This post might need to disappear later

This publication has been sitting on a desk at work for a few months, and every day my resolve not to ask the owner of that desk about it weakens a little. I've been doing my anti-snark breathing, but it isn't working! Someone send me laryngitis!

Filmbook: "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009)

This has been the season of fiction authors I love writing nonfiction books and directors I really like making children's movies. While I want to reward both for stretching outside their comfort zones, there's a greater potential for disappointment in each.

"Fantastic Mr. Fox" is definitely a Wes Anderson movie first and a children's movie second, and I think I liked it better that way. For me, this movie was a great escape: I went in fretting about whatever it is I normally fret about and walked out 90 minutes later with a smile on my face. Beautifully composed with dollhouse-level details, witty without resorting to topical jokes (that's for you, "The Squeakuel" trailer we had to sit through first), stacked with solid voice work -- it was strong on all fronts, even if I don't think I'll be watching it over and over like Anderson's others.

Anderson and co-screenwriter Noah "Minor Dickens" Baumbach did a fair amount of re-arranging on the original Roald Dahl book; Mr. Fox gets an opossum sidekick I didn't remember from the book (seen above), and his four children are condensed into one, Ash, a neurotic teenager voiced by Jason Schwartzman in the Schwartzmanest role he has ever Schwartzmanned. Mr. Fox's theft gets a backstory as well as a B-plot in the form of Ash feeling deprived of his dad's attention when cousin Kristofferson comes to stay with the Foxes. The screenwriters also add to the ending substantially, but I won't spoil that for you here.

I wouldn't call it inappropriate for children (except for the peril of having to explain to your kid what the rat calling Mrs. Fox "the town tart" means), but I can see how they would get bored, and maybe even a little scared once the Foxes go toe to toe with Boggis, Bunce and Bean. As for the Wes Anderson humor, some of it will go over their heads, but then again some people in my (kid-free) audience weren't laughing either.

I was surprised that Anderson managed to keep "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" mostly within his comfort zone; Dana Stevens wrote about the movie in Slate that "the Anderson tics that threaten to get in the way of his storytelling in live-action films serve as assets here," and while I like the director more than she does, I do think this one plays to his strengths in a kind of unique way. It may yet sneak onto my top 10 of the year, although I have a lot of movies to catch up on before making that call.

FTC cover-assery: I paid for this ticket myself, but because I signed up for MovieWatcher 800 years ago, I now have a free ticket to burn off in the next three weeks. If I'm going to use it on a literary depress-o-fest this weekend, should I go for "The Road" or "The Lovely Bones"? I like the former book better, if that helps.

Still: ign.com

Some notables are more notable than others

Fresh on the heels of its list of 100 notable books of the year, the New York Times recognized your attention span is too short to appreciate it and made a new list of the 10 best books of '09. Two of the six books I singled out made the cut, A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN and CHRONIC CITY. (I also requested HALF BROKE HORSES and RAYMOND CARVER: A WRITER'S LIFE to review, but didn't get either. Scribner, are we not friends any more? Is this about what happened in Valencia?)

Funny thing about CHRONIC CITY, though: Jonathan Lethem's latest received two reviews from the Times, one from editor Gregory Cowles in the Sunday Book Review and another from big-name critic Michiko Kakutani. Cowles' was positive, calling it "astonishing" and praising its "beautiful drunken sentences," but Kakutani's was first and negative, concluding that it was "lame and unsatisfying." A few books every year get this treatment, but normally the review people remember is the most timely one.

My own review (which can be read here) is closer to Kakutani's than Cowles', but in promoting the book to the top 10 I sense a little skirmish among the Gray Lady's luminaries. Was a tie-breaker brought in? Did Sam Tanenhaus administer an arm-wrestling bout for that contested spot? I picture the disgruntled critic, having been overruled by her boss, storming back to her office, slamming the door and taking the whiskey bottle out of the bottom drawer before prank-calling Philip Roth and Photoshopping Thomas Pynchon's Naval portrait onto the bodies of World's Strongest Man competitors.

