Achtung Baby!

Mr. Nabokov had Strong Opinions, but one person ain't listening

+ NPR: Nabokov Novel to Be Published, Against Dying Wish
+ Dear Dmitri Nabokov: Don’t Burn Laura! Let Draft Gather Dust (2005)
+ Wikipedia: "The Original of Laura"

If sex is the sermon made of art....

"If sex, you see, is the sermon made of art. Love is the lady of that tower". Vladimir Nabokov discusses "Lolita" on "Close Up", a circa 1950's CBC program: Part 1 & 2.  

Nabokov writes fiction because it is "an interesting thing to do...I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions" (16). Second, Nabokov loathes social satire. He has "neither the intent nor the temperament of a moral or social satirist. Whether or not the critics think that in Lolita I am ridiculing human folly leaves me supremely indifferent. But I am annoyed when the glad news is spread that I am ridiculing America" (23). Third, Nabokov doubts that "we can postulate the objective existence of a 'modern world' on which an artist should have any definite or important opinion"
MARTIN AMIS: Between the Influences of Bellow and Nabokov

All of Nabokov's books are about tyranny, even Lolita. Perhaps Lolita most of all.
Martin Amis

+ Martin Amis - The War Against Cliché
+ A Chronology of Lolita

James A. Reeves

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns & 1986

Vowing upon his parent's death to rid the city of the criminal element, the Batman has,
over the years, fought crime in its many macabre forms ...
For the last ten years no one has seen or heard from him ...
That is, until now ...

from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, published by DC Comics from February to June 1986.

Curiosities of the year when this series came out......

// February 21 - Nintendo releases the Famicom Disk System in Japan.

// Some Billboard #1 hits

How Will I Know - Whitney Houston
These Dreams - Heart
Rock Me Amadeus - Falco
Kiss - Prince
Addicted to Love - Robert Palmer
Live to Tell - Madonna

// Top grossing films

   1. Top Gun
   2. Crocodile Dundee
   3. Platoon
   4. The Karate Kid, Part II 
   5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

// Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

// THE BOURNE SUPREMACY was a bestseller.

// 1986 Prices - Gas: $0.93/gal, Stamps:$0.22/ea

+ Comic Books as Literature: The Dark Knight Returns

+ Whoa, someone who actually liked DK2.

+ For those who don't know: Frank Miller is still writing Batman Comics ( to be more precise "The God Damned Batman!"). With covers like this one.

 

Sources: Wikipedia 1986, Time Magazine, Billboard.

/a monday miscellany/

Dear Battlestar Galactica Season 4. Get here already!
/ A complete 'Battlestar' refresher

/ This song reminds me of Kate Austen: Kathleen Edwards - "In State"

/ The man above? Michael Emerson: The best actor working in American television today, that's who.

/ Additions to my Burnout soundtrack: Gnarls Barkley's "Run" & "Paper Planes" via this trailer's use of it.

/ Justice League: The New Frontier comes out tomorrow. Here's a review and here's another.

/ The art of Chip Kidd’s new book.

/ Inchworm: Bob Sabiston, creator of the rotoscoping software behind A Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly wanted to draw and animate on his DS...

/ The Dishwasher: I played it over the weekend and became a believer in XNA if games like this are going to  come out of it.

/ If it wasn't for afrojacks, I wouldn't know there's a badass "new" of live VU song out there.

/ Musica! HEAD OF FEMUR: Isn't It A Shame, Delorentos: basis of everything, Great Northern: Telling Lies,  Oren Lavie: Her Morning Elegance.  

/ SXSW is fast approaching, a trip down memory lane: Amy Winehouse live during one of the SXSW daytime parties.

