David Thayer

The LBC is back in business with essays from Carrie Frye and Kassia Krozser, aka Tingle Alley and Booksquare respectively discussing their Spring nominees for Read This. Carrie writes about Yannick Murphy’s Here They Come while Kassia recommends Gina Frangello’s My Sister’s Continent. Even if you’re not compelled by the titles it is worth reading both pieces for the writing. Carrie and Kassia are excellent writers, vivid, funny, and articulate. Not so much persuading you to their passions as taking you by the hand and depositing you there. I don’t pretend to know what their literary ambitions may be, but it does strike me that the ability to write might prove useful to a writing career.

I do suspect however that if Carrie and Kassia are this good there are others who are too; maybe they blog about books in an informal conspiracy of talent. Much of blogging is writing despite the new fangled podcasting and photo capabilities. Businessweek or Forbes or somebody had an article about corporations searching for talent to bring some life to their blogs. The problem is this: they don’t know where to look. Where might International Business Machines find talent? How much fun would an IBM blog be? How cool could FoMoCo be if only they could blog?

One solution might be The Blog Agency. Established in midtown Manhattan, the Blog Agency would audition bloggers for their corporate clients; beneath head shots of famous bloggers, agents would urge applicants to blog at will before narrowing the focus. After five minutes of furious typing the agent would say, “hey, that was great. How about five hundred words on ventilated disc brakes? Just feel it, people…disc brakes. Yeah, now you’re blogging dude.”

You might recall that the City of Seattle dug a hole in front of the Mystery Bookshop last year. Well, they placed a metal cap on that one in order to dig another fifteen feet away. This one is a rectangle where last year’s was a square ( a book square?). “Next we’ll dig a circle,” said Emma Bovary of City Light, “Cherry Street is perfect for digging.” There will be an encore performance of the Jackhammer Quartet.

Undaunted Michael Gruber will appear at noon Saturday April 22. Tropic of Night was released by Harper Collins in 2003 featuring Jimmy Paz. Night of the Jaguar is the latest.

Booksquare Management released its first quarter results yesterday. Pages of reports reveal that the readership of this blog include at least one former Morgan Stanley executive, plenty of robots, and, of course, our friends in the Outer Hebrides. Japan is a hot spot, as are Israel and the Czech Republic, Hong Kong and Australia. We had a big spike for Sara Gran. Our publisher has decided to continue the blog because he loved all the arrows and pie charts; we beat the street and that’s all he cares about.

Michael Cader has an essay at Publishers Marketplace about Amazon’s latest web initiative; if you can’t access PM Cader is quoted at Galley Cat by Ron Hogan. Check it out. More anon as the staff at Druidical & Literary prepare for the Earl’s Beheading. Reality is not a just a TV show.

Victor Gischler’s latest novel Shotgun Opera is available in stores. The italics are mine. Victor is interviewed by Philly’s own Duane Swiercynski; hit the link on the blogroll and you will be transported there. Thanks to Sara Weinman for locating this one.

Smoked by Patrick Quinlan landed on the transom. This is published by St. Martins-Minotaur which frankly surprises the hell out of me. This is more a thriller than mystery, grittier and tougher in subject matter than most of their list. So far so good with this one although I dislked the opening scene the prose pulled me through.

Bob Dugoni’s The Jury Master from TWB ( mais non! Hachette Livre.) hit number 29 on the NYT’s Bestseller list. It’s a page turner, and who is Paige Turner anyway? More thoughts on these in the coming days.

Remember Her Lyrical Poetry by our own Prudentia Chalfont-Smythe will read at Google HQ by a flying squad of anti-trust attorneys; yes, there will be singing.

Cantara Christopher of Cantarabooks reports:Events coming up: I’ll be moderating the panel on Literary Presses at the Round Table Writers Conference on April 29. Location: 20 West 44th
Street. Cost: Not cheap, the two-day conference costs $325 to get in but is crammed to the gills with experts and professionals who can help you get on the road to being published. If you live in NYC you might want to check this out.

Cantarabooks LLC is a literary press located in the Village not far from NYU. They publish fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

A fresh literary scandal may be brewing reports Style Editor Concetta Comedia della Arta. On the very day Judith Regan arrived in Roman occupied Los Angeles, a cultural high water mark for all the Californias, reports began circulating that the Earl of Watership Down is not only a figment of the imagination but may be a thirty six year old mother of two from Elko Nevada. After an exchange  of valuable consideration Brooklyn Superior Judge BobnRay heard testimony in camera after a change of venue motion filed by Wellington Leg Premier Publishers was granted in Ventura County. Hizzoner while channel flipping found the notion that there are “many and several mothers of two dwelling in the state of Nevada” both compelling and personally rewarding.

At stake is the reputation of an entire industry said lobbyist Puffy or P-Lobby. “This is JT Leroy all over again,” he puffed. “Why else would the Earl be on the cover of Glamour and Elle?”

