In praise of John Barth's 'The Floating Opera'

As part of our monthly, ongoing and fractured discussion of postmodern fiction, George Ducker praises John Barth's 1957 novel, "The Floating Opera."

John Barth is the guy who wrote the big long novel about the goat-kid and another big long novel about an epic poem set in the late 1600s. And those are certainly good books; important and worth reading and quite funny, both of them. Unfortunately, the sheer size of "Giles Goat-Boy" and "The Sot-Weed Factor" -- combined, more than 1,500 pages -- is enough to strike fear into the heart of anyone who's had their patience worn thin by the Internet or who just doesn't happen to have the next two months handy.

But here's the thing. Although Barth went on to earn a lifetime's worth of free lunch at the postmodernist cafeteria, he had to start somewhere. "The Floating Opera" was his first novel, published in 1957. In its 1967 introduction, he wrote, "I had picked up from the postwar Zeitgeist some sense of the French Existentialist writers and had absorbed from my own experience a few routine disenchantments. ...  I discovered by happy accident … how to combine formal sportiveness with genuine sentiment as well as a fair degree of realism.”

One of the joys of "The Floating Opera" is that it is a rambling, overstuffed first novel bearing as much ambition and stylistic frothiness as the more physically daunting case studies that came later. It feels comfortable and easily familiar, especially to anyone who's ever enjoyed "A Fan's Notes," Richard Ford's holiday trilogy or even Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men." Basically, you can add it to the top of your Middle-Aged White Man Looks Back In Awe And Bemusement list.

Written when John Barth was 24, "The Floating Opera" is a first-person reminiscence of the day Todd Andrews decided to commit suicide. Somewhat confusingly, Todd himself "writes" from the vantage point of his 50s, but the story itself all takes place during one single day in Todd's 37th year:

So. Todd Andrews is my name. You can spell it with one or two d's; I get letters addressed either way. I almost warned you against the single-d spelling, for fear you'd say, 'Tod is German for death: perhaps the name is symbolic.'

The ending is spoiled almost immediately. Todd Andrews isn't going to off himself. All the better, as we get to spend the next 249 pages reading about drunken sea captains, love triangles, farcically entangled lawsuits, Hamlet's indecision, Johns Hopkins' frathouses of the 1920s, and the lingering behaviors of the old-money class of Dorchester County, Maryland.

Is there anything to gain from a happily verbose narrator? That's after the jump.

Vibe magazine closing

Vibe magazine will cease publication, according to a report on the AOL-owned site Daily Finance.

Founded in 1993 by Quincy Jones and Time Warner, Vibe has been a general interest music magazine that covered politics and current events as well as hip-hop and soul. Called by some -- well, Wikipedia -- "the black Rolling Stone," Vibe was bought by the Wicks Group in 2006. Its circulation, reported to advertisers at 818,000 earlier late last year, had fallen to 600,000, the New York Times reports.

Although the magazine had already implemented cost-cutting measures, including layoffs and a four-day work week, staff today were told that its run was over. Editor Danyel Smith sent this sad note to Gawker:

On behalf the VIBE CONTENT staff (the best in this business), it is with great sadness, and with heads held high, that we leave the building today. We were assigning and editing a Michael Jackson tribute issue when we got the news. It's a tragic week in overall, but as the doors of VIBE Media Group close, on the eve of the magazine's sixteenth anniversary, it's a sad day for music, for hip hop in particular, and for the millions of readers and users who have loved and who continue to love the VIBE brand. We thank you, we have served you with joy, pride and excellence, and we will miss you.

Danyel Smith
the former Chief Content Officer VIBE Media Group
& Editor in Chief, VIBE

Gawker speculated that Vibe may have had the most demographically diverse readership of any music magazine. Will those readers find a place to gather -- say, at  the Source or HiphopDX? Or is it more likely that they'll scatter to smaller music venues? Can publishing sustain a general interest music magazine anymore?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

The Thing and Jonathan Lethem

Created by Bay Area visual artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan, The Thing is half-literary journal, half-art project: a combination of text and object that might coalesce as a window shade, a baseball cap or a set of coasters designed by an artist like Miranda July, Tucker Nichols or Anne Walsh.