"Achtung Baby" is my Bible

U2's Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall

+ Songs for the Dumped: Volume Six - U2: So Cruel
+ U2 in San Jose 4/20/2001

Lucifer Morningstar was a Bad Angel

I move from dreamer to dreamer, from dream to dream, hunting for what I need. Slipping and sliding and flickering through dreams; and the dreamers will wake and wonder why this dream seemed different, wonder how real their lives can truly be.
SANDMAN #22

[ Rufus Wainwright: Evil Angel ]

When I was fifteen I was looking through half priced comics at an old (mysterious in a Stephen King sort of way) bookstore when I found and bought the issue seen here. Having been brought up in a religious home I was freaked out by having a comic with Satan himself. Never mind the daemons doing it and other terrors contained within. So I had to hide it. I figured, when I'm older maybe this story will make sense and back I went to X-Men and Batman comics. No more of these "Suggested for Mature Readers" comics for me since I was afraid of getting in trouble for having them. This meant that for a few years I had no idea how this story began or how it ended. My resolution to wait until I was older didn't last long because I was fascinated by Dream, Death and the whole family and when I was on a vacation trip ( a year later and away from adult supervision) I bought the newest issue I could find ( part 1 of the "Brief Lives" storyline) and started reading it monthly. And the rest is history. The rest being me insisting that my two favorite High School teachers would read and recognize how good Sandman was. I don't think I got them to read Sandman but I did get Mrs. Hotard to read "The Dark Knight Returns". A great victory in my eyes. One day she's teaching us "The Stranger", the next I'm teaching her about Frank Miller's brilliant Post-Modern Regan Era Anxiety filtering of the myth of Batman.

Powells:"The first book I read was Season of Mists, which remains my favorite for reasons both sentimental and aesthetic. Kwitney notes that this is one of the more popular volumes, largely for its accessible and compelling storyline. This is also the first story in which the Endless appear in their entirety, and the first time Morpheus begins to regret the decisions he has made in the past. Confronted with his own cruelty, Morpheus journeys to Hell to free the lover he'd confined there, only to be handed the key to the realm by Lucifer, who has decided to retire. "

"Would the Lord of hell destroy his realm? Would the Lord of hell ever free the souls held in torment? Would the Lord of hell expel the never-born? Would the Lord of hell abandon the war with heaven?"

"The Lord of hell will do what he damn well likes."
SANDMAN #23

[ Booth And The Bad Angel: Dance Of The Bad Angels ]

Previously....... [ Absolutely ]

+ Dave McKean Links

Howard Roark would approve of Bioshock

+ Wired: First-Person Shooter BioShock Owes More to Ayn Rand Than Doom

The architecture is all Albert Speer does art deco (A), but the world, called Rapture, is beginning to crumble and let in water. You're soon beset by deranged flappers and dandies, like Jay Gatsby's party guests gone feral (B). And, as in any first-person shooter, you reach for your gun...

Or do you?

+ 2K Games Announces The BioShock EP Featuring Period Songs Remixed by Moby and Oscar The Punk

Moby - "Wilde Little Sisters"

+ Bioshock And Ayn Rand
+ Creative Director Ken Levine on BioShock
+ Bioshock Videos
+ Review & screens
+ BioShock Art Book Now Available For Download
+ Gary Cooper as Howard Roark

"And the rest is rust and stardust..."

One of the prized books on my shelf, a signed first printing of Stardust signed by Neil with a drawing of a Luna in it. Neil is awesome. Are you going to go see the movie or What!

+ NPR: A Magical Fairy Tale Hits the Big Screen
+ NEIL GAIMAN AND CHARLES VESS' STARDUST - new printing

[ Maude Maggart - Stardust ]

And the rest is rust and stardust. --Nabokov.

Abstruse Words

Abstruse words found in Against the Day, a novel by Thomas Pynchon.

• embonpoint — n: plumpness 
  
  • [ U2 - Big Girls Are Best ]
• gamomania — n: extreme desire to be married
  
  • [ Damien Rice- Be My Husband ]
• gynecophobia — n: fear of women
  
  • [ Pulp - The Fear (live) ]
• mouchard — n: police spy
  
  • [ Radiohead - Karma Police ]
• xanthocroid — adj: blonde, blonde hair - a Greek neologism
  • [ Micah P. Hinson - Yard of Blonde Girls ]

Pynchon+Miller

"They are in love. Fuck the war." Gravity's Rainbow
A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition featuring cover art by Frank Miller 

+ Scott has a Penguin Modern Classics Obsession
+ So I illustrated Gravity's Rainbow...

