Morning Miscellany

What caught my eye this morning:

At Critical Distance, an essay on Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine. I adored that book when I read it, despite my suspicion that Baker is well and truly nuts. The essay, by Stephen Augustine, is well-written and interesting, if a little scattershot. Also, it uses the word "cloacal." Here's a bit that ties in with the Infinite Jest read this summer:

David Foster Wallace’s “trademark” footnote-mania as on display in Infinite Jest is sometimes (though Baker is by far the less-famous of the two writers) reckoned as a steal from Baker (The Mezzanine preceding Infinite Jest by about a decade), but neither writer invented the use of footnotes in fiction. It isn’t hard, though, to imagine Wallace reading The Mezzanine and wishing he’d written it, or thinking to himself that he could do better by bringing an epic, humanist plot to the formal (and possibly elitist) apparent barrenness of Baker’s twee-but-envy-seedingly original work. It’s not a stretch to see Wallace as the tragic little brother to Baker’s eldest son in this genealogy of a lacquered intensity of style.

Not one but two interviews with Joe Meno, whose new novel The Great Perhaps I just downloaded despite the fact that my Kindle is practically bulging with unread books. (I have no self-control when it comes to downloading books. This is the one great drawback to the Kindle. I sincerely hope my husband is not reading this post, by the way. But I digress.) Anyway, at IdentityTheory.com, Meno talks to Michele Filgate and makes this statement that I completely agree with: "That's why I feel like whether you're religious or not, I feel like probably the most important part to me about being alive is being able to use your imagination. It’s really, really sad that there’s not enough opportunity. The book to me, without sounding evangelical, to me is almost religious." And at The Millions, Meno discusses switching publishers and the importance of diversity with Edan Lepucki.

Like the rest of the Internet, I am baffled by the good people who are apparently so offended by Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop that they want not only to remove it from the library but also to publicly burn it and receive compensatory damages. Um, yeah. I'm wondering whether I can sue them, because I'm pretty sure just reading this story emotionally damaged me.

Tablet Magazine continues to entertain me, this time with an critique of the portrayal of grandmothers in Jewish children's books.

And finally, I really liked Colum McCann's op-ed in the New York Times, in which he says this: "This is the function of books — we learn how to live even if we weren’t there. Fiction gives us access to a very real history. Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be." (McCann's new novel, Let the Great World Spin will be available on June 23.)