Roguetry in motion

Carl Hiaasen, eminent muckraker and novelist, reveals to the world a secret communication between Sarah Palin and the publisher of her soon-to-be excreted “memoir,” Going Rogue:  

2. The mainland of Russia is indeed visible from parts of western Alaska during favorable weather conditions in the Bering Straits. Considering the ridicule you endured over this issue during the campaign, your desire to set the record straight is understandable.

Still, 78 pages is a big chunk of the book. Perhaps it’s possible to deal with the I-can-see-Russia controversy a bit more succinctly.

3. Our researchers can find no evidence that Tina Fey belongs to the Taliban. Could you send us the sourcing for that reference?

4. John McCain’s campaign staff is vehemently denying the incident you describe in Chapter 13. Perhaps you could provide our legal department with the names of persons who actually witnessed the senator placing the duct tape over your mouth.

5. Even though you quit with 18 months remaining in your term, your achievements as Alaska’s governor will be of great interest to your readers and political supporters.

How about expanding that section of the book to a full chapter?

Looks like they’ll be editing this turkey right up to the last minute.

Blue Monday

Not many guitarists could say they schooled Jimi Hendrix — say it without being laughed out of the room, at any rate – but Johnny Jones was a member of that extremely small circle of musicians. Jones (who died last month at the age of 73) was a leading light of the Nashville blues scene, and he showed the young Hendrix a thing or two, as he recalls in the clip above. Jones’ first band, the Imperial Seven, had a bass player named Billy Cox, who had met Hendrix in the Army and invited his friend to sit in with the group. Cox later recorded with Hendrix on Band of Gypsys.    

Jones was far better known in Europe than in the U.S. Ironically, it was a soul-styled cover version of “Purple Haze”  that gave Jones his overseas calling card: 

Late in life, Jones played out a good deal with his friend Doc Blakey:

Do the Scalzi

I celebrated the fall of 2008 by sending my agent a nonfiction book proposal and the completed, polished manuscript of a crime novel. Shortly after La Agent fired off some submissions to various interested editors, the publishing industry began rending itself with layoffs, budget cuts, and severe restrictions on the purchasing power of the editors who survived the staff reductions.

What’s that you say? Great timing, Steve? Tell me about it. The editors who didn’t get the ax got the workloads of those who did. The nonfiction proposal is finally getting some atttention, but a year after the novel manuscript went out, its fate is still an open question. Things are tough out there. 

Maybe you’ve heard about John Scalzi, a very good SF writer who posted an entire novel online, chapter by chapter, via his blog. He did it because he wanted people to read his work. He ended up getting a book deal and went on to become a successful novelist, but all that was after the fact. The chief thing is, he wanted his work to be read.  

I like my crime novel, a lot, and I want it to be read. So on Wednesday, with my agent’s full blessing, I’m going to start posting it a chapter at a time. It should be complete by late December, at which point I’ll post a short essay describing how I came to write the novel, and the sources of inspiration for the (rather unusual) main character. I’d be delighted to get comments from readers, but they should come as e-mails to moi. Comments will be switched off for the individual posts. If you want to send me a few bucks in exchange for the posts, that would be nice, but mainly I want to get some daylight on the novel.

Friday finds

Cuba gives a cache of Ernest Hemingway’s papers to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, which is certainly ironic when you consider the historical relationship between JFK and Cuba. The papers reportedly include a different ending for For Whom the Bell Tolls, corrected proofs of The Old Man and the Sea, and thousands of letters.

Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, in words and photographs.

Lynn Viehl shares the latest numbers from her bestselling novel.

The new issue of The Biographer’s Craft is up.

A few words in praise of Ayn Rand.

Jon Stewart does Glenn Beck. He has to call it imitation, but you don’t have to.

Neil Young, who has already released more good music this year than Bob Dylan, has a new disc coming out next month.

Getting to know Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey.

The Wednesday Westie

Watching-the-driveway-flow edition.

The existential dilemma of the coffee maker

My coffee maker has a problem. Which means I, too, have a problem.