But I'm letting my imagination run away from me. If you've read one of the other books on the list that you'd like to speak up for, the floor is yours.

A benevolent dictatorship at worst

In a way, I was disappointed that John Freeman's THE TYRANNY OF E-MAIL failed to convince me of the dangers of e-mail, although I ultimately agreed with some of his points. Yes, the irregularity of e-mail can make it strangely addictive, and yes, it can be very distracting. But I wasn't sold on the case that those were the faults of the medium which therefore should be used sparingly. Perhaps Freeman's argument would have been more convincing had he not started with a history of mail from cuneiform tablets of empire to the postcard, which I was happy to learn was the last medium fated to ruin American literacy forever -- which is to say, when this section wasn't dry, it didn't help him build his case. Nor did anecdotes about celebrities' marriages breaking up because they told national magazines they brought their BlackBerrys to bed with them.

Freeman concludes the book by offering tips, but those, too, have their weaknesses. His first tip is never to send an e-mail unless it's absolutely necessary, a rule that, conservatively, I have broken at least six times today already. (That spirited debate on the Best One-Hit Wonders Of The Naughties, however, was necessary.) There are many times when an e-mail is not the most efficient method of getting what you need, but the medium can be a joy and a comfort -- what of those? Writing in Slate about Thomas Mallon's new book on letters, Megan Marshall paraphrases V.S. Naipaul's plea to his sister into "Please keep me alive with your e-mails," terming it "an appeal only Google could love." I don't think that's the case. A message can be very much needed without being necessary.

Sure, I probably check my e-mail too often and get distracted by it when I do, but I think I can moderate my own exposure to it. That said, if you believe you have an e-mail problem, I suggest this alternate reading list. Disclaimer: I am not an expert (or while we're at it an editor at a well regarded literary magazine, as Freeman is), nor am I particularly well organized.

If you are short on time, read Merlin Mann's articles on Inbox Zero which encourage ruthlessly dealing with every e-mail you get and not treating your inbox like an urgent to-do list. (I believe this is the subject of his forthcoming book as well). If you have a little more time, read Julie Morgenstern's NEVER CHECK E-MAIL IN THE MORNING, focusing specifically on work productivity and how to get more done in your day. If you think your problem is more systemic than with just your e-mail, read Liz Davenport's ORDER FROM CHAOS. She's a professional organizer, but not the kind that will encourage you to go out and buy a bunch of bins or folders for your existing junk, more of the kind that will help you determine what parts of your existing junk will help you get more done.

FTC cover-assery: I got THE TYRANNY OF E-MAIL from the library; I had checked out the Morgenstern book when I read it a while back and I bought the Davenport book. I got my first e-mail address in 1997. Hotmail, naturally.

Once, when Amy and I were fourteen, the three of us were getting out of the car after a trip to the mall. The neighbor woman, who was out watering her yard, saw the shopping bags and asked what we'd bought. Amy showed off her new candy-colored sweater and her hoop earrings and hot pink pants. The woman congratulated Amy. She then turned to me, pointing at the rectangular bulge protruding from the small brown bag in my hand. I reluctantly pulled out my single purchase -- a hardback of THE GRAPES OF WRATH. My mother looked at the neighbor, rolled her eyes in my direction, and stage-whispered, "We're going through a book phase."

It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word "phase." As if any minute "we" would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to "our" senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken shoes. But the book phase never ended.

--Sarah Vowell, "American Goth" (from TAKE THE CANNOLI)

Notes of irritation

For those of you who thought I would break my streak, in the words of former president Calvin Coolidge, "You lose." That said, these are all remnants unworthy of being turned into posts of their own:

• Re. the FTC blogger crackdown: The way I understand the rules, I don't have to disclose any book I don't specifically get from a publisher or author for the purpose of reviewing on this blog. But I think I'm going to try massively over-disclosing for a while, so the FTC gets bored and go away. (Joke!) You probably don't care whether I got a book from BookMooch or as a birthday present or from the library, but maybe you do. Also, despite what some bloggers who have gotten thousands of dollars of freebies have whined, it's not that hard.