From the journal’s inception, its editors had their sights set on one particular collaborator, author Jonathan Lethem. Now Lethem’s contribution is set as The Thing’s seventh issue.

Inspired by his latest novel, "Chronic City," due out this fall from Doubleday, Lethem designed a pair of black framed glasses with text featured on the temples, reading "Will you know a chaldron when you see one? With these glasses you will know a true one."

That’s because "Chronic City" is set in a parallel Manhattan peppered with "impossible objects" called chaldrons. In case that’s confusing, the glasses come along with "Twelve Statements About Chaldrons," including the particularly illuminating ninth statement: "A chaldron is like an opera pouring from a flea’s mouth."

Lethem said he had several reasons for wanting to work with Herschend and Rogan. Namely, Lethem appreciated the way their enterprise plays with notions of the physicality of words. Rogan has described Lethem’s writing as "architectural," and the author agrees completely.

"I love that. I hope so," Lethem said on the phone from his part-time residence in Maine. Read more of what Lethem had to say ... after the jump.

Alice Hoffman strikes back -- and strikes out

On Sunday, Alice Hoffman tweeted her unhappiness over a review of her latest novel, "The Story Sisters." The Boston Globe ran the review, by author Roberta Silman. Some of Hoffman's complaints seemed valid -- she thought that too much of the plot had been given away.

But the vitriol Hoffman used to express her dissatisfaction was extreme. "Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron," one tweet began. "Now any idiot can be a critic," stated another. 

At first, Hoffman defended her right to express herself any way she wanted. "Girls are taught to be gracious and keep their mouths shut. We don't have to," she wrote, and then continued a minute later: "And we writers don't have to say nothing when someone tries to destroy us."

That's not all: Hoffman tweeted Silman's phone number and e-mail address, encouraging readers to "Tell her what u think of snarky critics." 

The move from defense to offense served no one, especially not Hoffman, who instead of being wronged by a poor review comes off like an aspiring literary gang leader, dispensing orders 140 characters at a time. 

Silman hadn't been deluged by phone calls, she explained to Jacket Copy, because Hoffman got her number wrong. Silman, who isn't on Twitter and had been off in the Berkshires, didn't hear anything of Hoffman's reaction until around 11:30 a.m. EDT Monday, when a friend called.

"Aside from your email there have been nine emails to me, all in support of my review and/or my right to review and all apologizing for Alice Hoffman's perplexing behavior," she wrote to Jacket Copy in an e-mail. "I wouldn't change anything about my review. I have written many reviews for The Globe and say what I believe, and, in this case, I praised her earlier work, which was clearly better. I'm sorry Alice could not take pride in the good things I said, and perhaps mull a little on the criticism. That is what I have always tried to do when professional people have criticized my work."

If Silman takes a look at Twitter, she won't be able to read Alice Hoffman's messages, because today her Twitter account (@AliceHof) disappeared, although some bits are available through Mediabistro and Gawker. What Hoffman has to say now has been limited to a formal statement.

What this has to do with Alain de Botton ... after the jump.

The story behind Infinite Summer

Exactly why Matthew Baldwin decided that the footnote-heavy, uber-smart David Foster Wallace novel "Infinite Jest" would make the perfect summer read was a puzzle. And just as intriguing was that after he recruited friends to read with him, the online book club they formed, Infinite Summer, seems to have taken off in as many ways as the book's 1,078 pages. Jacob Silverman gets Baldwin to give him the inside story.

Jacket Copy: How did you choose "Infinite Jest"? Is there something about Wallace's work, in all of its maximalist, postmodern freneticism, that you think particularly lends itself to this kind of experience?

Matthew Baldwin: After David Foster Wallace's death last September, I was struck by a great sadness -- not because I had read his work and felt a kinship, but because I had read nothing of him, despite the entreaties of my friends who had, and despite the knowledge that the type of literature he was reputed to write was exactly the kind I most enjoy. (My favorite novel of the last decade, "House of Leaves," is profoundly Wallaceian, or so I've been told.) I felt like I had wasted my opportunity to read his works while writing a fan letter afterward was still a viable option.

So the selection of "Infinite Jest" was something of a personal atonement. Its "maximalist, postmodern freneticism" played no factor in the decision because, having not yet read it, I am only dimly aware that it has such qualities.

