Now this is a bandwagon I am more than eager to hop on and fervently encourage: the naming of a poet laureate to organizations that are otherwise not in need of a poet laureate, have never had a poet laureate, and are not obviously even related to poetry.

MTVu has selected John Ashberry to be its first Poet Laureate. And bravo to MTV for picking a REAL poet. Not a pop singer, not a rapper, not a folksy-artsy dude with long hair and a guitar who seems to say semi-cogent phrases that blow your mind when you’re on mushrooms, not even a “slam” poet or one of those weird, angry spoken word types, but a REAL, LIVE, GOOD poet.

And this selecting of poets laureate is a trend I would like to see continued. There’s so much possibility! Our country has one. States have them. Cities have them. Do counties? Do corporations? Do professional sports teams?

No?

Then I hereby officially announce my campaign to become the poet laureate for the Dallas Cowboys. Or the University of Texas at Austin Longhorn football team. Or the Dallas Mavericks. Ah hell, I’ll settle for the Cleveland Browns. Or a farm team. I’m willing to start at the depths of arena football and work my way up. I’m patient, a team player, and flexible. Reading my haikus at the halftime shows of high school football games while the drill team is sauntering off and the band is warming up will provide me plenty of time to hone my craft.

Does Google or Microsoft have a poet laureate? They should. Me.

Why do I want to be a poet laureate so bad? It’s the last acceptable position for an artist that garners any respect and adulation without demanding any specific duties. Beyond writing brilliant poems of course.

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Son publishes a memoir called Oh The Glory of it All.

Mom publishes a memoir called Oh The Hell of it All.

Isn’t that cute?

In a recent review of Mom’s book Alex Kuczynski of The New York Times shares his enjoyment of son’s book and utter disappointment in Mom. Poor Mum.

But I wasn’t too incredibly fond of son’s book either. For someone who worked at The New Yorker and co-founded McSweeney’s, the writing is mediocre and the book is too long and really not that interesting. After the petty antics of son’s wealthy socialite parents, where’s the part when he meets Dave Eggers?

The very fact that this Mom and Son duo have even published these two books like this is a perfect example of what I found so terribly pompous and arrogant and self-absorbed about son Sean Wilsey’s book. No one cares! You two just need to get over yourselves or retire to a cabin in Saskatchewan where you can read each other passages from your books and leave the rest of us alone.

Read What is the What. That’s a book.

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Get it?

Jeff Gannon sets the record straight.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!! (Thanks P Dub! Best headline EVER.)

But “seriously,” “Jeff Gannon” is becoming a “legitimate” “author” by writing a “book.” (This just in case the literature of O.J. Simpson wasn’t enough for you.)

Evidently, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Gannon’s former and now-defunct employer Talonnews.com claimed that Gannon had a book that would “finger” Karl Rove as being gay. In actuality, the book seems to be about something a lot more boring. As Gannon explains, “The book is about the current, what I call, media war, between the
right and the left,” he said. “My story is nestled in there somewhere.
It’s an insider’s view of the White House press corps.”

But Karl Rove is gay.

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This guy is now our Poet Laureate:

What? You missed the changeover?

It’s true. Our Poet Laureate is no longer Donald Hall.

What? You missed that too?

Well, I rather like poetry. It’s an audacious and absurd undertaking. One to be admired, respected, and treated with the utmost caution; like the wild beast it is.

The New York Times calls this new Poet Laureate, Charles Simic, “a surrealist with a dark view…a writer who juxtaposes dark imagery with ironic humor.” And that’s probably true. Who am I to argue with The Times?

But he also has an entirely cute and wonderful poem called “Watermelons” that goes something like this:

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

And Mr. Simic has written that, “Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.”

So I’m liking him already, but Simic has yet to decide what specifically to do with his tenure. But let’s hope it has a lot to do with surrealism, dark imagery, ironic humor, and awe-as-religion.

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The authoring, Nobel Peace Prize-winning, Holocaust-surviving, and now altercation-surviving Elie Wiesel’s attacker has been ordered to stand trial but in a special court where mentally ill defendants receive alternatives to prison time.