Absolutely

My absolute trinity is complete.

+ Emmylou Harris - Mr. Sandman
+ La Concorde - Here Comes The Knight
+ Phantom Planet - Watching The Detectives  

The Rock Star of Book Covers

One more book for my fall list. Will the list ever end?

+ Tour Dates 
+ Books and their covers by JOHN UPDIKE
+ Covers - "Not only do we have to give props to Chip Kidd, in general, for the release of his new book, but I also just really like this cover, it’s borderline surreal."
+ NYT interview [ via LHB ]

[ Previously... ]

another over sized book

Yet one more over sized book ( 16 x 21 inches ) worth having: Little Nemo in Slumberland. Don't take my word for it. The site is full of testimonials from the likes of Chris Ware and Matt Groening.   

Spalding's Last Book

+ NPR -  Spalding Gray: 'Life Interrupted' { Read the Foreword, by Francine Prose }
+  V V -  Spot treatment: the master monologist's last words
+ Audiobook read by Sam Shepard comes out in December.

Myths - Remixed

Jeanette Winterson's Foreword To Weight
WE WANT TO TELL THE STORY AGAIN

"Chip Kidd: Book One"

Publisher's Page for Chip Kidd: Book One

+ Be A Design Group: Paula Scher commented in her introduction to Make it Bigger, that one of the worst things about doing a monograph of your life’s work is that people will assume that you are finished. From the title of his forthcoming book, Chip Kidd: Book One: Work: 1986-2006, it looks like renowned book designer and author Chip Kidd is doing his best to show people that he has only just begun...

+ Back from BEA: a panel called "The Future of Graphic Novels" was moderated by Chip Kidd.

+ Previously released:  "Chip Kidd" by Veronique Vienne.

+ Design Geekery As Applied To Some Book Covers By One Author

a comic-strip novel by Clowes

'It's not as cold here as it sounds.'

An expansion and reworking of the "Ice Haven" stories which appear in Eightball #22
+ {quimby's}

While Dan Clowes has gotten a nod from the mainstream - and Oscar nomination for the screen adaptation of Ghost World - his work remains wonderfully idiosyncratic and imaginative.
+ {AtomicBooks}

Wow, Fantagraphics actually updated their page. Too bad they didn't publish this book.   
+ {Clowes Page at Fantagraphics}

+ An Interview with Dan Clowes: He Loves you Tenderly

Which concerns Don Quixote De La Mancha

"Love not what you are, but what you may become."
Miguel de Cervantes

Last year's definitive English translation is out on paperback. Random Don Q. memories: I read some version of it when I was in second grade, to the amazement of teachers and the librarian.  When I was 4th grade I went to a Don Q Play, it was very exciting. Then there was an Anime version, which I watched when I was a kid.

+ 400 Windmills: Reading "Don Quixote"
+ DON QUIXOTE DE ORSON WELLES
+ Guardian: Orson Welles's Don Quixote   

White Noise could of been Panasonic

White Noise on White Noise is a collection of 36 randomly selected fragments of text from Don DeLillo's novel White Noise.

An Annotation of the First Page of White Noise, With Help From Don DeLillo.

it was don delillo, whiskey, me,
Bright Eyes - Gold Mine Gutted

songmeanings: " In Don DeLillo's (the author Conor mentions at the beginning of the song) novel "White Noise", one of the main characters begins taking a pill that stops the brain from producing the chemical(s) that produce the fear of death. Seeing as how "Digital Ash..." is directly concerned with Conor's death and drug use, I'd say it's very likely Conor's read the novel. I'm sure if there was a drug that stopped people from fearing death, Conor would take it. That is, if it'd even work with all the coke he's hopped up on..."

Previously.... [ Don DeLillo whiskey ]

Cohen for Nobel

[ AUDIO ]  Paul Kennedy convenes a public forum at Montreal's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival to nominate Leonard Cohen for The Nobel Prize in Literature.

