Sean M. Carroll: life at the edge

Today Brett Levy reviews "Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge," an anthology of scientists and science fiction writers looking very far forward.

Among the contributors is Sean M. Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech who is among the bloggers at Cosmic Variance, an essential if occasionally mind-blowing Web stop. There you'll find him writing about physicist-y stuff, including excerpts of a paper on a long-range "fifth force": "A long-range fifth force coupled to dark matter can induce a coupling to ordinary matter if the dark matter interacts with Standard Model fields." But just when your brain starts to hurt, he'll post with exasperation about a billboard campaign that says, "Sex can wait" because "I want to be an engineer."  "That's why you should become scientists, kids!" he blogs. "(Because engineers don't have sex.  You want me to spell it out for you?)"

But back to the book. Levy notes that Freeman Dyson is the progenitor of many of the authors' ideas. In 2003, Dyson spoke at the TED conference; that video has just been made available online. And it's after the jump.

What's booking in Denver

The hippest place for bloggers in Denver is called The Big Tent. For its $100 entrance fee, it's providing juice for laptops and PDAs (courtesy Google), free WiFi, free burritos and other snacks, yoga space and free mini-facials and hand massages (courtesy the Huffington Post). And it's right next door to one of the country's most famed bookstores, Tattered Cover.

All day Monday, authors visiting The Big Tent took their signings to Tattered Cover, including Markos Moulitsas ("Taking on the System"), Ted Sorenson ("Counselor") and David Sirota ("The Uprising"). It's a serendipitous spillover; I only wish that they'd post pictures.

On Wednesday, another big author will be signing at Tattered Cover: Michael Chabon. Is the author of "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" a sleeper candidate for the Democratic nomination?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo from Tattered Cover

Cheech, 'Burn Notice,' Loh: smoking book news

Tommy Chong, author of "Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Biography," visited Barnes & Noble at the Santa Monica Promenade on Friday. Despite his occasional frustrations with Cheech's turn to seriousness, he promises that the comedy duo's reunion tour is on.

Gawker discovered Tod Goldberg's piece on writing the tie-in books for the TV show "Burn Notice"; as is often the case with Gawker, the comments are the real treat. "Since I wrote all that fanfic, Veronica Mars has put out an imaginary restraining order on me," countered with, "What a weird coincidence. Veronica Mars has imaginarily restrained me on numerous occasions," and so on.

Did you notice that our review of Sandra Tsing Loh's "Mother on Fire" book included the phrase "cunning linguist"? If so, you're right in step with more than 100 Patterico commentors.

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photo by thingus995 via flickr

Back to school, in poetry: 'Life, friends, is boring.'

Returning to school may be billed as a gleeful time, one for new clothes and old friends, but it's not quite that simple. Even for the bookish -- who anticipate energizing assignments and glowing report cards -- there is a certain measure of dread, of questioning. What will my classes be like? Did I wear the right thing? Who will I sit with at lunch? This dread, for me at least, lasted all the way through graduate school.

Tapping into that fear, and salting it with a measure of ennui, the Poetry Foundation has come up with an appropriately dark back-to-school set: 10 Poems to Read When You Get Stuffed Into Your Locker.

Their list is well worth reading, as it has thoughtful explanations for each poem. The poets range from the long-dead (John Clare, George Herbert) to the still-writing: Franz Wright, above, Michael Ryan and Heather McHugh. Also included are poems from William Butler Yeats, Alan Dugan, J. V. Cunningham, Richard Brautigan and John Berryman; a video of the latter is after the jump.

Book publishing industry: Inside the sausage factory

Publisher Richard Nash, who has embraced Web 2.0 (he blogs, he twitters), is guest blogging at writer Jeff VanderMeer's site Ecstatic Days. He kicked things off by saying that publishers don't respect readers much. He cranks open the door so we can get a peek into the goings-on in the publishing sausage factory:

there is a real tendency in our business to treat the customer as this perverse, mysterious, gullible, arrogant, narrow-minded, slightly thick, imperceptive lug. We largely talk down to him, dumb down for her, expect the least, fear the worst, and generally leave it up to the retailer to figure out how to reach him or her — we’ll get the book onto their shelves, we’ll pay them some payola, and then it’s their problem.

Which is pretty harsh, but is it unique? Seems to me that it's a rare advertisement that targets us as perceptive and sharp. Richard's solution is to deal more directly with the reader; as an example, he points to a prospective, unorthodox book jacket design. He wondered if people would get it, so he asked them.