To recap, Back in February, Eric Hunt, 23, followed Wiesel across the country and finally caught up with him in a San Francisco hotel where he intended to isolate Wiesel and force him to admit that the Holocaust did not happen. Evidently, Eric Hunt also wrote on a website where anti-semitic comments were posted.

File this under C for Crazy as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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A CIA inquiry completed in June 2005 but kept classified until now because so ordered by Congress, accuses the agency’s ex-chief (and recent author) George Tenet of failures to prepare for attacks prior to 9/11.

George Tenet rejected the charges against him.

Really?

When observing the American political scene, it’s best to imagine the characters involved not as distinguished diplomats but instead as adolescents on a playground. It goes something like this:

“You were wrong.”
“No, I wasn’t.”

I don’t see how George can deny too much. Afterall, he did call his book, At the Center of the Storm.

Not, “Off to the Side of a Field of Daisies,” or “Poolside With a Tom Collins on a Breezy Day.”

No. He called it CENTER of the STORM.

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The If I Did It saga comes to a close with Barnes & Noble announcing that it will not sell O.J. Simpson’s morally bankrupt book in stores; but it will sell it online at bn.com.

Is that the decent and tactful thing to do? Or equally inept and unethical? I think it’s morally uncourageous.

Amazon will carry the book as it would any other. Borders will sell it in stores but will offer no promotions or marketing for it. Classy. Just take whatever money you can for it without overtly and publicly committing yourself, which would have opened up inevitable criticism and backlash. Real classy.

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As if talk of Dick Cheney writing his memoirs now that he is leaving office was not enough, his wife Lynne’s memoir will be published October 9th, 2007.

Judging by Simon & Schuster’s description, it sounds like a big cow flop of nostalgia and typical nationalistic sentimentality. I’m not one to deprive people of their personal history and traditions (yes I am), but I just instead choose to concern myself with things of consequence and literary merit.

That’s why I’m such a fan of Mario Acevedo.

Regardless, I wonder if Lynne’s drivel will sell better than her daughter’s and have more relevance than her kid’s books.

Wait. Is that Lynne on the cover?

She’s HOT!

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Youth in Revolt looks to be finally inching towards cinematic production.

I’m a fan of C.D. Payne’s silly, absurdist novel and look forward to its silver screen interpretation. I hope it happens. I really hope it happens.

Because we still haven’t even gotten to see Confederacy of Dunces.

So let’s not get too excited yet. Hit cult novels may be cursed for film adaptation. At least C.D. Payne hasn’t killed himself. Nor has his mother accosted Walker Percy to get him to read the dead son’s manuscript.

Happy shooting Hollywood!

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I am reading Francine Prose’s bestselling book “Reading Like a Writer: A Guide For People Who Love Books And For Those Who Want to Write Them.”

First of all, if your name is PROSE you better be a writer, right? You better have authored fourteen books of fiction. You better be a distinguished critic and essayist and teacher at major universities. Your last name is prose afterall. So good for Francine. It’s good to know that sometimes things do go according to plan.

But beyond the absurdly leading implications of her surname, “Reading Like a Writer” is rather good. In the chapter on paragraphs, Prose discusses Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s lack of paragraph breaks in “The Autumn of the Patriarch.” She shares a story of a neighbor who once told her that he had trouble with Garcia Marquez’s novel because he likes to drink while he reads, and “The Autumn of the Patriarch” gave him no space in which to take a sip of his beer.

I’ll drink to that!

I suffer similar woes as this neighbor friend. It is a legitimate and grave issue for those of us who are serious readers and serious drinkers. Writers should be more responsive to our reading needs.

If you have the reading/drinking vice (which I highly recommend), I highly recommend Hemingway & Bailey’s Bartending Guide to Great American Writers. It’s a fun survey through writers from James Agee to Thomas Wolfe and features a quote, an anecdote, a drink recipe, an excerpt, and a short biography for each writer.

Cheers.

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