Ten days after the release of Bill Sizemore’s “The Christian with Four Aces” in our Spring 2008 issue, we have been contacted by Chris Roslan, spokesman for Pat Robertson. (Roslan’s PR firm Dera, Roslan, & Campion also represents Alice Cooper and the Institute for Human Origins, the group that discovered the remains of the early human “Lucy”; publicity work, it would appear, is not subject to cognitive dissonance.) Mr. Roslan didn’t sound any too happy about the article—wanted to know our fact-checking procedures, who had vetted the piece, and so on. But the real purpose of the call was to request the opportunity for Mr. Robertson personally to rebut the article. I have welcomed that rebuttal and offered to feature it prominently on our website. The ball is now in Mr. Robertson’s court.
While he’s at it, maybe Mr. Robertson also will look into acquiring VQR, as he has announced he is considering doing with Sizemore’s home paper The Virginian-Pilot. We’re trying—without much luck, I might add—to rustle up donors for a VQR endowment, so we find ourselves willing to listen to all offers. On the other hand, if you value the kind of publication that commissions long articles investigating Pat Robertson or delving into issues surrounding HIV/AIDS in Jamaica or introduces remarkable new writers like Glen Retief or features beautiful and urgent poetry like Mary Szybist’s “I Send News: She Has Survived the Tumor After All“—just to name a few examples from the current issue—then you might consider clicking on the “Support VQR” button directly above these words.
I can’t promise to heal you if you place your hands on your television set, but we will keep the phone lines open.
Grant Barrett has an article on a little-acknowledged linguistic phenomenon: “Saying it wrong on purpose“:
People incorrectly say words on purpose all the time. My wife says aminal instead of “animal” and maters instead of “tomatoes”.
I sometimes say “muscles” so that the ‘c’ has a ‘k’ sound (the same way the cartoon character Popeye says it), computor instead of “computer” (after Ned Beatty’s exaggerated pronunciation of “Mr Luthor” in the Superman movies), and I occasionally say benimber instead of “remember” because it was something my cousin Paul said more than 20 years ago.
My wife and I both sometimes say chimbly instead of “chimney”, fambly instead of “family”, and liberry instead of “library”. Like maters, these are common enough pronunciations that many Americans wouldn’t notice we were saying them any differently from anyone else.
There’s even a general-interest book on the topic, Paul Dickson’s “Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families,” released just last year. Dickinson’s guide is more of interest to those looking for cute things kids say than any linguistic insight, though.
Mark Samels, the executive producer of the PBS program, says “it’s hard to imagine one voice with the strength and the power to unite the polarized nation we currently live in… Walt Whitman saw himself as that kind of voice, and he sacrificed nearly everything, his financial well-being, his family, his personal life and his health, in hopes of being able to heal and unify the country as it raced towards one of its greatest conflicts.” Now, as always, is a good time to revisit his legacy.
On the one hand, I love this. Liz Phair’s albums once played on loop in my Walkman, and I expect I’ll enjoy her book as well. On the other hand, this story reminds me of a publishing trend I’ve been thinking about lately. Many readers of fiction require their favorite authors to lead fascinating nonfictional lives. They want to know about the personality that drives the text. They want to know the faces, bloggings, and histories of their favorite authors. Has it always been this way? It seems to me that authors used to have more leeway to work in the shadows. Now books have to be transparent so readers can see directly through the pages to the writer.
I think this demand for the writer’s reality creates a new way of reading fiction. The reader always keeps one foot outside of the fictional dream. “I’m not just reading a novel, I’m reading a novel by Liz Phair,” I will think when I pick up the rock star’s book. Phair’s autobiography will hover in the background and probably alter the quality of my reading. It will be a fictional world she creates, but one firmly rooted in reality.
I’m not saying that Liz Phair shouldn’t write a book. I’m glad she’s writing a book and not another pop album. And who doesn’t want to raise her profile high enough to attract a book deal? (Ahem.) But I wonder if fiction moves a step backward when the writer takes center stage. Or perhaps the heightened visibility of the author creates a more nuanced way of reading - a very 21st century way of reading - that I don’t understand yet. The reader is simultaneously drawn closer to and estranged from the text through knowledge of the author.
It seems like America’s desperate need for celebrities has infiltrated the book world. Maybe one day the novel will just be a “reality show” for the writer. All along we’ll know the fiction writer is mostly faking it, but by reading we’ll be complicit in the ruse. It’s too bad a dream world can’t just remain a dream world, without reality getting involved. As Linda Grant writes in her essay on the demand for autobiography in fiction:
For writers of fiction are what they are: those who make things up, who exaggerate, who cannot be trusted with the facts, whose inner world is more realistic than the one outside the window.
