Recently in Literary Endeavors Category

By now, I'm sure you've heard about the new edition of Huckleberry Finn that will edit out the N-bomb and replace it with the word "slave" (a word that has no negative connotations!). Someone has decided that this historical revisionism does not go nearly far enough!

The tweeting of comedian Chris Hardwick (aka @nerdist) alerted me to an insane/awesome project: publishing a custom edition of Huckleberry Finn in which every instance of That Word is replaced by "robot." The originators of the idea--Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine--launched a Kickstarter page for it, with the expectation that more money raised = a more awesome book (i.e., illustrations and other goodies). Different levels of donation can earn you different items as well, such as an invite to the launch party in LA.

Peep the video below for more information. It's a spot-on parody of the intellectual dishonesty behind the original literary scrubbing, as well as a comment about how the attempts to "clean it up" dehumanizes the character of Jim just as much as the racists in the book who casually hurl epithets at him. Oh, and the video is pretty damn funny, too.

Right back atcha, pal.

I've been writing fiction for a really long time, though not without hiatus. I occasionally go through crises of faith with it, because both market-wise and creatively, this is probably one of the worst periods for fiction in America, possibly ever. After The Baby was born, I found my worldview and my time so altered that I felt I couldn't write it any more. I didn't see things the way I used to, and I also lacked the acres of time needed to get into a fiction "groove".

That's the biggest reason why I channeled my literary ambitions into this blog, because it satisfied my desire to write and didn't require me to lock myself in a soundproof vault for 12 hours. For a long time, fiction was such a slog for me and with so few avenues for exposure, I simply had no desire to write it any more. It was quicker and much more enjoyable to write funny ha-ha's here.

Lately, for reasons too varied and arcane to get into here, I've decided to dive back into fiction. I'm working on a novel I'd all but abandoned a few years ago when it hit the 100 page mark, because I think the idea behind it is still relevant. I'm trying to power through an admittedly sub-par first draft so I can revise it and hopefully finish it some time early next year. I've been feeling really good about it. I've received lots of encouragement. I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And then I read this and felt like throwing the whole thing in the garbage. Because when the fiction world can still stomach a vile specimen like James Frey, do I really want to associate myself with it?

For those of you don't want to read the whole article or don't enjoy vomiting, I'll give you the gist of it. It's a piece in New York magazine by Suzanne Mozes about Frey, who you may remember from such frauds as A Million Little Pieces (the "memoir" that turned out to be largely made up). What's he been up to, other than not acquiring any sense of shame? He's established a company called Full Fathom Five.

The firm specializes in YA fiction series, on the principle that if you sit a thousand struggling, desperate writers in front of a thousand typewriters, eventually one of them will write the next Harry Potter. It is the fiction equivalent of a veal pen, and is as much of a shell game as anything Bernie Madoff ever cooked up.

As a kid, I was fascinated by 1970s baseball. The huge afros, the amazing facial hair, the retina-burning uniform designs--it seemed like such an insane, colorful era, particularly when compared to the heavily moussed 80s, where I spent most of my kid-dom. (Of course, there were some colorful characters then, too, but that's a tale for another time.)

Whenever I had some disposable income (which was not often), I would spend it at a baseball card convention or store, usually on a large plastic box filled with completely worthless cards from 1977 or 1975, just so I could savor such sartorial majesties as Willie McCovey's sideburns. My elementary school library had these slim books on each major league team, all published in the mid-'70s, which I borrowed repeatedly. And whenever my grampa took me to Cooperstown, I'd seek out the unbelievable mini-exhibit on the technicolor uniforms from those years (sadly, no longer there).

While there are some chronicles of players and teams from the 1970s (The Machine and Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning are great, recent examples), there haven't been many (if any) retrospectives about the decade in total. When people speak of a Golden Age of Baseball, they usually save such mythologizing for the 1950s and its stainless, sepia-tone heroes.

But now there is finally an evangelist for game as played in the Me Decade. Journalist Dan Epstein has penned a love letter to 1970s baseball entitled Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride through Baseball and America in the Swinging 70s. ESPN's Rob Neyer has said of this tome, "What the 1960s were to America, the 1970s were to baseball, and Dan Epstein has finally given us the swinging book the '70s deserve." The book drops May 25 from Thomas Dunne Books, and there will be a big ol' release party at the Bell House in Brooklyn on May 26 (I for one am excited to try the Oscar Gamble hot dog that will be served there).