In Ballard Lars Kierkegaard slid from beneath a 1984 Volvo 240 wagon, with a manual transmission, to report he was completely fooled by the Earl. “He said he’d been dropped from alien spacecraft into Elliot Bay. I believed him.”

Police in Elko report no upsurge in unsolicited manuscripts. “We monitor that carefully. Due to the volume of submissions we can’t offer comment.”

A woman dressed in a suit of armor was briefly detained at the stationhouse. “She displayed no interest in a literary career,” said police. “She wants to be a Knight Templar.”

It’s been a while since I posted an author interview. Today Sara Gran is with us through the miracle of cyberspace and email to share some thoughts. Her novel Dope was released by Putnam a few months back garnering major praise in places like Newsday, the San Diego Union Tribune, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Boston Globe, Tribe’s blog and Sarah Weinman. Sara is the author of Come Closer and Saturn’s Return to New York. Reading her books is like discovering the drawing that you found in your attic is by Salvador Dali.

Q: Come Closer is being released as a paperback. What’s the release date and who is bringing it out?

Berkeley is releasing it May 2. There’s a long strange story behind that that I recently posted on my blog, but suffice to say, I am totally thrilled that the book is being reincarnated yet again. These guys are a sister imprint to Putnam, who published Dope, and I could not be happier with the whole operation. These guys are always professional and always kind, which is all us writers want from our publishers, and almost every day they seem to go above and beyond and do something unexpectedly wonderful.

Q: Dan Conaway blogged about Dope before anyone knew he was Dan Conaway and before anyone knew he was blogging about your novel. Was that weird for you or fun for you to know what Mad Max was on about before all was revealed?

I have a funny story, which is, I was pretty sure that was Dan before he told me, when I still didn’t know him very well. As you can imagine I was extremely proud of myself, but I shouldn’t be; Conaway has a very distinctive and wonderful way of writing which was easy to spot. It was very fun, I only wish he would do it all over again.

Q: If I had the money I’d make Saturn’s Return to New York into a movie because of your main character’s mother. How did you manage to capture the Village locale through her eyes so well?

Thank you, David. The kind and wonderful Domenica Cameron-Scorcese is doing exactly that. My own mother lived in the village for years before she was married, and we had always spent a lot of time there, so there was some stealing from my mother there. Also, I think there’s a uniquely New York way of feeling affection for a neighborhood that translates well from one neighborhood to another; what I mean is, even though I’d always lived in Brooklyn, it was fairly easy to translate my strong feelings about Park Slope into strong feelings for the West Village.

Q: Dope’s final scene is mentioned in many reviews and some of the reviewers seem confused or disappointed with it; did the book end the way you envisioned when you started?

Yes, that’s exactly the ending I had in mind from the beginning. Some things reviewers kvetched about were quite helpful—for example, a few folks noticed that the narrator often spoke improbably given her level of education, and I will definitely be more careful about that in the future, and I’m grateful to people for pointing that out to me. But the ending? They just didn’t get it. Of course, I need to take some responsibility for that: if that didn’t seem like the perfect ending, the only possible ending, I didn’t do my job well enough. It’s hard to argue with the reader. Possible, but hard.

Q: Can you tell from your book store appearances who your audience is? Crime fans, literati?

You know, I couldn’t tell too much from the readings, but from letters I’ve gotten, it’s mostly other writers, mystery and literary. Fortunately there’s enough of them to be an audience in and of themselves; or maybe those are just the people who are getting in touch with me. I’ve also
heard from a good number of former addicts who have read dope, which has been quite moving.

Thank you Sara.

Sara Gran is the first famous author to be interviewed by the staff at the Druidical & Literary. A behind the scenes look at the author’s current thoughts will appear tomorrow in what will then be real time but is not yet. Publisher Oliver Castinstone says “this is a real coup for fans and critics alike. Someone’s going to get reserved parking behind this.”

Donald Rumsfeld bobblehead dolls are declining in value, according to Lars Kierkegard, Publicist of Gloom. “You want to short the Rummy,” he wrote in his weekly column Is it Must or Musty? The earl has rushed off to the Piltdown Exchange to unload a trunk full of the Rummies. Good luck with that.

Traffic tips for Southern California: the I-5 will be closed near Tustin southbound until CHP units secure the town. Troops from the Valeria Victrix and the Primagermanica legions raided a Hollywood Video store making off with several copies of Conan the Barbarian. “They specified VHS,” said one astonished clerk. UCLA Professor Barry Berry noted “they have primitive technology. Why VHS? Why Orange County?”

Governor Arnold vowed to crush the Roman invasion before the summer vacation peak driving months. He was embarrassed by incursions at the campus of UC Davis. Roman troops erected a statue of Virgil in a city park on Saturday. The Roman commander gave the commencement address to stunned students. He also reiterated his earlier warning to literary agents: anyone rejecting the earl’s work will be dragged in chains to Rome.