+ CBC Archives - Leonard Cohen: Canada's Melancholy Bard - Excellent collection of Audio and Video.
+ CBC host heads Nobel drive for Leonard Cohen

Previously.... [ Lustless ] [ Cohen is 70 ][ "Beautiful Losers is...." ] [ Women.. ]

Neil Notes { March 05 }

first three-quarters of the first chapter of Anansi Boys

Mirrormask [SOUNDTRACK]

Previously...
+ Comics Scene (April 1991)
+ Neil Notes { February }

HST - Texas style

And Today's WTF moment goes to the crummy newspaper The Austin Statesman. What kind of story is this "Before Hunter S. Thompson, Texas had its own literary outlaws" ? So tacky. When someone dies you are supposed to do a tribute, not a "we have better ones here, he didn't come up with anything" story.

" If Hunter S. Thompson hadn't existed, Texas would have had to invent him. "

+ AP Interview: Son says Thompson may have just decided it was time

Unrelated: O'Quinn Finds Belated Stardom on 'Lost

H S T

"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."
Hunter S. Thompson

+ ABC News: Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself
+ Blogcritics: HST Goes Into the Darknes
+ Blogcritics: Hunter Thompson, goddamn you!
+ Salon Audio
+ Depp to star in ‘Rum Diary’ ( will it ever happen?)

Auster's Smoke

Has it really been ten years since "Smoke"? I love that film. I file it under "movie I like that no one I personally know has seen or heard of". I Even appreciate the improvised "sequel" ( Lou Reed being the best part of it). The curious thing about it is the fact that the director of this sublime film went on to make "Maid in Manhattan" and "Because of Winn-Dixie". The good news is he will be directing a movie with Ziyi Zhang.

My true place in the world, it turned out was somewhere beyond myself, and if that place was inside me, it was also unlocatable. This was the tiny hole between self and not-self, and for the first time in my life I saw this nowhere as the exact center of the world.
Paul Auster, The Locked Room

In a related note: Paul Auster's "Collected Prose" came out in the US.
+ In his Collected Prose, Paul Auster remains an incomparable writer, Another Review.

Development Hell & Batman

"Before Christopher Nolan took over, director Darren Aronofsky was attached to make a Batman movie based on the graphic novel "Batman: Year One" and have the author Frank Miller write the screenplay. By 2003 there was a first draft screenplay with story boards, which are properties of AOL Time Warner. Warner's decision for not producing the film is unknown, but based on the details that have since leaked out, it would probably have to do with the screenplay, which strayed a considerable amount from the source material, making Alfred an African-American mechanic named "Big Al," the Batmobile being a suped-up Lincoln Towncar, and Bruce Wayne being homeless, among other things. This is all detailed in David Hughes' book "Tales from Development Hell." {source}

+ Review of "Tales from Development Hell: Hollywood Film-Making the Hard Way" by David Hughes
+ BATMAN - YEAR ONE: FRANK MILLER SCRIPT REVIEW

Don DeLillo whiskey

"I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes."

+ In which Mr DeLillo visits UT @ Austin: Novelist leaves audience wanting more
+ Ransom Center Acquires Archive of Noted American Novelist Don DeLillo.
+ Game 6, which stars Michael Keaton, with a script from novelist Don DeLillo.

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence. The writer is the man or woman who automatically takes a stance against his or her government. There are so many temptations for American writers to become part of the system and part of the structure that now, more than ever, we have to resist. American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous. Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.
--Don DeLillo, from the 1988 interview with Ann Arensberg

"Beautiful Losers is...."

" Beautiful Losers is
a love story
a psalm
a black mass
a monument
a satire
a prayer
a shriek
a road map through the wilderness
a joke
a tasteless affront
an hallucination
a bore
an irrelevant display of diseased virtuosity
a Jesuitical tract
an Orange sneer
a Scataological Lutheran extravagance
in short
a disagreeable religious epic of astounding beauty."

