This, that and the other

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1) It's March which means many people pay a lot of attention to basketball and eventually I remember that the cool people over at The Morning News are holding the annual Tournament of Books. I'm still working my way through the first round but man, this is good stuff.*

2) Which is sort of related (smart writing about books -- on the Internet!) to another thing: this recent, incredibly smart piece in Salon, examining Franzen v. Internet (for the record, I'm on the Internet's team) and giving the best defense I've read yet on what the Internet has brought to the world of books and readers. It's so good I'm going to quote from it at length. But you should still go and read the whole piece. And follow the links in the first excerpt.

The Internet has been amazing for book talk. There is more of it, and at a higher quality, than perhaps at any other moment, certainly in my lifetime. Dinosaurs love to lament the lost space in newspaper book reviews; a few years ago, the National Book Critics Circle fought, what seemed to me, a self-serving campaign to save the book review, by which a handful of people really wanted to save their right to sell the same lame 450-word book report to a handful of regional dailies. You didn’t have to bother reading the book to write many of those reviews, and as a one-time daily books editor myself, who once assigned reviews to some of those active in this debate, it was clear that many critics did not. Now we have the Rumpus and the Awl and the Millions and the Morning News and Maud Newton and Bookslut and the Nervous Breakdown and Full-Stop and the Los Angeles Review of Books and HTMLgiant and you get the idea. Professional freelancers didn’t save the book review – the battle was won by the Internet and people who love reading. The culture is richer for it. Twitter’s a useful tool for keeping track of the idea explosion.

and this:

That the online book culture is full of branding and image-burnishing is hard to deny. But it is also a generous place, at its best, and writers who use these social media tools understand this. They retweet, they send out links to positive reviews and articles about other people, they congratulate each other on publication day. Promotional, sure — but if it’s news that a favorite writer has a new story in a small journal I wouldn’t have known about, well, that’s valuable news. Indeed, it’s at least as valuable as the phony and promotional blurb industry which Franzen seems to have no problem being a part of.

 Hear, hear! Also, read, read! And write, write!

3) Speaking of writing ... if you are a Keys person and you are a writer, aspiring or otherwise, there's a cool contest this year at The Studios of Key West. It's called The Writes of Spring and last I heard there were about 10 spots left (they're only taking 25 registrants total). So get over there (digitally or otherwise) and sign up!

4) Illustration of The Book Reader of the Future, which came from the April 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics, courtesy of the awesome website Retronaut.

* Special thanks -- and asterisk/footnote homage -- to Citizen Reader both for reminding me about the Tournament of Books in general and for pointing out that this hilarious round in the ToB was judged by Wil Wheaton -- a name that sounded vaguely familar when I read it but didn't remember until I read the CR entry that goddamn, that *is* Wesley Crusher from Star Trek TNG! I've read occasional references and links to his blogging but had no idea he was this funny.

Book Beginnings on Friday: The Beautiful Cigar Girl

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I've been remiss on my Teaser Tuesdays lately so I'm going make it up, I hope, by jumping into this meme, hosted by the Few More Pages book blog. I'm reading The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder by Daniel Stashower, part of my current historical true crime kick.

Here are the first couple lines of the book, from the prologue:

In June of 1842, Edgar Allan Poe took up his pen to broach a delicate subject with an old friend. "Have I offended you by any of my evil deeds?" he asked. "If so, how? Time was when you could spare a few minutes occasionally for communion with a friend."

The opening effectively establishes Poe as a supplicant, if a persistent one. I'm about a third of the way through the book now and so far it's a lot more Poe than Mary Rogers, the murder victim (which makes sense -- we know a lot more about his life than hers).

I'm kind of dubious about the subtitle -- the invention of murder -- but at least it doesn't call it the crime of the century like the majority of the other historical true crime books sitting on my desk at the moment.

You may be hearing more about this book in the future: In googling around for a book cover image, I discovered reports that it's being made/has been made? into a movie ... starring the reclusive Joaquin Phoenix as Edgar Allan Poe.