• Don't you hate it when the lyrics of the song you're listening to have a very glaring grammatical error in them, the type that rankles every time you listen to it? I'm thinking of one in particular where making it correct would not affect the rhyme scheme or melody at all, but fill in your own example. (ETA: This is exactly the one I was talking about.)
  

• I strongly feel there should be a term for a superhero's sole weakness that is not his/her/its Kryptonite or Achilles' heel. Even in metaphor I find those too specific. If you prefer, put it like this: Imagine you are taking superheroes with a group with no knowledge of the Trojan War and only the most basic knowledge of Superman -- how do you address this? Surely there is a lexicon.
  

• Speaking of creating words, I don't normally get indignant about nouns that have been converted into verbs, but I have to call out Markus Zusak's THE BOOK THIEF for this sentence: "Every night, Liesel would nightmare." Was it really necessary to use that over "have a nightmare"? At some point an editor must have said "Hey, just because this book was a best-seller in Australia doesn't mean we need to let it run rampant over the rules of grammar." (So saith a person who uses the word "unbooken" regularly.)
  

NYC: WORD's Holiday Open House

Booksellers everywhere will be nervously watching the till this December to end the retail fiscal year on a high note. WORD in Greenpoint has one of the most original ideas I've seen so far: They're having local authors come in today and tomorrow to sign their books for your giftee. Today, pick up and personalize A.J. Jacobs' THE GUINEA PIG DIARIES or Amy Braunschweiger's TAXI CONFIDENTIAL (1-3PM); tomorrow, conspicuously show your copy of INFINITE JEST to Lev Grossman (3-5PM), whose book THE MAGICIANS I still haven't read but I hear is just great.

What's a book you got signed that you treasure?

Your Friday afternoon entertainment: Help Goodreads pick its best books of the year in the book-centric social networking site's massive poll. It's not clear how they picked the nominees in each category, especially when it breaks down into genre, but still fun.

If they were really smart, though, they'd only let you vote for books you had marked as read in your account. I made a few uninformed choices -- I wasn't actually aware, for example, that Michael Ian Black had written a children's book before now.

And they all fell under their spell

"Puritanism had landed smack on that rock and after regaining its strength at the expense of the soft-hearted Indians had thrown its steeples and stone walls all across Connecticut, leaving Rhode Island to the Quakers and Jews and antinomians and women."

I cannot lie, I picked up this book because of TV. As mentioned in my library queue post, I had to watch the pilot of "Eastwick," which I enjoyed slightly at best, and began to question that this premise had fueled not only a novel but also a movie, a play, a musical and two TV pilots prior to this one. The show has since been canceled, but I resolved not to judge author John Updike's work based on, for example, being asked to pretend that Lindsay Price is unattractive when she has her hair up and her glasses on. (Come on!)

The first surprise waiting for me in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK was that it was set in my former home state of Rhode Island. The second, that this book is very funny and cutting. And the third, that this book isn't really about witches at all. You already knew that, because you're smart, but I'm just getting there now.

It's true that Alexandra, Jane and Sukie, three friends in the bucolic town of Eastwick, are all witches. But their neighbors don't suspect and dislike them because of their powers, but rather because they're all divorcées rumored to be sleeping with some of the town's married men. In fact, they all are, and continue to do so after the appearance of wealthy stranger Daryl Van Horne, who -- spoiler, because I feel like it -- embarks on separate affairs with all three after a Halloween night to remember in which they all get high and have a foursome in his custom hot tub. (Speaking of Bad Sex in Fiction though! Like the other sex scenes in the book, I found this one alternately funny and over-detailed; I think the author goes out of his way to make them untitillating.)

While carrying a moderate load of scorn for the radicalism outside their borders, especially after one of their lovers runs away with a teenage girl and goes underground, the witches participate in it in this trickle-down capacity, mostly heedless of the consequences until their arrangement with Van Horne goes awry. Updike attributes this to their desire to heal others, which I read as a fairly tongue-in-cheek summation of their own justifications for the affairs, although from reading around I see the debate over how the author really regards these women has been going on more or less since it was published. In some ways, they're far ahead of their fellow citizens, but prove to be just as petty and mean as them when they have to be.

