Free Advice Friday: With a dreamy far-off look, and her nose stuck in a book

In this week's Dear Prudence chat, the manners police strikes out at public readers:

Sometimes when I want to eat out but don't have anyone to dine with I take a book to read during my meal. Sometimes I also read before a play begins. Recently an older woman came up to my table at a restaurant and told me it was very rude to read in public. I was shocked and embarrassed. I never read when I'm with others. Is it rude to read in public?

PRUDENCE: Apparently there is a cadre of people who would like to increase the amount of illiteracy in the world. They think we should all stare straight ahead when we are relieving ourselves, or waiting for an event, or enjoying a dinner out alone. Having a nice meal while engrossed in a good book sounds like a delightful evening—I'm one of those people who when dining alone would end up reading the ingredients on the Tabasco bottle if I didn't have a book with me. I assume the old lady also goes around pulling out people's earbuds and spilling ink on their crossword puzzles. She was a nut—ignore her remarks.

All I wish to add is, if this older woman is conducting this intervention on people reading books, the mere presence of smartphones must make her head explode.

Hey, in case you need a break from reading about today's important Supreme Court decision (Pre-Existing Condition Dance Party, Saturday, my place!) you can read about Rielle Hunter's alternate Edwards Family history in her own memoir, as reviewed by Emily Bazelon at Slate.

Summer Reading: Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum Make Me WANT MY MTV

I started watching MTV in secret when I was 11 or 12. I was just old enough to be allowed to stay home by myself while my parents were out running errands, and when I heard the garage door close I would creep up to my parents' room to watch their TV. I remember the texture of the purple corduroy pillow I would sit on to watch so I wouldn't leave a tell-tale crease in my parents' bed. I don't think I ever asked permission; I just knew it wasn't allowed.


Whatever was on, I would watch, but back then mostly I watched videos. This was the era of Prodigy and No Doubt, of Missy Elliott wearing a coat like a garbage bag and Fiona Apple rolling around on the floor. Biggie and Tupac had just died, but I wouldn't understand the significance beyond the tribute videos for a long time. I loved "Daria" and thought it might be fun to be on "The Real World" (this was back when they made them all get jobs and weren't full-time drunk hot messes).

I wasn't around to see the first golden age of MTV when the channel flipped on with "Video Killed the Radio Star," but nor do I feel insta-nostalgic for whatever JWOWW did last week. As a creation myth, Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum's oral history of MTV was an eye-opener for me, and even when I got to the aspects of its history I was familiar with, the detail they dug up over what must have been thousands of interviews made the retelling new.

Before delving into the videos we know and loved (or hated), Marks and Tannenbaum spend a fair amount of time explaining the way that the channel was shaped by its shoestring budget and casual operation. MTV began as a small pet project of a giant corporation with the budget of a rounding error, and couldn't afford to pay record labels for their videos (most of which were promotional pieces aimed at Australian or European audiences) -- so they convinced labels to air them for free, and played whatever they had. Cable owners didn't want to pick the channel up, so one executive begged Mick Jagger to record a commercial that would appeal to viewers to demand it -- the legendary "I Want My MTV" spot. They couldn't afford famous on-air talent, so they did a talent search and picked 5 unknowns to be the first "VJs," who look back on their time at MTV with fondness but feel a little cheated by their old contracts.

Some of the more salacious details about past misdeeds on sets and catering money going to less legal pleasures go unchecked, but Marks and Tannenbaum probably have at least one tidbit that will shock you even if you've heard it all. Mine concerned Rod Stewart, some lovely ladies and the River Cafe, a respectable upscale restaurant here in Brooklyn... and that's all I'll say about that. I'd recommend this book for trivia obsessives, people who like to wax nostalgic about the "good old days" of music videos and anyone who, like me, wishes to have been present at the creation.

A place I took this book in 100 words or less: Long Island City, Queens for work. Warehouses scrolling by on every block interspersed with views of the UN. A parking lot containing small planes instead of cars. Stained-glass windows on the platform of the elevated train, representing shops on the street and a train itself. I took a picture of the platform's Art Deco detail and accidentally captured a man in the foreground who was sitting in the trunk of his hatchback. Winds chased each other down to the river as if pulled by gravity. Sandals over cobblestones. Sunshine and no one.