The Over-Sea Railroad: You can no longer ridealong but you can still readalong

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Exactly 100 years ago, Key West was in a tizzy, getting ready for the arrival of the First Train. On Jan. 22, 2012, the train would arrive bearing oil tycoon-turned-railroad magnate Henry Flagler and marking the completion of the Over-Sea Railroad. These days, we're in a bit of a tizzy ourselves, getting ready to commemorate the Centennial of that event -- a major one by the standards of any small town and, you could argue, in the history of Florida and the nation. It was certainly a remarkable achievement, crossing mangrove swamps and open water. Crews endured hurricanes, mosquitos and the relentless humidity of the subtropics -- without the modern comforts we take for granted now.

Lots of events are planned to mark the Centennial -- more information is available at the official Centennial committee's website. At the Key West Library, we're celebrating with our One Island One Book program. This year we're reading Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford, which tells the story of the construction of the Over-Sea Railroad -- and its destruction, barely two decades later, when the Upper Keys were hit by one of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the continental U.S.

Most of our One Island One Book events don't start until mid-February -- Standiford will be speaking at the Library on Monday, Feb. 27. But one event is starting in the next few days: our first every online readalong. What does that mean? It means  you read about 50 pages a week of the book (there's a reading schedule on the blog), and comment about it at the blog. We'll start things out with some comments and questions but this isn't a class and our posts are not a syllabus -- everyone is welcome to chime in on whatever aspect they like, from wherever they are. So if you're curious about the railroad and feel like learning some more -- and interacting with others who are doing the same, please join in.

Some of you, especially those familiar with the Keys, may have noticed that the image above does not show Key West. It's Pigeon Key, the island in the bend of the Old Seven Mile Bridge (and one the best places these days to get a feel for how things were back in the railroad days). Even though it's not Key West, this is one of my favorite images of the railroad, probably because of the human element introduced by the kids waving below. And it comes from the library's spectacular collection of historic images that have been scanned and placed online for open public access -- including a collection of 700 images about the Over-Sea Railroad. Many of the library's images, incidentally, were used for a beautiful new Centennial edition of Last Train to Paradise, published by Books & Books and the Flagler Museum.

Future Perfect Continuous

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It's all over but the workshops. Yet Another World materialized in the San Carlos for one night and three exhilarating days, and then it was over. What's left is the post-Seminar letdown ... and a massive new reading list.

I promised further explanation of this year's theme. Can't say I can, other than to reiterate that it isn't really dystopia -- though there was a good bit of that -- nor scifi, or speculative fiction as high-end scifi is frequently styled these days. The subtitle was "Literature of the Future" and the guiding texts were 1984 and Brave New World, if that helps. In his introduction in the Seminar's program, Program Chair James Gleick writes this, referring to the writers gathered for the Seminar: "What they do share -- what their work reveals -- is a deepening awareness of past and future, which also means an awareness that our world is not the only one possible."

I won't even try to come up with a coherent report about what the Seminar covered or explicating further on the theme -- keep an eye on the Seminar's always-expanding Audio Archives for recordings of individual sessions. Here, instead, is an episodic report of stuff I heard that I thought was interesting (and short) enough to jot down in my notebook.

Interesting information new to me

In his opening introduction, Gleick told us about a religion newly officially acknowledged as such in Sweden: Kopimism, or copyism, it is a religion dedicated to file sharing. Ctrl-C and Ctlr-V are sacred symbols. "That is not speculative fiction," Gleick said. "That is Wikipedia. And it wasn't there yesterday."

Sharks save swimmers, according to Jonathan Lethem. How? Because after a shark attack, the number of drowning deaths decreases for a few years.

Year of the Flood, according to Margaret Atwood, is not a sequel or prequel to Oryx & Crake but a simultaneal.

Colson Whitehead's first piece of professional writing, for the Village Voice, was a think piece about the series finales of Who's The Boss and Growing Pains.

After finishing a novel, Cory Doctorow buys a steampunk bondage mask from some specialty shop in Bulgaria. According to William Gibson.

After Chronic City was published, Wikipedia had to lock down the Marlon Brando page because fans of the book were trying to revive him in keeping with the book's plot.

