License to kill also serves as a license to transfrom language

When I first heard the title of the latest Bond film, I, like many people, wondered what the hell it really meant. Happy to see Matthew Shaer over at VQR break down the other ways in which 007 plays with our nifty little language:

As Daniel Craig told the BBC earlier this year, there’s something poetic about the idea of a quantum of solace. (The dictionary definition of “quantum”: “The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation.”) When [relationships] go wrong,” Craig explained, “when there’s nothing left, when the spark has gone, when the fire’s gone out, there’s no quantum of solace.”

FBI kept tabs on Mailer

I'm reminded of a movie character who once left a nervous voicemail to her Lit major ex-boyfriend and said, "Oh, and I read War and Peace, which was good! [beat] Like that was a surprise...."

So now we discover that J. Edgar Hoover once wrote to a subordinate, "Let me have a memo on Norman Mailer." No kidding. "Like that was a surprise." I think we all expected that the FBI would have something on Mailer. Personally, I think Gore Vidal could provide more provocative gossip, but presumably we'll have to wait a while for that one, if the person-of-interest being kind of passed-away is a prerequisite.

Anyway, onward to the block quote!

In 1969, at Hoover's direction, an agent prepared a five-page, single-spaced review of Mailer's book "Miami and the Siege of Chicago," about the 1968 political conventions. The review carefully itemized all six references made to the FBI.

"It is written in his usual obscene and bitter style," the agent wrote. "Book contains reference to . . . uncomplimentary statements of the type that might be expected from Mailer regarding the FBI and the Director."

(via Paper Cuts)

Another magazine goes digital

And it's a biggie. I.e., The New Yorker.

So not to toot my own horn. But I wrote a little piece in May 2007 in order to graduate from my neighborhood journalism program, and the kicker went thus:

Unless major titles convert their websites into digital communities, then the mainstream magazine industry will trend down, and the niche, independent digital magazine communities will continue to trend up. As time marches on, those two species of magazine websites---digital billboards for the print publication versus digital magazine communities---will become increasingly distinct. And users will grow ever more savvy at recognizing which is which.

[Debbie] Day recently browsed NewYorker.com and learned that the magazine is trying to sell the complete archive on a hard drive that costs $199, rather than make that archive available online. Moreover, there’s no opportunity for readers to comment on stories, much less interact with each other. Day called the site “very, very elegant.” But it clearly lacked the affordances of front-edge magazine websites.

“I’m not trying to put down whatever their efforts are, but I don’t think they’ve mastered the medium,” Day said. “They’re still really dabbling.”

Publishing ain't the place for no halfway crooks!

I chuckled when I saw this on Chris Shea's Brainiac blog at the Boston Globe, due to I once lived the life of a book publicist. I don't think I ever stooped this low, but who knows? The wretchedness of the publicity world is in the eye of the beholder/pitched, I suppose:

As the subprime mortgage and credit disasters continue to wreak havoc on world economies and pocketbooks, many are looking to Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke for guidance and leadership in this tumultuous time. Fortunately, our Fed chief is one of the pre-eminent scholars of the Great Depression. Because of the market turmoil, Bernanke's treatment of the Great Depression has been finding a new audience of readers as media, policymakers, businessmen, professionals, and others -- both in the US and abroad -- seek to understand our present economic situation.

[sheepishly raising hand from the back row] Um, wouldn't "guidance and leadership" possibly -- just possibly -- have been best demonstrated by steering us clear of this catastrophre from the get-go? I mean, this kind of feels like asking the burglar who just stole your flat-screen TV and family jewelry how you might go about getting those items back. Except you have to pay for his advice and take time out of your schedule to listen to it.

Gone & done it again

Another blog post at the Kenyon Review. Here's the tease -- which I not so artfully buried in the bottom third of the piece:

Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.

Go Red Sox!! I mean (ahem), "Meanwhile, in Frankfurt...."

Good grief. Another week and I've laid off the gas. Damn Red Sox -- they do this to me every year. At least, every year that I've been following them (which dates to 2003, and my initial introduction to Sox heartache when Aaron Boone sent a soft Tim Wakefield knuckler to the second deck in extra innings). Just when you're about to write them off, they storm back from a 3-1 deficit to force a Game 7 in the ALCS. Oh, and I hear there's a mildly important political contest taking place these days, too. Anyway, that's no excuse. So back to the world of words....

The Frankfurt Book Fair took place this past week. It's one of the three major annual book fairs, London and Book Expo America being the other two. (BEA roves from city to city, but mostly bounces between New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.) Bookninja has a nice round-up of the Guardian's coverage, if you care to dig deeper.

I've attended two BEAs in a previous career, and I found them fascinating. But not for all of the author signings or keynote addresses. I just think it's kind of wacky that the world's publishers get together and announce, "Here. This is the culture's intellectual agenda for the next 12 months."

This is a wacky announcement because 1) book publishers are almost as slow as newspapers when it comes to adapting to the shifting sands of business in the digital age. And 2) they're still kinda right. Nothing offers quite the same ring of bona fides as publishing a book.

Since when was convenience part of the job description?

Thanks to Dan Gillmor for calling CBS News's Dean Reynolds on a ridiculous point. First, here's a clip from Reynolds's rant about the relative discomfort of working on the Obama campaign vs. the kindly generosity of the McCain campaign:

The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who've been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure.