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
- RIP Nora Ephron, 71, author of HEARTBURN, I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK and others.

“Is Mitt Romney electable?” he continued. “On the face of it, he looks presidential and he’s not stupid. But he lets himself down hideously whenever he has a victory. He looks as if he’s had five grams of coke — he’s shaking with a power rush. And that was always the most impressive thing about Obama: how he didn’t let that happen to himself. As if he didn’t feel it.”
--Martin Amis for political pundit 2012

Let's talk about vaginas in order to make Mitch Albom very uncomfortable

On some level it makes perfect sense that Albom, Michigander, is uncomfortable with words like penis and vagina in literature; after all, one of his state reps was banned from saying "vagina" within the context of a debate about abortion bills. (Not because, technically, abortions do not occur in vaginas, but rather because Rep. Mike Callton found the word "vagina" inappropriate to be used "in mixed company" -- that is, around the owners of vaginas and others who do not have them. He also said the term vagina was "so offensive, I don't even want to say it in front of women." This is rather curious because, well, most-to-almost-all of them have vaginas! I'm not saying teach your three-year-old niece what a vagina is without her parents' consent, but these are adult women in front of whom

(Let it also be entered into the record that Callton is not a doctor. He is a chiropractor, but not an M.D. Not that being an M.D. gives one law to decide which medical terms like "vagina" are inappropriate... but I think you get my drift.)

(He's also a Birther. Just adding another fact I found out about Mike "I Don't Want To Hear The Word Vagina Ever, Even Though I Have Probably* Traveled Through One Once**" Carlton.)

Back to Albom: Under pressure, perhaps, to write a 50 SHADES OF GREY column, he focuses on how it embarrasses him that such crude language is used in our culture. This is the entirety of his column -- that he feels embarrassed by 50 SHADES, by movies like "Hysteria" and by "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23," because there is open discussion of sex in all those things. Somewhere, Andy Rooney shakes his heavenly fist that he didn't think of this one first***.

At least he doesn't use the throw blanket of "But think of the children!!" to cover up his shoddy argument. But pray tell, who made Albom read 50 SHADES and watch "Don't Trust the B----" (I hear it's good, actually) or "Girls" (which he paints with the Katie Roiphe brush that if it isn't fun-looking then it must be bad)? Oh... nobody. But just knowing that women like 50 SHADES or that a character in "Don't Trust the B----" sleeps with another character gives him the bad tingles in the no-no place.  As much as Albom claims he's not trying to tell people what to do, he's... suggesting to people what to do, and that's the same. 

Now if I ran into Mitch Albom at a party I wouldn't say, "Let's talk about vaginas." I know my crowd. (I'd probably open with "What are you doing in New York?", which is safe enough.) But unfortunately, "It makes me embarrassed for the world" is not a good enough reason to not have free speech. If that were the case I would send Mike Callton into deep space, where no one could hear him rattle off his preferred euphemisms for vagina****, along with people who post homophobic jokes on Facebook, wear blackface or own a "No Fat Chicks" bumper sticker. I can't blast them off into deep space because I have to deal with them here on earth, and so does Albom. There are centuries of more "demure" popular culture he can dive into -- well, some of it may not be all that demure, but at least it doesn't have the word vagina in it, oh heavens where are my smelling salts. You can choose not to consume whatever forms of various entertainments you wish, but leave us out of it.

For the record, the word vagina is used 6 times in 50 SHADES OF GREY; penis, not at all.

As to Albom's contention that "If there isn't some shock involved, it isn't worth doing anymore," I would hope for the sake of the human race that he is incorrect, and so does my vagina. 

*I would prefer not to double check this fact.
**There is likely a more clinical way to say that, that makes birth sound less like an airport hub. 
***Actually, there is probably an Andy Rooney "60 Minutes" commentary about this somewhere. And if you know where it is, let me know.
****...I don't want to know.