I thought the book cover was clever, but I didn't e-mail him. And imagine if you never saw that Velvet Underground and Nico album that it was playing off of — would you bother to respond? Would you want to expose yourself as someone who finds the cover confusing, indecipherable, offensive? Sounds like those people (if there were any) kept mum.

I was relieved to learn I wasn’t crazy, that the unorthodox cover worked, but once that relief wore off, I started to realize that far more reader interactions like that are necessary.... I’m sure most folks don’t want to see inside the sausage factory, but... if we expect y’all to eat our damn sausages, we’re going to have to spend more time with you guys figuring out how best to make them.

On the one hand, I'm encouraged that a publisher wants to open up a dialog with readers. On the other, I'm not sure how effective focus groups really are. I would like to think it's possible to treat the reading customer as smart and accessible, humble and perceptive,  an open-minded wit — without having to ask him or her. Seems like Nash's instinct was right about the cover all along.

— Carolyn Kellogg

photo by Kevin Marks via Flickr

The woman behind Erin McGraw's Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard

Erin McGraw, who grew up in Redondo Beach, based her new novel, "The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard," on her own grandmother's fairly incredible life. She answers questions about the book and its background.

Jacket Copy: The protagonist of your novel, Nell Plat, leaves Kansas for Los Angeles, abandoning her family. Is this what your grandmother did?

Erin McGraw: That is exactly what my grandmother did. I don't think my grandmother was quite as single-minded as Nell -- there were some lost years, and my grandmother Bessie apparently went to Oregon before she wound up in LA. But yes, at age 17, she took her two young children over to her mother's place, said, "Look after them," got on the train and skedaddled out of Kansas. I heard the story over and over when I was growing up, and I loved the idea of getting out and starting fresh. A person could change her name, change what people knew about her or thought they knew -- imagine the possibilities!  Any kid who'd gotten off on the wrong foot in junior high would love this story.

JC: When she arrives in L.A. around 1900, Nell finds some good friends, a boarding house and a job as a shop girl. What kind of research did you do to bring turn-of-the-last-century Los Angeles to life?

Erin McGraw: Hooray for the 21st century, when so much wonderful scholarship is easy to find. There are a number of excellent books about Los Angeles in this period, particularly Kevin Starr's superb work, and about the evolution of shop girls, which was a step that would eventually lead to feminism that we could recognize. Cultural histories talk about the new working class of young women and the complicated ways that these women were simultaneously liberated and restrained.

      A big issue at the time involved keys to the rooming houses. By and large, "girls" (I would call them young women) were not allowed to have their own keys as an issue of propriety, since women who had keys to their own lodging houses had been thought of as prostitutes. But some girls who proved themselves sufficiently mature were allowed keys of their own. How did they prove their maturity? Often by having sex with the owner of the rooming house.

       Since most skirts of the day didn't have pockets and the girls didn't carry handbags, the lucky ones with keys wore them in their shoes. Those were big keys. They couldn't have been comfortable.

JC: The title, "The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard," is kind of a joke between Nell and her new husband in L.A.; she spends more time sewing for the city's social elite than for Hollywood. Was it important to you to use real historical figures? And does this follow the arc of your grandmother's life?

The answer -- and more -- after the jump.

In books this week: Sandra Tsing Loh, Ernest Borgnine, stinky cheese and more

"Ernie," the memoir by nonagenarian actor Ernest Borgnine, enters the L.A. Times nonfiction bestseller list at No. 12.

"Hey, aren't you the 'Stinky Cheese' guy?" Sonja Bolle finds out what it's like to be author Jon Scieszka, the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

Galaxy Craze (the author, not a pro soccer promotion) is interviewed by William Georgiades; her second novel is "Tiger, Tiger."

Tod Goldberg writes frankly about expanding his literary career (two novels and a short story collection) to include writing the tie-in books for the TV show "Burn Notice" -- but he neglects to mention his mercilessly funny blog.

Richard Rayner revisits multitalented, mysterious poet Weldon Kees, whose work has been reissued.

Sandra Tsing Loh says she's close to losing it in her memoir "Mother on Fire," but the narrator in Haven Kimmel's "Iodine" may be much more seriously disturbed.

We wished a happy 88th birthday to legend Ray Bradbury, and celebrated the birthday of departed rocker Joe Strummer.

Kingsley Amis' drinking essays are collected in one undiluted volume.

Carolyn Kellogg

photo: Benjamin Reed/Los Angeles Times

Opening the books on Joe Biden

Late last night (or early this morning for those not on Pacific time), Barack Obama named his running mate: Sen. Joe Biden.

