Six panels and two fun events later...
"I'm not even sure people are reading INFINITE JEST now."
--Lev Grossman, getting his BHD status revoked for never having heard of Infinite Summer. This was only the third most insane thing I heard at this panel on David Foster Wallace and John Updike, actually.
"If there are people out there who want me to co-write a vampire or zombie novel, I'm down."
--T Cooper: Novelist whose work I most want to get into after hearing him speak.
"When people get ahold of technology, they're bound to do something stupid with it."
--Keith Gessen of n+1 (who backed up this claim with an example from Philip Roth, so at least he was keeping the brow high). Same panel as T Cooper, and unfortunately they were both mowed down by a fellow panelist who used the opportunity to complain that she wasn't a famous best-selling author yet. Sorry, guys!
"It's the difference betwen having sex with a person and having sex with a piece of technology."
--John Freeman of Granta on e-books. Freeman was incredibly insightful on a panel moderated by blogger Maud Newton, but this analogy is questionable on a few levels.
"Bonobos laugh when they see something weird -- as if to say, 'That's weird, but it's okay now.' Satire is the opposite. It's seeing something perfectly normal and it scares the hell out of you."
--Jeffrey Rotter (THE UNKNOWN KNOWNS*) holding his own against seriously funny co-panelists Sloane Crosley and Gary Shteyngart.
"I think in five years this will be the Brooklyn Blogging Festival."
--Rabbi Simcha Weinstein is probably right, but that is still sad.
"We should start blogs. We could get famous through our blogs."
--girl behind me at the Crossroads coffee stand. It's already starting! Noooooooooo... (She went on to say, "I have a burlesque blog"--pause while I struggle mightily not to turn around, 'cause wouldn't you?--"but I haven't been to any performances recently." A burlesque review blog! The world is so full of a number of things.)
"I have never kissed a man onstage."
--David Cross checked that one off his list at the Happy Ending event with the help of Jonathan Ames. Just thought the Internet should know one way or the other. And there is video (not shot by me).
--
*Correction: I incorrectly referred to the title of Jeffrey Rotter's book earlier as THE KNOWN UNKNOWNS. Sorry, Mr. Rotter.
2 days ago
5 comments:
As far as quote #7: Joseph Kennedy is said to have quipped that it was time to get out of the stock market when the boy shining his shoes asked him for stock tips. I had a similar experience in 2004 when I overheard a teenage girl advising her parents on how to flip houses. But on the other hand, I suppose blogging has always been about fanfare for the common person.
I don't want to step on anyone's desire to start a blog, because heaven knows no one tried to stop me from starting one. Or, as it turns out, many. And people are still getting famous from their blogs, it's true.
I just enjoy being a Frowsy McCurmudgeonpants spoiling all the fun. Surely people who bought their own domain name 10 years ago feel the same about me.
I gotta know: what were the 1st and 2nd most insane things you heard at the DFW/Updike panel? I was there too so...we may harmonize.
Sometimes, you can infer the quality of a person's writing after hearing them speak for ten seconds. This - I'm assuming - was one of those times.
Jeff: these were the other two that made me really sit up and take notice. If you have alternate candidates, I would love to hear them.
#2 was Laura Miller's opening salvo of overwhelming indifference towards Updike. I sense that she was trying to be honest, and "legacy" doesn't necessarily have to have a positive connotation, but it struck me as odd that she was on the panel given her low opinion of half the topic. Then she didn't build on her dislike of him to say anything particularly meaningful about his legacy, either. I'm no Updike expert, but I felt her dismissal was really glib and contentless. Of course, because she announced this, the content of the hour tipped towards DFW, which probably displeased a certain segment of the audience -- but anyway.
#1 was David Lipsky's theory that people turned to novels in the past because they were full of cursing and sex and Leopold Bloom taking a shit. (For those who weren't there, the current was that movies and TV had taken over on the transgressive front, leaving novelists stranded.) It's the kind of theory that is so bonkers it would make an incredible discussion in itself, in that it simultaneously makes all of Western culture look like a race to the bottom (pun intended!) and says something interesting about transgression and our attraction to it in general. I swear I could hear Geoffrey Chaucer's ghost chuckling but I couldn't think of an appropriate response other than "...Really!?"
I think of the panels I went to the Updike/ DFW one had the clearest objective -- here are two writers who have recently died, discuss. Neither of these critics hijacked the panel to push their ideas, even though they were surprising to hear. I still thought it was worthwhile -- what did you think of the panel overall?
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