This month in Ayn Rand jokes

"I would do anything to spend one night with Howard Roark."
-Monica, Ellen Page's character in "To Rome With Love" (W. Allen, 2012). This is how we know not only that she is culturally as deep as a kiddie pool, but also that the addressee of this remark, Jack (Jesse Eisenberg), will fall in love with her anyway. I was very much alone in laughing at this in the theatre, which is why I'm recruiting the Internet to have my back on this.

Reading jam of the moment: Pylon, "Read A Book"

Short and sweet.

Class of 2012: Do more drugs! Plaigiarize yourself! Take full custody of your younger brother?

The Strand Bookstore's collection of "inspirational" books could take your child in any number of interesting directions. Nice to see Patton Oswalt's ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND in a primo spot, though.

Filmbook-to-be: "Anna Karenina" (2012)

It must be really damaging to Jude Law's dignity to get stuck playing Anna Karenina's husband instead of her (spoiler, but come on) dashing younger lover. On the other hand: fair. I can't lie, this trailer gives me a lot of pause -- and I like Joe Wright, I like Knightley, I like the idea of remaking this one every 15-20 years or so. I think it's just the odd dancing bringing me down.

Take the Staples reading speed challenge... with a grain of salt

Oh lord, if this were even possible? I would get so much more shit done.

Take the Staples timed test here.

Via Iris Blasi on Twitter.

"I found work in a dusty tomb of a book­store, doing data entry with cowork­ers who com­plained about their neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders, or who told me about the mag­i­cal crea­tures they saw on their way home, and who kept web­sites depict­ing them­selves as minotaurs."

-There's a lot to unpack in this sentence from Frank Bures' "The Fall of the Creative Class," about Richard Florida and the fallacy of picking a place based on external rankings of any kind. To summarize, Bures (a freelance writer) and his wife moved to Madison, Wisconsin, from Portland (OR), expecting to find a liberal oasis full of creative people they could connect with while they settled down to start a family. They didn't feel like they fit in, and then they moved to Minneapolis. His argument that this is Florida's fault for producing a faulty thesis, upon which he once placed undue weight, is a little shortsighted.

However, there is a larger truth to Bures' flight pattern in this piece, about the expectations that people bring to moves like this and even jobs like that. Clearly, by working at a bookstore Bures expected to meet kindred souls, and instead found the same weird people who work at any job. But this isn't a crazy expectation; it's the same one I have while leaving a bookstore and thinking "it must be so great to work here!" It's an idealization of a trade of ideas (in book form); for others, maybe the idea of owning a bookstore is the shining thing. On one hand we might say, "Well, Bures is lucky, at least there are still brick-and-mortar bookstores in Madison." But he didn't go there just because of those.

Same goes for Madison (a city I have never lived in, but has been very nice on my brief visits). Bures and his wife idealized the image of the "Creative Class" to the extent that they expected -- and I'm not blaming them here -- to burrow into it immediately on arrival. When that didn't happen, and their neighbors were not so friendly, and their jobs weren't so stirring, they withdrew from their new hometown and began to doubt. (I related to this, having gone through something similar for about six or seven months here in New York, but solved it in a different way.) The gap between the infrastructure of culture and the real people who live in it broadens at the point where Bures and his wife base their next move on "cheap hous­ing, jobs, fam­ily and friends," rather than points of public transit and the arts -- and even then, it's "not perfect," and after four years it has only "begun to feel like" a good match, but this is considered better.

It's not Madison's fault that Bures never found the "Creative Class" he was looking for, but neither is it Florida's, really. He may have misattributed the driver of the city's economic power, but in the end, the hard lesson is that the bookstore job is still a job, the search for community and like minds is still a search, and "creativity" is largely homegrown. If you aren't the type just to grow where you were planted, sometimes you have to refertilize the ground around you to make things come up.