Biden made a stab at the Democratic presidential nomination himself this year; the first time he gave it a go was back in 1988. That year's election was chronicled in detail by Richard Ben Cramer in his book "What It Takes." Of Biden's ability to connect with audiences, he wrote:

Joe would get to talking fast, with conviction -- something near joy in his voice -- and he'd haul them along, until they could feel his belief like a hand on their backs, until they could see it as he could, until the thing was shining in the air...

Of Biden's youth, he emphasized his scrappiness:

Joe Biden had balls. Lots of times, more balls than sense. This was from the jump -- as a little kid. He was little, too, but you didn't want to fight him -- or dare him. There was nothing he wouldn't do.... Joe was kind of skinny, and he stuttered, and the kids called him Bye-Bye, for the way he sounded when he tried to say his name. But Joey would never back down, and he knew how to box, when no one else did....

Biden has his own say, of course. It seems a candidate doesn't strive for high office anymore without a memoir. Biden's -- "Promises to Keep," published in 2007 by Random House -- begins with his own recollection of that stutter, concluding:

It’s a funny thing to say, but even if I could, I wouldn’t wish away the darkest days of the stutter. That impedimenta ended up being a godsend for me. Carrying it strengthened me and, I hoped, made me a better person. And the very things it taught me turned out to be invaluable lessons for my life as well as my chosen career.

As for how Biden's skills on the podium -- or his scrappiness -- will play out in the campaign to come, I'll keep reading the L.A. Times blog Top of the Ticket.

Carolyn Kellogg

photo by democratic_flickr

The cure for a Beijing coma

The Olympics are not supposed to be about politics -- but of course that's a fiction.  Reminders of Chairman Mao's presence have been minor in Beijing (or have they? above) just as Adolf Hitler himself did not play a dominant role during the Berlin Games in 1936. Even for people aware of the political situation in China today, the parallel between the Berlin Olympics and Beijing's is remote though undeniably eerie: authoritarian regimes trying to polish their glossy apples of modernity; the startling feats of certain athletes -- Michael Phelps, for instance, breaking records in the pool just as Jesse Owens once did on the track.

The best literary answer to the narcotic forgetfulness induced in TV viewers of the Olympics is the deadly serious, yet very comic "Beijing Coma" by Ma Jian, which I’ve been reading over the last two weeks.

Jian’s narrator, who wakes up from a coma that was a result of injuries suffered at the massacre in Tiananmen Square during the 1989 protests, is hearing voices. He remembers, in particular, one voice, that of his father who in the story has been released after 22 years in the “reform-through-labor” camp system.

The father is describing a fellow prisoner’s method of surviving: “One day three rightists who worked in the camp’s cafeteria were sent to the local town to fetch a batch of yams.  When they returned Old Li waited outside the cesspit, and after the men [went to the bathroom], he scooped out the excrement, rinsed it in water and picked out the chunks of undigested yam.  He managed to eat about a kilo of them.  He knew the three men were so starving, they wouldn’t have been able to resist munching a few raw yams on the way back from the town.  There were three thousand inmates in the camp.  We’d been on starvation rations for half a year. . . .”

-- Thomas McGonigle

Thomas McGonigle is a contributor to the Times' Books coverage and the author of several books, including "The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov."

Photo credit: Jewel Samad, AFP/Getty Images

The genius of place: An L.A. landmark and the Nobel Prize

A blogger who travels under the pseudonym Floyd B. Bariscale — is chronicling every historic-cultural monument in the city. His descriptions are lively and photos are lovely. He started at #1; Jacket Copy checked in on #126, the Shakespeare Bridge.

Today we celebrate #159: the Ralph J. Bunche house. The young Bunche lived in this house in South L.A. from 1917 to 1927 with his grandparents, who took him in after his mother died (his father had disappeared years before). Bunche excelled in high school then lived at home and worked while attending UCLA, where he was valedictorian. Then he moved east, becoming the first African American to earn a doctorate in political science from Harvard. Bariscale telescopes his successes:

[Bunche] writes a couple of books, including A World View of Race in 1936 and, with Gunnar Myrdal in 1944, The American Dilemma; joins the OSS, focusing on Africa; helps draft the U.N. Charter; serves on the U.S. delegation at the first session of U.N. General Assembly in London; after the assassination of Count Bernadotte in 1948, becomes acting mediator in Palestine; negotiates an Israeli-Egyptian armistice; in 1950 becomes the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...

Read what the Nobel Committee wrote about Bunche after the jump.

— Carolyn Kellogg