VQR held a reading for poets Charles Wright and Charles Simic as a part of the Virginia Festival of the Book weekend before last. The hour-long event was recorded by the festival, and is provided here for for your listening and dancing pleasure.
00:00-05:04: Introduction by Ted Genoways
05:20-34:11: Charles Wright
34:46-1:08:00: Charles Simic
A week ago, the four authors inaugurating the VQR Poetry Series were assembled for the first time, as a part of the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. The four authors read from their respective books, and we had the good sense to record the event.
00:00-03:05: Introduction by Ted Genoways
03:15-15:37: Jennifer Chang (The History of Anonymity)
15:50-29:42: Kevin McFadden (Hardscrabble)
29:58-39:29: Cecily Parks (Field Folly Snow)
39:36-51:02: Patrick Phillips (Boy)
51:25-57:54: Q&A
The story of condoms – “Quite agitated. Put on condom; entered. Heart beat; fell. Quite sorry…”
The 40-year anniversary of Alexander Portnoy – “…Portnoy’s Complaint did for the Jewish mother what Jaws did for the shark: took an already frightening creature and made it even scarier.”
Among the treasures of rare book collecting are so-called association copies—books owned by famous writers or inscribed by the author to someone meaningful in their lives. If you can double up on something like that, say, one famous writer inscribing a book to a friend who is also a famous writer, then you’ve got book collecting gold. So sought after are such items that many writers—especially poets—can’t wait to cash in on their collections. Why let the executors of your estate have all the fun, right? Well, the odd side benefit is that those of us who enjoy perusing the rare book websites can sometimes get a glimpse of the peculiar thoughts poets share in the jotted lines of gift copies. Here’s a sampling.
There’s a copy of James Tate’s The Route as Briefed, in which he has inscribed to Jorie Graham: “Dear Jorie, If you look a dog in the eye too intently, it may recite an astounding poem to you. Love Jim.”
In a copy of They Feed They Lion presented to Mark Strand, Philip Levine writes: “For Mark, The only other Lion in New York. From the big pussy, Phil.”
Better still, in a copy of Levine’s 1933, also presented to Strand, is inscribed this impromptu poem:
Dear Mark,
Here in Fresno the rains
Stream down but the grass
Does not grow since
You went away
With your beloved
To the town of dark towers.
The dawn comes
like a grey smear
Since you went away
And sent back only a kiss
A sigh of gas
Out of your great heart beating
As mine beats now
Above the kisses & the gasses
Stirring where I think of you,
Oh lonely wandering half Jewish
Poet in your city of dark towers
& gas rising like my
gas. Love, Alka Seltzer.
Strand seems to have sold off his entire collection at some recent time, because there are dozens of books on the market with inscriptions and his ownership signature. There’s a copy of Donald Justice’s From a Notebook, for example, inscribed, “For Mark, who was There— & who might find himself again here, in #18. Don Justice” (Strand appears in the eighteenth poem in the book); a copy of Charles Simic’s Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk inscribed, “To Mark & Jules: the dream of every honest cliché is to enter a great poem, Charlie”; and a copy of Charles Wright’s ultra-rare chapbook Colophons playfully inscribed to Strand in Italian, “For Marco il Magnifico dal Carlo, Conte della Gondola Saltimbocca.” Simic, too, appears to have sold off a significant part of his collection, including a copy of Charles Wright’s Hard Freight with another humorous inscription from the poet: “For Charlie—If you are the mote in the devil’s eye, don’t blink, Charles.”
Less juicy, but equally intriguing, are copies of books by James Wright and William Meredith, each inscribed to W. S. Merwin; and a very cool copy of John Berryman’s hard-to-find His Thoughts Made Pockets & the Plane Buckt inscribed, “To Howard Nemerov, with all thanks for the issue w. Runes & the book of stories—wh. I’ll read as soon as I can—at present all I can do is write, and read theology & oriental art history—with a handshake, John Berryman, Mpls. 6 Mar. ‘59.”
What does all of this tell us? Only that if you’re a Pulitzer Prize winner and inscribe a book to another Pulitzer Prize winner, expect people to be snooping through your words at some later point. Oh, and it’s also a reminder that my birthday is just a week away, and rare books always make great gifts.
Radiohead continues to push back the frontiers of popular music—and the way we buy and listen to it. On the heels of the hoopla over their label-less, online unveiling of their new album, In Rainbows, the band has decided not to release the obligatory b-side remixes, but instead to sell fans the individual tracks necessary to make their own. And once you’ve created your masterpiece, you can share it with other Radiohead fans or just vote for your favorite among the hundreds of remixes already uploaded. Or better still, just listen to my remix—and vote for me! If you’re a nerd with GarageBand, like me, this is your new drug of choice. (My wife marveled—with a mixture of shock and resignation—”It’s like they designed it just for you.”)
After 79 seasons, the PBS history series 
The Virginia Quarterly Review