"This is a difficult book, even in English, if it is taken too seriously.  May I suggest that you skip over the parts you don't like? Dip into it here and there.  Perhaps there will be a passage, or even a page, that resonates with your curiosity.  After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.  In any case, I thank you for your interest in this odd collection of jazz riffs, pop-art jokes, religious kitsch and muffled prayer æ an interest which indicates, to my thinking, a rather reckless, though very touching, generosity on your part. '"
A NOTE TO THE READER

+ Excerpt from "Beautiful Losers"
+ Amazon: Look inside this book
  Beautiful Losers is my favorite book.

Murakami's Kafka

"To sleep with a woman: it can seem of the utmost importance in your mind, or then again it can seem like nothing much at all. Which only goes to say that there's sex as therapy (self-therapy, that is) and there's sex as pastime." 
(Haruki Murakami)

+ Haruki Murakami: Talking cats and falling fish from the Wind-Up author
+ Read an extract from his new book, Kafka On The Shore.
+ January's author of the month - Haruki Murakami
+ Guardian Review
+ Short Stories

Comics Scene (April 1991)

It's been a while since I did one of those {Neil Notes} post, so here's one In which Neil is interviewed about Sandman, Miracle Man, Books of Magic an all other creative wonders of the early 90's:

Howard Roark Laughed

Out with the Old In with the New

At last, a decent non little mass paperback edition of the book has been re-published.

+ Excerpt: Howard Roark on trial
+ The Saga of Two Manuscript Pages from The Fountainhead

Robin tells us about Lemony Snicket

[ What is lemony snicket? ]

+ Video of Mr. Snicket

Kitchen

"I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else."

+ Yoshimoto's Journal
+ Metropolis: Big In Japan - Banana Yoshimoto

In 1987, Yoshimoto Mahoko was a waitress at a golf-club restaurant, earning around $480 a month and stealing moments out of her day to write a novel at coffee-shop tables. The result was Kitchen, a 1988 phenomenon that eventually sold millions around the world. With a change of name to Banana Yoshimoto -- because it was "cute" -- a literary star was born. {Bananamania}

New Hardbacks

THE ORIGINALS Hardcover Written by Dave Gibbons

SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT


AMERICAN FLAGG! VOLUME 1 HARDCOVER COLLECTION

LITTLE ENDLESS STORYBOOK HC

MARVEL 1602

Tori's Book and New Album

+ randomhouse.com: Tori Amos:  Piece by Piece

+ Tori Amos kicks up buzz for 'The Beekeeper,' new book

When I heard the title was "The Beekeeper" it made me think of "Honey" and  "The Beesides"

The day I met a Pulitzer Prize Winner

Last Friday I had the change to meet Pulitzer Prize-winning Comic Book Artist Art Spiegelman and get his latest book signed. I wanted to bring along a New Yorker cover to get signed but didn't have a chance to dig through my magazine collection for one. Art informed me that there was a book collection I could get. Colleen was ecstatic. I was more subdued. It didn't seem like it was a bid deal to me but it was. I was the sort of teenager that explained to my teachers that comics were a valuable medium and used Maus as an example. I also made my favorite english teacher in high school read a graphic novel. Batman no less! I made her read "The Dark Knight Returns".

+ Review of "Comix 101," a lecture by Art Spiegelman
+ Austin Chronicle: Comics are art, Spiegelman notes in his panel-busting history lesson
+ TIME: Disaster Is My Muse
+ electroniciraq: Art Spiegelman, cartoonist for The New Yorker, resigns in protest at censorship
+ New Yoker: Re: Cover. How It Came to Be

Running thread: signed Books [ 1 + 2 ]

Chip Kidd & Frank Miller

(My favorite designer) Chip Kidd & (one of my fave writer/artists) Frank Miller come together. Mr. Kidd has designed new editions of Mr. Miller's Sin City volumes ( at least two for now ). To be released next year to coencide with the movie.

+ A Dame To Kill For
+ The Hard Goodbye

Designer Chip Kidd: Entertainment Weekly, 1992

From my singed copy of "The Cheese Monkeys"

bookshelf

{ What does your bookshelf say about you? }

Curiosities: signed books

Since I was talking about a signed book earlier....I took bad pictures of the Chris Ware and Chip Kidd ones so I'll add them later.