Five authors to watch out for on Twitter

Last week I went to a reading cohosted by Jami Attenberg, an author I discovered solely because she's on Twitter. Because of that, I know she's been out of New York for five-ish months (photos of New Orleans, road trips, cute dogs) and if we're lucky she might read from her new book THE MIDDLESTEINS, out this fall, whose fast food-patterned cover bears a blurb from none other than Jonathan Franzen. Of course, Franzen famously hates Twitter, but in Attenberg's case he might make an exception.

From Attenberg's tweets, and her blog, I assembled a picture of a woman who was quiet and solemn and somewhat tall. This is why online impressions are dangerous, because at the reading I was acquainted with a happy, near-bubbly woman who read from her New Orleans travel journal and made me want to pack my bags right away. (Also, about average height, not that it matters.) Turns out that social-media first impressions can be just as dangerous as the other kinds.

Here are five other authors you should check out on Twitter, if you aren't already following them.


Meghan Daum (@Meghan_Daum): Apparently she's not going to answer my pleas to write a new book every year, but the author of MY MISSPENT YOUTH and the recent LIFE WOULD BE PERFECT IF I LIVED IN THAT HOUSE writes a regular column for the L.A. Times now, and tweets about her writing life ("Speaking tonight at my alma mater. Managed to get worst case of laryngitis in my life. Anxiety dreams can come true!") as well as pithy commentary on the viral human-interest story of the day (on Marina Keegan: "Death of young Yale grad indisputably tragic. Wondering how many others w/o NYer jobs lined up also died last wk that we haven't heard abt?") It was also on Twitter that I found out (via Sarah Weinman, newsbearer to the book world) that she just signed a deal for a new essay collection, UNSPEAKABLE. Maybe I'll get my wish after all.

Elif Batuman (@BananaKarenina): Come for the punny name, stay for the insights into Turkish culture ("Naming the one Turkish character on your TV show 'Kemal Pamuk' is like naming your only British character 'Sir Winston Shakespeare.'") and meta-jokes ("Twitter suggested I follow Dalai Lama - I considered it, but what if later I change my mind and unfollow him and he gets super-mad?")

Matthew Batt (@MattCBatt): This is my official debutante pick for the first-time memoirist whose book SUGARHOUSE, out this very week, chronicles the years when he and his wife bought an old crack house and planted their unsteady flag in it. His tweets are like a tiny window into a different life ("Nothing like a trip on a hot day to a public pool to make me feel like a complete patrician ass.") and while he's there to promote, he does so with whimsy ("Index of evildoers mentioned in SUGARHOUSE: Karl Rove; Idi Amin; Darth Vader (twice); my 8th grade shop teacher; Mr & Lady Macbeth.")

Andrew Shaffer (@AndrewTShaffer, also @EvilWylie, @EmperorFranzen): The busiest man on Twitter, the one who showed up to Franzen's first FREEDOM reading in New York City in an Emperor Palpatine-style cloak, was always working stealthily behind the curtain even as he quipped about the sad state of modern letters ("TELL ME you didn't just put a link to your Amazon book on my Facebook wall with the status "Indie Authors Rule!" delete block block block"). And if I take the time to read anyone's parody of FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY, it's going to be his, FIFTY SHAMES OF EARL GREY, for which I hear he was handing out branded tea bags at BookExpo America a few weeks ago.

Kate Christensen (@aquavita): Attenberg's cohost at the event I went to last week is new to my Twitter feed, a former Brooklynite who lives in Maine now (a place, like Batt's St. Paul, I can only imagine). Unlike her cohost as well as Batt and Shaffer, I had read Christensen's most recent book THE ASTRAL (and really liked it) before I was even aware that she was on Twitter. From the landscape, I look forward to her blog posts about cooking and advice on writing as she presses forward with the memoir she said last week she had to write.

For more recommendations: Social media for authors: Play now, get to work later

New York City: September 23, save the date

The Brooklyn Book Festival 2012 announced its existence, and that there will be authors there (most of them not surprising because they've been around in previous editions, but still: exciting).

Wallaceblogging: LA BROMA INFINITA

My Spanish was never good enough to be able to read this even at its peak, but I find this cover both unbearably creepy and strangely compelling, despite it having nothing to do with the book.