed down near the Horse Guards-parade, as if the passengers wished to look at the crowds by the Foreign Office and in Downing-street, but did not stop. ...

technorati: Orwell, Graham Greene

Take what you will

Novelist Richard Ford, interviewed by a Chilean newspaper: "Bolaño is overrated in the U.S.... But I liked the sex scenes." Interview in Spanish.

technorati: Bolano

Focus on the Fundies: FOTF sheds famous anti-gay program

Focus on the Family is still having money problems and has decided to end support for its anti-gay "Love Won Out" program -- one of those "ministries" which attempt to provide "encouragement" for gay people to stop being gay and pretend to be straight. The infamous Exodus International group will be taking it over, and that's got to be a natural fit. Exodus is the "ex-gay" organization whose co-founders finally gave up and stopped the pretense and went back to being as gay as the day they were born.

technorati: Focus on the Family, Love Won Out, antigay

Newly available: Lesbian Camp Girls

For a long time I've had a broken link to the porn book I wrote under a pseudonym, "Lesbian Camp Girls." First published on the Lulu POD site by my friend Marilyn Jaye Lewis as part of her work with the Erotic Authors Association, the book was unavailable for a long time, more because of my laziness than anything else. But now you can order it as a book or as a PDF download (the latter only a buck fifty). It's 135 pages of jaw-dropping, shocking porno, and of course should be read by ADULTS ONLY. Really. It's books like this that make people draw distinctions between erotica and porn, and this is the latter.

It's also really funny, I think. I wrote it partly as an homage to the silly, nasty paperback porn of the late 1970s, the kind of stuff with self-descriptive titles like "Dog Loving Lesbians" and "Her Horny Cousins." But I also wrote it to measure up (or down) to that material. So be warned (or intrigued).

technorati: porn, summer, lesbian porn

New story: 'The Truth Hurts'

A few years ago a contact in the erotic writing ... um, it's not really a community, it's not a club, I'm not sure what to call it... Let me start over. An acquaintance of mine, a young woman who was a sex columnist for some time and also an editor of anthologies of erotic stories, sent me a call for submissions. She was doing an anthology of spanking stories, would I like to send something in? Sure, okay; I thought it was a somewhat limiting topic, but I did write a story that I had fun with, and sent it off to her.

She rejected it, saying the mere suggestion of incest made it verboten. Keep in mind no such behavior occurs in the story itself or offstage between the characters (unlike some of the stories already published in my books). The story I sent had just a whiff of intergenerational sexual energy. That was too much for her.

Time passed, and another acquaintance asked me if I had any stories. I sent her a couple and she bought the spanking story the first editor had rejected. And it's for an online publication, and it just went up. So here you go: "The Truth Hurts." (Caution, story contains explicit descriptions of sex.)

Triumph of the Bourgeoisie: a sturdy railing between you and the jungle

I was struck by this banner ad, which I saw on the site of the San Jose Mercury News:

Nice clean white people separated from the jungle by a sturdy wooden railing. They aren't sweating. They aren't in the sun. Their L.L. Bean sportswear is still perfectly pressed, dry and free of stains from grease, sunscreen or bug repellent. In fact, they might as well be watching a DVD of the Panamanian jungle from their condominium -- and why didn't they, instead of contributing to global warming by flying down there just so they can stay as far away from the jungle as possible?

Yes, I went to India two years ago -- and I stayed in the city, as opposed to a friend of mine who went a year later. He was never in the city, he boasted, but always out in the countryside, seeing the sites, whatever they are. I did not say: and every step of the way, your whole presence was an insult to the bitterly poor populace (and they are much poorer in the country than in the city), reminding them of the hopelessness of their lives.

I can't imagine traveling to a third world country just to lord it over the locals, who would be able to size me up at a glimpse and tell that my annual income is 10000% of theirs. So I don't understand the appeal of such trips to the American bourgeoisie (of which I am definitely a member; make no mistake, it's not like I'm trying to say that I'm not). What is it that they're going for? Scenery they can't see in the US? Cheap prices? To practice their language skills? I really don't get it. I hate the fucking jungle, I hate getting hot and sunburned, I hate sweating, I understand completely. My point is, why go at all?

So I won't be going to Panama (or anywhere else where the standard of living is below that of, say, Argentina) anytime if I can help it.

technorati: travel, third world

Triumph of the bourgeoisie: getting rid of the dark scum on your deck

A couple days ago the NYT had an article about someone who realized a classic upper-class fantasy: buy the house behind yours, and transform it into something that shows everyone the superiority of your taste.

Just to be clear what we're talking about, here is the photograph showing an interior view of the transformed second house:

That the person in question was a celebrity author, Douglas Coupland (among other things, he is credited with creating the phrase "Generation X") adds to the cachet of the project and makes it seem like an acceptable thing for a liberal to do. To clarify his intentions, here's his description of the house in question:

"It was just a mess," he said. "There was dog effluvia, nicotine dripping down the walls, water damage...."