Pithy quotes

"Paranoid art, unlike paranoid persons, also distrusts itself." -- Jonathan Lethem

"Technically every woman is the woman I never married. So why not call her Marie?" -- Charles Yu, from How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

"The real versus the unreal doesn't mean what it used to." == Jennifer Egan, discussing how much of our lives are now conducted virtually

"We may be tempted to dismiss books with ghosts and monsters in them. Scary is really hard to do." -- Michael Cunningham, who is currently adapting The Turn of the Screw for the screen

"I've always found someone like Beckett to be a form of high realism." -- Colson Whitehead

"MacArthur Park is an investigation of the artist's journey." -- Colson Whitehead

The human mind "is a factory for processing metaphors." -- China Mieville

"Everywhere I go, the empire collapses. The State Department is desperately trying to send me to China." -- Gary Shteyngart

On paranoia: "It's essential as a sensibility and it's disastrous as a world view." -- Jonathan Lethem

"The past is rumor. The future is speculation. The present is over. So where are we, as writers?" -- Valerie Martin

About that dystopia thing

Margaret Atwood has coined a term "ustopia" that covers both dystopia and utopia, normally cast as opposites. "They're much more like the ying and yang," she said. "Within each dystopia there's a little utopia and within every utopia there's definitely a little dystopia, especially for people who don't fit the plan."

About that steampunk thing

The Seminar's major disappointment was the spoiling of the panel addressing steampunk by the moderator's insistence on trying to make the panelists define the term (Why steam? Why punk?) -- and by the way the panelists were Dexter Palmer, China Mieville and William freaking Gibson. And when the panelists did offer definitions, and hints that it might be broader and more interesting than just young guys in funny mustaches, the moderator kept interrupting them and narrowing it down. Infuriating.

Despite that, the three extremely smart and extremely patient men managed to say some interesting things about steampunk as a genre, ethos and lifestyle choice. Mieville's definition was two words: Fantastical Victoriana. Gibson's is a little longer: Technologically driven alternative history.

When Mieville finally got to talk, he made a really interesting point about why steampunk has become so popular in the last 12 years. Victorian Britain, the epicenter of steampunk, was built on the proceeds of the Raj, Mieville pointed out. Yet in classic steampunk texts, there is no Raj. Steampunk, he said, expresses a "particular anxiety about resurgent imperialism." Mieville's disquisition met with loud applause from the audience. Unfortunately the moderator did not take this as a hint that he should get out of the way and let these guys talk. Oh well. Every Seminar has one. It was just too bad that this year's happened on the panel I was most looking forward to.

Books mentioned by Seminar authors that might be worth checking out

Futuredays by Isaac Asimov (mentioned by James Gleick in his program intro, includes the program illustrations by Jean Marc Cote)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (mentioned by Jennifer Egan and Michael Cunningham)

Pavane by Keith Roberts (mentioned by William Gibson)

In Praise of Shadows by Junichuro Tanizaki (Gibson again)

Pandemonium 1660-1886 by Humphrey Jennings (yet another Gibson)

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (mentioned by Valerie Martin)

Writers who could probably make it as TV stars and/or stand-up acts if the writing thing goes south

Margaret Atwood & Joyce Carol Oates (on some PBS Charlie Rose-style show)

Colson Whitehead

Gary Shteyngart

Margaret Atwood & Gary Shteyngart (on some late night Craig Ferguson-style show)

Cocktails created by Jason Rowan of Embury Cocktails for Seminar receptions

(Detailed descriptions appearing gradually ... )

City of Tomorrow

Future Perfect Continuous

Neurogibson

Atomic Sunset

Chocotopia

Release the Kraken

Fantastical Victoriana

In which I assert my coinage of the term Conch Gothic

Years ago, I came up with a term for the particular weirdness that occasionally erupts around here: Conch Gothic. This is more a sensibility than a literary genre, at least so far. The perfect exemplar of Conch Gothic would have to be the story of Elena Hoyos and Carl Von Cosel. Though I'm pretty sure serious weirdness has been going on here long before that. It's the island thing, I think, where isolation allows weirdness to develop in ways that other places might nix earlier -- paradoxically combined with the seaport diversity that gives places like this (and New Orleans and Savannah, for example) a live-and-let-live nonjudgmental ethos. I write this because 1) China Mieville said any movement or school of thought/writing needs to own its name and the name needs to be cool and 2) I mentioned Conch Gothic to William Gibson at a party Saturday night and he seemed to like it so if it shows up in a work of his fiction in the future, you'll know where he got it.