Leonard Cohen has a stamp made out of the symbol on the cover for "Book of Mercy".

Neil Gaiman drew a luna.

The Enchanter

Since Tony brought it up in a comment he made to an earlier post, here's one of my favorite book covers.

[ From The Literary Encyclopedia ] The principal Nabokovian antecedent to The Enchanter (and indeed to Lolita) is to be located within his novel The Gift (written 1933-38), when a minor character suggests the following synopsis for a novel (Penguin edition, 172-3):

Imagine this kind of thing: an old dog – but still in his prime, fiery, thirsting for happiness – gets to know a widow, and she has a daughter, still quite a little girl – you know what I mean – when nothing is formed yet, but already she has a way of walking that drives you out of your mind – A slip of a girl, very fair, pale, with blue under the eyes – and of course she doesn't even look at the old goat. What to do? Well, not long thinking, he ups and marries the widow. Okay. They settle down the three of them. Here you can go on indefinitely – the temptation, the eternal torment, the itch, the mad hopes. And the upshot – a miscalculation. Time flies, he gets older, she blossoms out – and not a sausage. Just walks by and scorches you with a look of contempt. Eh? D'you feel here a kind of Dostoevskian tragedy?

Cohen Collection

Some of my Leonard Cohen books. Can you tell hes my favorite?

" I was born part precious metal part pirate. "

Last year I hunted down a hard cover version of Jeanette Winterson's Gut Symmetries to re-read. For the hell of it I went to check her nifty site and discovered she has a new book out called Lighthousekeeping. I liked the line " I was born part precious metal part pirate. "

R.I.P Spalding Gray

+ Spalding Gray found dead

+ Early Eulogy: Is Spalding Gray Finally Swimming to Cambodia?

+ newyorkmetro: Vanishing Act

+ NPR apperances: ( SPALDING GRAY ON THE CULT OF PERSONALITY ) , ( Talk of the Nation Audio ) , ( why Spalding Gray is frustrated ).

Book Lust

The semi biweekly visit to Bookpeople produced these new books I want:

[ Nabokov - Overlook Illustrated Lives ]

[ Amano : The Complete Prints of Yoshitaka Amano ]

There was also a book called "A Day In The Life of Andy Warhol" that I can't find anywhere on the net.

Dear Random House, Re: Vintage Readers

Dear Random House,

Kuddos on your new Vintage Readers line, too bad that when you do a search for "Vintage Readers" on Amazon.com your new books don't show up. Also, you have no information on the content of the books on your own website. You are a bunch of incompetent dicks.

Book of The Week

I need to make a correction to my best of 2003 list. Another great book I read last year was Superman: Red Son. And if you are snubbing this book because its a Superman book you are an idiot. Anyways, it came out on paperback today.

The Passion

I found out from reading an article about Mel Gibson's Jesus movie that The Passion, the first jeanette winterson book I ever read, is going to become a movie with Juliet Binoche. Exciting!

Endless Joy

Re-enter Sandman: Fantasist Neil Gaiman Returns to the Graphic-Novel Series That Made Him Famous

Endless Nights came out today. I already ran out and got mine during lunch and I can't wait to go home and relax and read the whole thing.

Last night I had an impulse buy moment: I exchanged two DVD's I had from B&N for the Bjork Live Boxed set. I ended up paying all of $7 and started my morning by listening to the Homogenic disc. Score!

CNN Story , Neil on NPR's Talk of The Nation

Best book of my year

I just finished Fables: Animal Farm and it is the best book I've read this year so far. It's absolutely brilliant. Bill Willingham is a genius. 'nuff said. Is it just me or is Rose Red cute?

Ghost World is too naughty

According to the Birmingham Post, a misshelved copy of the acclaimed Dan Clowes graphic novel GHOST WORLD has created a mini-scandal at the library.

New T.C. Boyle Novel

LA Weekly: Features: Marco Drops In East is East is still a fave book of mine.