Nicotine "dripping down the walls"? Man, your neighbors were real trash, weren't they? You sure did the world a favor by taking their house and turning it into some kind of overblown cartoon of 20th century architectural flavors rather than, say, creating a home for for a family (or, given the apparent size of the mansion, several families). But if people lived in it, they might smoke, or have pets, or disturb the "art" that Coupland has put up, or worst of all, interrupt what he has apparently been doing ever since being the renovation, and which he must be doing over and over and over again while reading this New York Times piece and viewing its slideshow of images, namely, masturbating.

technorati: houses, Douglas Coupland, decorating

For the narcissist in your life

This Samsung camera has two viewscreens: one on the back, so you can see what you're taking a picture of, and one on the front, so you can take a great picture of yourself.



Not that you would do something like that.

A Samsung press release is quoted saying "The growing popularity of social networking sites has given rise to the self-portrait, with many consumers turning their digital cameras on themselves." There's something very sad about someone who needs a picture for a "social networking" website, yet doesn't known anyone well enough even to ask them to take their picture.

technorati: camera, DualView

What makes a postmodern novel

Courtesy The Rumpus, I found a link to an entry on the LA Times books blog listing 61 "essential" postmodern novels. I was more amused by the alleged common attributes of a postmodern novel, as defined by the author -- LA Times books columnist and reviewer Carolyn Kellogg -- than by the list itself (of which I have read 12 of the 61 books). The list of common attributes:

• author is a character
• self-contradicting plot
• disrupts/plays with form
• comments on its own bookishness
• plays with language
• includes fictional artifacts, such as letters
• blurs reality and fiction
• includes historical falsehoods
• overtly references other fictional works
• more than 1000 pages
• less than 200 pages
• postmodern progenitor

To that list of attributes, I would add "refers to pop culture ironically, i.e. in such a way as to both embrace it and distance itself from it."

technorati: books, postmodernism

Bolaño all the time

On The Rumpus, I posted:

The limits of narrative

It's a short bit, not even an essay, for the pretentious title; it could have been expanded into a much longer piece. But I didn't have time and just wrote it over the course of a couple hours while multi-tasking on other things.

If it seems like all I can blog about lately is Roberto Bolaño, a Chilean author, it's because 1) Nothing much is happening in my life to write about, except 2) I'm very excited by this author's work. I feel evangelistic, like the way I did when I started doing Zen meditation. Everyone should read this author's books, etc. I know it's tiresome. Still, I liked my post. I worked "The Sopranos" in too, if that helps.

technorati: Bolaño, books

Reviews of Roberto Bolaño's 2666

More or less for my own reference, a collection of reviews and articles about Roberto Bolaño's 2666:

• 7 Jan 09, Times Online (UK), The many deaths of Roberto Bolaño
• 3 Nov 08, Slate, Slouching Towards Santa Teresa: Roberto Bolaño's utterly strange masterpiece
• 9 Nov 08, New York Times, 'The Departed,' review by Jonathan Lethem
• Winter 2009, The Quarterly Conversation #14, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
• 14 Nov 08, New York Magazine, Natasha Wimmer on Translating Bolaño's 2666
• 7 Nov 09, New York Magazine, A Bolaño Timeline ("It's a good thing he wrote so fast")
• 9 Nov 08: LA Times, review
• 23 Jan 09, The Guardian (UK), review
• 31 Mar 08, The Nation, review of Bolaño's Entre paréntesis: Ensayos, artículos y discursos (1998-2003) (Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches)
• 6 Sep 07, London Review of Books, Benjamin Kunkel reviews The Savage Detectives, Last Evenings on Earth, and Amulet

technorati: Roberto Bolaño, 2666

That place we camped

Salon just put up a review of a history book about the Cahokia mound builders. This mysterious pre-Columbian group had a big city (for its day), and they built big mounds that are still geographic features of the southern Illinois landscape.

When I was a kid living in nearby Edwardsville, Ill., Cahokia Mounds State Park was where we went on Scout trips. One fateful weekend we camped there, along with other troops from nearby towns. It's an exaggeration to say that that weekend was a turning point in my life, but I can look back on on that 36-hour period and see attitudes and behaviors that set the tone for my entire childhood and adolescence. However, that has nothing to do with the Cahokia tribe, the subject of the book. I just want to say that the park then was adjacent to a drive-in movie whose screen we could clearly see from our camp site -- the outlines of which can clearly still be seen from the Google Maps satellite photo of the area by zooming in and looking just to the upper left of the "A" pin that marks the park itself. The mounds today are squeezed between two busy freeways.

Natasha Wimmer links

Having read (twice!) Roberto Bolaño's "The Savage Detectives" and having just started on his final book, the monumental "2666," I wanted to post several links having to do with both books and their translator, Natasha Wimmer:

• By way of introduction, here's a short email interview with Wimmer in the NYT Papercuts blog, December 2007.
• A summer 2007 interview with Wimmer while she was at work on 2666, on the website The Quarterly Conversation
• A short statement by Wimmer on the Words Without Borders site from December 2008
• Wimmer's own biographical essay on Bolaño (PDF)
• A November 2008 interview in the Village Voice
• A Jan. 16, 2009 interview in the Christian Science Monitor

technorati: Natasha Wimmer, Bolaño, translation