JC: Infinite Summer makes use of many social networking and digital platforms: blogs, discussion forums, tumblr, Twitter, Facebook. How has it been managing all of these platforms? Have you been able to integrate them, or does it sometimes seem like too much media to handle?

Matthew Baldwin: Each of the media has its own niche, so juggling them has not been as difficult as you might imagine. The main website is used for content. Twitter is used for announcements. Short quotations and photos are posted to tumblr.The Facebook community is largely self-sustaining. And while it took some effort to get the forums up and configured, it has taken on a life of its own. Rather than integrate the various media, we just have them all point back to Infinitesummer.org, which serves as a nexus.

How do you think participating in Infinite Summer will shape your reading experience of "Infinite Jest"?

MB: One thing I am already noticing about "Infinite Jest," even 60 pages in, is that it is an intensely claustrophobic novel. Much of the action takes place in small apartments, hospital wards and in the minds of the various protagonists. It's so overwhelming that it would be easy to close the novel with a shudder and never return. I think the knowledge that there are thousands of folks out there reading concurrently goes a long way toward leavening those feelings.

In our pages: Werner Herzog's 'Fitzcarraldo' diaries

Three years of film director Werner Herzog's diaries have been published in "Conquest of the Useless: Reflections From the Making of 'Fitzcarraldo.' " The difficulties making the 1982 film -- about an opera-loving rubber baron who takes a steamship up the Amazon where it must be hauled over a mountain to reach its destination -- have already been shown in the documentary "Burden of Dreams." In our review, Lawrence Levi writes:

As "Burden of Dreams" made clear, "Fitzcarraldo" turned into a metaphor for itself: Herzog and his protagonist shared the same impossible goal. The jungle shoot became famous for its calamities, including Herzog's arrest by local authorities; the departure of the original star, Jason Robards, after he fell ill with dysentery; a border war between Peru and Ecuador; plane crashes; injuries; problematic weather; and an increasingly dejected crew.

So is there really any need for a book? Levi concludes there is.

"Conquest of the Useless" fills in the gaps of that account and shows what makes Herzog so compelling as an artist, particularly in his nonfiction films: his acute fascination with people and nature. ...

The book is also filled with terrifically funny and precise renderings of the creatures that inhabit the film crew's two jungle camps -- ants, bats, tarantulas, mosquitoes, snakes, alligators, monkeys, rats, vultures, an albino turkey and an underwear-shredding ocelot. "For days a dead roach has been lying in our little shower stall, which is supplied with water from a gasoline drum on the roof," Herzog writes in an entry dated "11 July 1979." "The roach is so enormous in its monstrosity that it is like something that stepped out of a horror movie. It lies there all spongy, belly-up, and is so disgusting that none of us has had the nerve to get rid of it."

Herzog was, of course, in the jungle so he could drag a full-sized steamship over a mountain. But moving that cockroach -- too much. Which is pretty phenomenal when you look at what it took to move the steamship, in the movie's trailer, above.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Oh, lordy: will Michael Bay film James Frey's unpublished sci-fi novel?

According to a stories in the Hollywood Reporter and the NY Times, on Friday Michael Bay bought the film rights to "I Am Number Four," the first book in a sci-fi young adult series purportedly co-written by James Frey. That you haven't yet heard of a book called "I Am Number Four" is no surprise -- it's only a manuscript, and an unbought one at that.

The NY Times writes that the manuscript has been shown to publishers as being written by two anonymous authors, "a collaboration between an unnamed New York Times best-selling author and a young up-and-coming writer." It does not currently have a publisher.

No one is confirming that it's Frey, best known for his non-entirely-true bestselling memoir "A Million Little Pieces." When contacted by the website Gawker -- Frey interned there for a day -- Frey said that he could neither confirm nor deny any involvement with the book.

"I Am Number Four" is said to be the first of a planned six-book series; Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg forked over a high six figures for the film rights. Bay may direct; he may not. After the massive box office of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," he can kind of do whatever he wants.

Anyway, what's the story? The NY Times describes it this way:

The story of “I Am Number Four” is about a group of nine alien teenagers on a planet called Lorien, which is attacked by a hostile race from another planet. The nine and their guardians evacuate to Earth, where three are killed. The protagonist, a Lorien boy named John Smith, hides in Paradise, Ohio, disguised as a human, trying to evade his predators and knowing he is next on their list.