OK, I readily acknowledge that my reporting experience pales in comparison to a career journalist's. There are surely many nuances of the craft that yet escape me. But I thought one of the basics that all reporters agree to when they get into this racket is that personal comfort pretty much goes out the window. It's really not any campaign's job to make the reporters more comfortable -- and it's almost always a power play when they do. Note the section in Reynolds's piece when the McCain campaign accommodates the press corps so they can write up a flattering piece about McCain. The irony, astonishingly, seems entirely lost on Reynolds:

The other day in Albuquerque, N.M., the reporters were given almost no time to file their reports after McCain spoke. It was an important, aggressive speech, lambasting Obama's past associations. When we asked for more time to write up his remarks and prepare our reports, the campaign readily agreed to it. They understood.

It's the last part, however, that really freaks me out:

Maybe none of this means much. Maybe a front-running campaign like Obama's that is focused solely on victory doesn't have the time to do the mundane things like print up schedules or attend to the needs of reporters.

But in politics, everything that goes around comes around.

This amounts to a threat against a political campaign to start catering to the press's comfort or else get ready for harsher reports. Am I missing something, or isn't that a flagrant ethical transgression?

Can't figure out the Web? Try suing your readers.

That's what the Washington City Paper proposes to do. Kind of. (It's not April 1, is it?)

THE BANKRUPTCY CASE AND THE PARTIES

1. On Oct. 9, 2008, the Debtors filed petition for relief under Chapter 86 of the Content Bankruptcy Code, Alternative Weekly Provision, in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Fourth Estate.
2. Debtor, City Paper, is an alternative newsweekly devoted to coverage of news, features, arts, and listings for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area (“Washington, D.C.”)
3. Defendant, the Readers of City Paper (“Readers”), are residents of and visitors to Washington, D.C., with expectations of well-reported long-form narrative journalism (“cover stories”) in addition to comprehensive and critical coverage of music, film, theater, visual arts, happenings, et al. (“arts coverage”). [via Romanesko]

I could use this post to compose yet another expository essay on the vicissitudes of print media in the age of the Web. But I figure the average reader needs that like he needs a hole in the head. So I'm going to tell a vulgar story instead.

One of my former bosses used to work for some newspapers in the South. One day about a year ago, an old colleague emailed him after the latest round of buyouts and said the following. I paraphrase -- liberally -- and with apologies to the unnamed parties:

I'm going to start my own newspaper. I'm going to call it "Old Fuckers." It's going to be a one-sheet broadside with text front and back, six columns, printed only in black and white with no pictures, no images, no graphs -- nothing to keep your interest except the text. We're not going to have a website, we're not going to do "podcasts," we're not going to give video cameras to reporters and tell them to "film for the Web and cut the video on your laptop!" None of that shit. Just thin notebooks, #2 pencils, and impudent questions. In other words, just reporting, goddammit.

I have to admit, that sounds pretty good right about now.

Meanwhile, on other blogs...

I've been doing some traveling this weekend, so haven't had much time to monitor the Internets. But saw this little piece about a sea change for how Gawker will be run. (via Bloggasm)

I don't particularly follow Gawker -- because, well, it simply never appealed to me. But I'm vaguely aware that its management has always been a test case for new media business structure. Kind of a canary in the mineshaft, if you will.

Though it's hard to say whether this is an instance of the canary keeling over or finally perking up.

"How 'bout those markets?!"

That was the question emailed to me by a friend yesterday when the Dow crashed 778 points in one day following a nay vote on the $700 billion bailout package. (Needless to say, the answer was "ungood.")

Though matters of national fiscal catastrophe might seem far afield for this space, in many ways they are also deeply connected to the origins and means of what I do and what I try to do -- this nonsense of making a living with words. My debts have certainly held me back on occasion from chasing a dream, or in some cases the mere ideas of dreams. Yet my debts have also focused my energies and rightly reminded me of my surrounding circumstances. This isn't always a bad deal. I have sometimes found that the most rewarding and satisfying experience occasionally hides right before us, masquerading as unappealing: the simple solitary homemade meal vs. another night eating out with friends. (Or as a famous philosopher once put it, "A man's got to know his limitations.")

Thankfully, Margaret Atwood -- as profiled in this Times piece a few days ago -- puts the subject in appropriate perspective. Debt commands our culture. Very likely, debt, personal and national, will define not only my generation but the ones before and after it. But perhaps the most provocative truth, which Atwood points out, is that debt has both material and immaterial aspects, completely aside from money:

“It was never just about money: it was about owing. Money is the form in which we have embodied this but it takes a huge number of other forms. What we're really talking about is imbalances of obligation, which is what debt is.”

As for the material aspects of debt, we can start with our own bodies:

In writing Payback Atwood became fascinated with a phrase spoken of the dead: “He has paid his debt to nature.” “It means you've borrowed something - the physical part of yourself made up of natural elements - and you're paying it back by dissolving into nature. What else are we borrowing from nature and how do we repay it?” The book's final chapter proposes an answer in strong terms.

I look forward to reading more of Atwood's appraisal of this fascinating (and uncannily timely) subject as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.