An article in the NYT’s Style section profiles editor Jeremy Ruby-Strauss of Kensington and his stable of manly writers. It must be a cosmic joke that this article appears in the Style section, that section furthest removed from Sports; only the manliest among us can read the Style section with any degree of confidence. What was I doing in the Style section? Looking for the latest on Randy Johnson’s mysterious shoulder ailment.

It is a tribute to something larger than the book world that Jeremy Ruby-Strauss has found his niche and that Kensington is publishing manly books, books read in the Meat Packing District, a stretch of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan where beef on the hoof and bloody aprons once lent an air to the neighborhood, not far from your reporter’s former home on West 16th, downwind from the soon to be trendy District. Who knew? We used to call it Rump Tower. We’re below the Mendoza Line in predicting cultural blossomings as fecund as this.

If you drink heavily and call strange women “baby” these books may be for you. You might wind up in the Style Section living in a Martha Stewart designed home and wondering where the good times went. Then you can to go to rehab and meet Leonard. Just write about it, okay?

Geraldo Riviera reporting: With only trainee Gus Flaubert at his side Geraldo infiltrated the cabal planning this year’s Easter fete. Flaubert agonized over the lead paragraph for most of the night before penning this immortal lede: The parade will be led by the Earl who has donated his 1954 Ariel Square Four as the principal means of transport. Irony abounds as the Earl’s pink bunny ears and cotton tail evoke the bourgeois sensibility we so detest. Last year the earl mesmerized the crowd with his reading from Madame Bovary; this year, the pubs are closing early to prevent a reoccurrence.

The official title of this year’s parade is the Goth Costco and Barnes and Noble Wellington Leg Easter Parade; a surprise visit from the Prosecutrix Mrs. Anderson-Cooper has flummoxed the Organizing Committee chaired by Viscount and Mrs. Pendragon, who have underwritten the cost of one tank full for the Square Four. Viscount Pendragon will don the ceremonial egg costume designed by haute couture House of Wellington. Layers of pink chiffon and a soupcon of Irish lace were stolen from a warehouse in Henley Hornbrook; Mrs. Anderson-Cooper promises a vigorous investigation although she had her fingers crossed when she said that. Pedestrians in pink chiffon will be targeted, promised DCI Borchardt whose collection of antimassacar is the envy of many. Lace doily production will not resume until Tuesday.

The parade will be incorporated into the reality television series The Earl’s Beheading according to Producer and Director Oliver Castinstone. “There won’t be a dry eye in the house,” he promised. Additional security for the parade will provided by men with arrows through their heads. “They’re the only guys willing to work on a Sunday,” reported Viscount Pendragon. “It’s deplorable.”

I read Ed Champion’s account of arrest and and being kept in a holding cell with a pot dealing sleepyhead named Jerome. Ed was surprised to be treated badly by the cops, but night time in the city is a bad time for an encounter with patrol officers. The rules are different at night when the legal system runs on one cylinder and all is forgiven in the morning.

When I lived in the Bronx everyone in the neighborhood was shaken down on the way to and from the subway. The turf was up for grabs. If you paid off the Commancheros, you had to deal with the Skulls; if you paid them off you had to deal with ducktailed white boys with gravity knives. I was a student with a job in lower Manhattan. Every morning my friend and I employed basic risk management techniques; say no habla espanol to the Commancheros, run like hell. Tell the sales rep from the Skulls that you’re paid in full, run like hell. See a cop pointing a nightstick at you, run like hell. Cops hated the sight of young men running. Up the stairs to the platform, vault the turnstile, get chased by a TA cop, jump into a car full of Skulls, grab a pole and watch the closing doors. My pal and I were in some kind of shape; tense, though, giving off a vibe that made people downtown duck their heads or cross the street when they saw us coming.

The turf war ended when the Skulls withdrew their forces north of the Harlem River. A Prague Spring followed where we strolled to the subway past all the cop cars cooping before roll call. Never commit a crime before shift change was a neighborhood motto; cops they want to go home. A few years later I was living elsewhere and watched my old building burn to the ground during a riot. It was a nice pre-war brick building that burned like a bastard. The cops suspected arson probably because of all the Molotov cocktails being thrown; the neighborhood rolled over and died.

A couple of years later I tripped over a dead guy at the foot of the stairs on a subway platform. Cops asked me if I had killed the guy and I said no I tripped over him. ME determined he had died of natural causes; he was homeless, never identified, buried in Potters Field. The cops kept asking me what I was doing on the platform at three in the morning. I said I was waiting for a train. How did I skin my knee? Tripping over a dead guy. Was he a friend? Did we argue? We were never formally introduced. Didn’t you see the dead guy? Yes, I saw him after I tripped over him. What was he doing there? Waiting for a train I guess. A local to be exact. I was released with a warning. Watch it, pal, they said. I think about that guy buried on an island in the East River. Sorry I didn’t see you man.