The problem is this: the coffee maker has about as many functions and tricky settings as a missile defense control panel. However, all it is required to do is make coffee. I don’t want it to guide nuclear missiles to designated targets, as amusing as that might be on a slow-starting morning. I simply want it to heat water, pour the water through a basket full of ground-up coffee, then keep the drippings hot in the coffee pot. A perfectly acceptable, one might even say, laudable mission for a coffee maker. Vital, even — especially in my house.

But the coffee maker evidently yearns for greater things, and it’s developed a bit of a complex about performing what ought to be a simple function. It prematurely stops brewing and flashes “Error” messages above the sludgy oil slick at the bottom of the pot. It beeps and stops heating the brewed coffee while I’m only halfway through my first cup. No machine that really wants to be my friend is going to do that kind of thing.

I’m beginning to imagine the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android every time I pop the cover off that big can of Chock Full’o Nuts. “My intellect, which is capable of solving every known mathematical theorem simultaneously, is instead going to brew supermarket coffee . . .” Marvin the Malcontent Coffee Maker may not realize it, but he’s about to switch roles from The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to WALL-E, and not in the starring role.

Come back, Mister Coffee — all is forgiven.

Blue Monday

James “Blood” Ulmer plays the hardy perennial “Sittin’ On Top of the World” with backing from Alison Kraus on violin. Though I’ve never really understood the “harmolodic” music theory espoused by Ulmer and his mentor, Ornette Coleman (as with Buckminster Fuller, Coleman’s ideas become harder to understand the more he explains them), I know I usually like what I hear.  

Here is Ulmer’s solo version of “Are You Glad to Be in America,” one of his earliest records: 

Here’s a showstopper: “First Blood” with Bernie Worrell on Hammond organ:

Check out the lame audience member with his fingers in his ears.

The costume index

No Harry Potters this year. Lots of Transformers — must have been four or five Bumblebees in The Divine Miss T’s school Halloween parade. Only one Spiderman, but Jedi knights made a comeback after being missing for the past few years. I guess that’s the intended result of George Lucas’ endless recycling and re-releasing of Star Wars.

Friday finds

All you need to celebrate Halloween the H.G. Wells way. (And the George Pal way, and the Oson Welles way, and the Hugo Gernsback way. . .) The image above, incidentally, shows Michael Condron’s sculpture of a Martian tripod in Woking, Surrey, where all hell breaks loose in the original novel. Check here for the New Jersey location used in the radio broadcast.

How about some literary costume ideas for trick-or-tweeding?

Halloween, B’more style.

Continuing our Halloween theme, it turns out that Dan Aykroyd based the Ghostbusters storyline on the psychic exploits of his own dad.

Novelists nominate books they think have been unfairly neglected.

A medievalist tries his hand at the Dante’s Inferno board game.

Taking on Knut Hamsun.

No need to be skeptical about Martin Gardner.

Patricia Cornwell’s latest mystery tale is playing out in court.

Gore Vidal’s sunset years.

How Paul Shaffer was crucified and resurrected by Bob Dylan.

There’s nothing more pathetic than a whining contrarian.

Maurice Sendak has three words for parents who think Where the Wild Things Are is too scary for their kids.

The Guardian harkens back to its coverage of John Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize for Literature. A writer retraces the journey described in Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley.

M*A*S*H was Robert Altman’s first big hit as a filmmaker, but his son ended up making more money off it than he did.

If you don’t have the dime, don’t do the wine

I have to agree with J.D. Rhoades that the idea of a bottle of tequila that sells for over two grand is pretty astonishing. I mean . . . tequila? Cactus juice? Grapes, okay, maybe. Grapes are friendly. They practically ask to be squished and bottled and allowed to ferment in a dark place. There’s nothing friendly about a cactus.  Cacti mean to do you harm. They practically say: Yeah, fool, c’mon and try to squish me, see what happens. You wanna take off your shoes and stomp on a big vat full of cacti, go ahead, be my guest.

In point of fact, much as I love my red vino, I’d be afraid to drink a two-grand bottle of wine. I can’t imagine what would be there in the flavor and bouquet that could justify the premium price, but if I found out, I’d be stuck with a jones for something that costs the equivalent of a monthly mortgage payment to enjoy. At present, my vices have a pretty manageable price tag. Unless the publishing industry loosens up, and unless Oprah comes calling, they’d better stay that way.