Which doesn't sound like it's trying to be particularly funny, but the aliens-masquerading-on-Earth-as-guys-named-John gag was hysterical in the film "Buckaroo Bonzai."  

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Left: Michael Bay Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times. Right: James Frey. Credit: George Ducker for The Times 

Chuck Barris's new camp murder mystery

Sometimes a title grabs you, and in this case it was a book with the somewhat silly murder-mystery title "Who Killed Art Deco?" And when I picked up a copy from our book room -- an advance, without the final art -- I was surprised to see that the author was Chuck Barris.

That Chuck Barris. The host of the 1970s TV hit "The Gong Show" and creator of "The Newlywed Game." The one who wrote the pop song "Palisades Park." Whose memoir, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," said he had worked for the CIA, something so preposterous that it was almost believable. It was later turned into a film of the same name; George Clooney directed.

So what's an ex-TV-host, ex-possible-CIA-assassin to do at age 80 but write a murder mystery?

With all the skepticism in the world, I picked up "Who Killed Art Deco" -- and promptly read the first 96 pages. It's silly and swift and filled with off-kilter characters that Barris nails in a few sentences. "Eddie Cantelone was a twenty-five-year-old lying, sleazy scuzzbag," and "Hattie Strange ... and her husband, Morgan Strange ... were far more hateful and bigoted than most of the members of the Methodist church congregation they belonged to." In other words, it's really fun.

Depending on how you count, it's either Barris' third novel or his fifth (two of his six books are in a mysterious fictional-memoir zone). He's got it down.

If you want to read a book that's a bit like "The Royal Tennenbaums" meets "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" with a dead body thrown in -- on page 97, to be exact -- "Who Killed Art Deco?" is totally your style.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Chuck Barris at Book Soup in 2007.

Credit: Amanda Edwards/Getty Images 

Danzy Senna's racial history -- is it just personal?

In the pages of the L.A. Times, Erin Aubry Kaplan reviews "Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History" by Danzy Senna.

Senna is the daughter of Carl Senna and Fanny Howe, two gifted writers whose marriage in 1968 shone with a defiant but hopeful symbolism of the age. He was black, she was white; he was an upstart, a figure who emerged from a new, intellectually empowered black class; she came from a prominent Boston family whose roots went back to the Mayflower (and, as it happens, to wealthy slave-traders)....

In the introduction to her new memoir, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?," Senna bluntly addresses the question in describing how she felt watching her father devolve over the years from a proud symbol of racial accomplishment into something painfully ordinary: a loser who drank, got fired from his job and once beat her mother in public. "Gone was the 'negro of exceptional promise,' " Senna writes with almost palpable disappointment and some embarrassment, "and in its stead he lived up to all the stereotypes that his fellow Americans had ever secretly or not-so-secretly harbored about black men."

Senna's parents divorced in 1976. In this book, she takes on the task of unearthing her father's history -- with his help -- and finds it's a more complicated story than she'd expected. Read the complete review here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Michael Jackson's bookstore visits leave a collectible behind

Michael Jackson wasn't the only celebrity who'd shop at Elliot Katt Books on the Performing Arts in West Hollywood, but he was, perhaps, one of the friendlier ones. "The owner got to know him fairly well," says Malcolm Bell, a friend and colleague. "On one occasion he asked him to sign a copy of his book."

That's where the personalized edition of Michael Jackson's 1988 biography comes in. Bell listed the book on EBay today for $999 (the "Buy it Now" price is $1,500).

"I think there's a lot of fans right now that would like to have this book," Bell said, noting that Jackson's death had left him in shock. "It brings back memories of Elvis Presley's passing."

Elliot Katt's bookstore, which carried high-end books on the performing arts, has been closed for some time. Six or seven months ago, he left just one item from his collection with Bell to sell on commission -- his signed "Moonwalk" by Michael Jackson.

Bell runs the independent Mystery and Imagination Bookstore in Glendale with his wife. Katt's bookstore, he says, was a "fine-quality cinema bookshop." Now in his 70s, Katt has retired, Bell says, to Arkansas -- far from the neighborhood where a pop star was a regular customer.

-- Carolyn Kellogg