Maybe it's embarrassingly on the nose to use images of witchcraft to portray these three working single mothers, standard bearers of feminist change -- and in case you don't get it, Updike finally delivers the sanctimonious stay-at-home mother saying of them, "I don't know why those women bother to go on living, whores to half the town and not even getting paid. And those poor neglected children of theirs, it's a positive crime." (To be fair, her husband was having an affair with one of them.) But I thought it was clever. This book in fact spills over with cleverness; one potent image contained both a dirty joke and a semiotician's dream of an analogy. The author flirts with obviousness -- a late scene set in a church contains a Randishly pompous, interminable speech -- but doesn't fall in love with it.

My exposure to Updike before this has been slim but I own RABBIT, RUN and am looking forward to checking out more of his books. At the same time, I'm not all that curious about the 1987 movie or the 2008 sequel to this book, THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK; I guess I'm satisfied with the ending of the story as presented here.

FTC cover-assery: This was a library book and the back cover copy (this edition) calls it a "hexy, sexy novel." Oh, the wrongness.

Holiday Gift Guide 2009 is coming...

Stuck on what to buy for your book-loving friends and family? Let me help you with that! I did a holiday gift guide last year and it was so fun I'm doing it again next week (although radio component is pending) combining books I have read and liked with books that generally intrigue me.

It's earlier than last year's not because of the inexorable march of holiday consumerism, but rather to motivate me to get my holiday shopping done earlier.

Know what you're giving already? Would love to hear your suggestions. Shameless plugs are welcome but (since we have now entered into the era of FTC cover-assery) only in the "I/ My friend/ employer/ Twitter follower wrote a book," not in the paid product placement sense.

Photo: witheyes

November Unbookening

Checked out 6 from the library
Received 5 to review
Borrowed 5
Bought 1
Received 2 from BookMooch
19 in

Returned 6 to the library
Gave 3 away
Donated 5
Returned 1
Lent 3
Left 1 behind en route
19 out

Photo of a Swiss art installation: timtom

It's an upset!

Prix Goncourt winner Jonathan Littell snuck past Philip Roth to take the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex in Fiction award for a passage in his novel THE KINDLY ONES, joining an exclusive club of winners like Tom Wolfe and John Updike.

Unlike the Bulwer-Lytton, there's really no way to quote these here in their horrifying glory, but having read all the very NSFW passages from the longlist, I'm not sure they gave it to the right man.

Not one person in a hundred keeps to a reading regimen. Every American over the age of thirty-five exercises regularly, or feels volubly guilty about not doing so. But almost no one approaches middle age with the ambition of getting around to George Eliot at last. Ask someone his favorite kind of food and he will answer as if he’d been waiting to be asked; his list will be ranked and comprehensively annotated. Ask him about his favorite genre and he won’t even bother to look puzzled; he will laugh at you.

-- D.G. Myers, "What have you been reading?" I realize I'm showing my youth by saying this, but I will not grow old to be like that, I will not. Now I'll stop before I sound any more like a 12-year-old about to get grounded.

Three funny things and one amazing

McSweeney's: Terrible Poetry Jokes

Quantz: "It's DEFINITELY time for me to fix the great works of fiction!"

Hark! A Vagrant: Hipsters Ruin Everything, Part 1 (it's germane, trust me)

YouTube via Like Fire: Silent film footage of Mark Twain from 1909, shot by Thomas Edison.

NYC: A.V. Club Reading December 7

I'll just point out at the top here that I am massively biased. While I didn't contribute to the A.V. Club's new collection of "obsessively specific pop-culture lists," the authors include my Wrapped Up in Books co-panelists, former and current bosses and people I look up to in general.

So it's for them, not for me that I beg you to come to the book tour's only NYC stop next Monday, December 7 and let these very, very funny people entertain you for free. It's at 8PM at Union Hall (702 Union St., Brooklyn) and yes, there will be a Q&A afterwards.

If you don't live here, you can still buy and enjoy the book.