Dan was generous enough to take some time out of his busy schedule and answer some questions via email about Astroturf, day-glo erseys, the best Topps card designs, and the worst promotions of all time. Read all about it after the jump.

We are bu-HACK on The Fan, and my next guest is one of the greatest living American writers. One of the best. One of the legends. There are writers who are known as being great writers, and this is one of those writers. His name is Don DeLillo, and he's got a great new novel out called Point Omega. Don, thanks for being on the show.
Thanks for having me, Mike, though I'm not quite sure why you wanted to speak with me...
Nonsense. I'm not just a sports guy. I know a lot about a lot of things, okay? You don't get three number one shows by being a one-trick pony. I read, okay? I read books. I read a lot of books. I read a lot of printed material, material printed on paper. And your books are among the books I've read, and I enjoy them very much. I think you are one of the shining beacons of American letters, okay?
Wow, that's very nice of you to say.
But I do have a bone to pick with you. In your 1997 masterpiece Underworld, you start out the novel with an extended set piece about the famous Shot Heard Round the World playoff game between the Dodgers and the Giants in 1951.
Yes, and?
And you make no mention of Mickey Mantle.

I'd like to write for a living. That's always been my dream. At various points of my adult life, I've earned deaux to write, in various media. I even get the occasional royalty check for Olde Works. But it's far from money I could eat on.

Writing for a living is not essential to my well being, since I have other abilities/experience that keep me employable. Plus, for all I know, getting paid to write full time might totally sap the joy and love out of it. Maybe the dream would turn out to be a nightmare.

Writing is lonely. It's solitary, requires a ton of time to perfect your craft and complete projects, and can have very few dividends (or none at all). A writer who taught at Brooklyn College once told me, "The world doesn't need your stories." (He meant the third-person you, not me personally.) You have to realize that no one's chomping at the bit, waiting for your next tome. You have to realize that no one's going to pat you on the back, even when you accomplish something.

It is a vocation that requires a lot of self control, because validation probably won't come from the outside world for a very, very long time, if ever. In fact, most factors from the outside world will be horrifyingly discouraging. Like these two items that passed over my transom yesterday.

I got a fresh piece of hate mail yesterday, something I haven't received in quite a while. When you write for the web as much as I do, it's like yelling in a vaccuum. It's hard to gauge if your words have any impact at all. So it's nice to know that someone read your work and was touched by it, even if the work touched them in such a way that they want you dead. 

The hate mail had nothing to do with Scratchbomb, but a piece I wrote at the now sadly defunct Freezerbox.com, a site I contributed to for several years. The emailer didn't specify the source of his/her ire, but they were very clear about what they wanted me to do myself, or have done to me.

I'm not going to reproduce the hate mail here--not because it's filthy, but because I'd rather not give the writer's words any more fame than they deserve. The gist of the message was:

1) I am on drugs because I disagree with this person politically, and also because, unlike them, I peppered my work with proper spelling and fancy punctuation.
2) They hope America gets taken over by Muslim terorrists so I'll get what I deserve. It's funny--I never hear liberal commie types like myself wish that the US would succumb to foreign aggressors, but AMERICA: FUCK YEAH! types say this all the time. That would totally be worth it--the beacon of Western democracy should fall to teach me a valuable lesson.
3) I should go back where I came from. I don't know where they thought I came from; Jihadist Russian Homo-ville, I guess.

I was mildly upset at first. I thought, Wait, I'm such a wonderful person! Who could possibly hate me? But hey, I'm not exactly innocent when it comes to writing really angry stuff online. Plus, in thinking these things, I've put more thought into the hate mail than the sender had.

In the old days, if you decided you hated someone, you'd have to type or write a letter, go down the post office, and spend money on a stamp before you could possibly express that hatred to them. Most people didn't bother, because they knew some secretary would read this letter and throw it out. And because taking all this time out of their busy day interfered with their elaborate masturbation rituals.

So in volume, I'm sure there was far, far less hate mail in those days than there are angry emails/comments today. But the instataneous nature of the Intertubes is a good thing on this front. Because if someone reads a post that pisses them off, they can fire off a snotty email or comment, and that's pretty much the end of it.

Read the comment sections of any site--political or not--and you will see some of the angriest, hate filled language ever written this side of the Aryan Nation. And yet, as far as I know, no blogger has ever been murdered a la Eric Bogosian in Talk Radio. 

Way back when, people were less inclined to publicly declare their hatred. But then all that animus built up over time until they started picking off people from clock towers. So I like to think of the Internet as a safety valve for the Crazy Steam that builds up in some people's brains. They let it off, and then they're close to normal for another few days.

Hey, I've been there. I know that if I don't post here often enough, I start getting pains in my head! But then I vent my frustrations and the neighbor's dog stops talking to me for a while!

If you're a fan of baseball, or a fan of sports, or just a fan of good writing, do yourself a favor and start reading Joe Posnanski's blog at SI.com. Or his own blog, which publishes a lot of his SI stuff plus some other tasty bits.

Posnanski belongs to that rare breed of baseball scribe who isn't allergic to numbers and doesn't hate things invented within the last 50 years. And he is also a joy to read, prose-wise. The only other writer I'd put in his category is Tim Marchman, who--near as I can tell--remains unemployed now that the NY Sun has folded, which is a shame. (Marchman's joblessness, I mean. The defunctory-ness of the NY Sun is neither here nor there for me.)

Prime example: A recent post wherein he argues that just because a particular stat wasn't considered important during a player's career (or didn't exist), that doesn't mean said stat isn't important. In Posnanski's opinion, new stats (or renewed focus on older stats, like OBP) recognize that certain things are not random or unimportant aspects of a game, but skills that should be recognized as such.

He's been around for quite a while, most notably as a columnist for the Kansas City Star. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm coming late to the Joe Posnanski Is Awesome Party, but I figured I'd pass it along. My first New Year's Resolution for 2009 is to berate people for doing things I should have been doing all along.

Here at Scratchbomb HQ, I get a lot of review copies of upcoming books. Oh my yes, I'm practically inundated with literature. But while I love to read, I rarely get a chance to speak with the authors behind these works. But that ends today! Because today begins a regular feature on the site, Authors Cornered!

My first interviewee is L.X. Magruder, best known as the creator of dozens of young adult novels. He's the man behind such beloved children classics as The Sleepover Pals and Wikipedia Jones. Next month, Slapdash Books releases the first volume in his first series for adults, a twisted universe of vampires and other monsters called The Darkening.

First off, I'm surprised you decided to write a series of vampire novels. It's quite a departure from your previous work.

I've always been a huge horror fan, so I didn't see it as such a reach. If you go back and reread at my books, you'll see many elements of the supernatural.

Even though your last five novels were in the Johnson High Cheerleader Squad series?

The supernatural elements are subtle, to be sure, but believe me, they're there. I mean, there's no way those really complicated pyramid moves could have been accomplished without the occult.

How did you come up with the idea for this new series?

Vampires are huge in publishing right now. Particularly, books where vampires fight humans and/or other types of monsters. While these works raise some intriguing issues, I don't think they explore them as deeply as they could. That's what I hope to do with The Darkening series.

What kind of issues?

Like, what would happen if a werewolf did it with a mummy? How would that work? I'm sure you've wondered about that before.

I can't say I have.

That's the role of the artist--to ask the questions no one dares contemplate.

There's a lot of snark on this web site, particularly where sports media is concerned. Thanks to one professional endeavor or another, I spent several years immersed in the stuff, so it's hard to wash the stink off.

That makes it even more important to stop the presses when I spot a rare example of Truth and Justice in sportswriting. So I take time out of my regularly schedule bile to declare the following: Tim Marchman is awesome.

Tim Marchman has written for such lofty outlets as the New Republic and such not-so-lofty ones as the New York Press (a weekly that once let this asshole write for them). I know him best as a baseball columnist for the New York Sun, and if you enjoy the game of baseball even slightly, you will love his writing. I'm usually not so absolutist in my opinions, but I feel confident making this statement.