A new study by researchers reveals that emotions are affected in exactly the same way, regardless of whether you are reading or watching TV.

This is good and bad news.

Good news for us sensible folk dismayed by the puritans blaming society’s ills on Grand Theft Auto and the like.

Bad news for us sensible folk bothered by the puritans railing against books and campaigning to have them banned.

But of course, there are some fine lines to be distinguished in all of this. Books, nor television, is a monolithic medium to be generalized en masse. I have quite a different experience watching Wipeout or America’s Funniest Videos than I do Jeopardy or Seinfeld or 8 1/2. Same goes for reading Zadie Smith or Hunter S. Thompson versus reading someone like Michael Crichton.

But one thing is sure that I wish the study would have explored to verify my lifetime thesis: Reading is Sexy.

Sexier than the boob tube for sure.

Posted by: James on August 14th, 2008 at 6:33 pm

Filed under: Books, news
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The “artwork” is by J.J. Sempe, a New Yorker contributor since 1978, and is called “Future Memories.”

Future Memories. Yeah, of false nostalgia blotted with sentimental Thomas-Kincade idealism. The image shows two adults roasting what can only be marshmallows over a campfire on a beach as seventeen ankle biters sit around enraptured by the fire’s glow and the sky’s sparkling expanse.

But certainly there will also be future memories of the bugs, the smell, the noise, the homesickness, the bad food, the annoying kids, the bed wetter, the crier, the stealer, the itches, the sickness, the sweat, and the discomfort.

At a time of war, grave athletic duels, and economic crises, I cannot fathom why such a distinguished publication as The New Yorker would resort to such escapist fantasy.

Is this what we want our children exposed to?

The ostriches at The New Yorker predictably resorted to a Frenchman for this drivel.

J.J. Sempe, born in the disreputable and ramshackle town of Bordeaux, is the author of “Sempe: A Little Bit of France.”

Buy it and the terrorists win.

Posted by: James on August 13th, 2008 at 8:00 am

Filed under: Covers, Politics, news
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Michael Swaim, writing at Cracked.com, has a magnificent rant on the homophobia of Orson Scott Card.

Do enjoy, but some highlights:

“The Mormon guy who wrote all those books about the innocence of a child winning out over war and hatred wants us to raise arms against any queers who feel like expressing their love legally. I mean, I understand a devout Mormon having some issues with gayness, but when your brain tells you that it’s an important enough issue to divide the country in a bloody coup, it’s time to get a new brain.”

“What the hell does it matter to you if two hot lesbians want to settle down and be respectable (which isn’t the way I like my hot lesbians either, believe me)? Until such a time as they bring down your property values with raging lesbian drug orgies, you’ve got nothing legitimate to complain about, and even then, I’ll trade houses with you.”

“You’ve spent your life imagining diverse races and cultures, and doing a hell of a good job. Yet your inability to imagine true love manifesting between two members of the same sex almost classifies you as retarded in my mind. It’s not even a moral issue. You’re just an idiot to me.”

“I know it’s pointless to ask you to change your mind; bigots armed with the intransigence of religion are rarely swayed. But hopefully some of those reading this post will be forewarned that Orson Scott Card has become a poison-spouting lunatic.”

Posted by: James on August 12th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

Filed under: Politics, Writers, news
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Michael Chabon won the “best novel” category of science fiction’s most prestigious awards for The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

The Hugo Awards are Authwhore’s favorite literary awards.

And not because we’re closeted sci-fi-loving, graphic novel-reading nerds. Authwhore is just uniquely situated to singularly appreciate any award that prominently features a bright, shiny phallus:

The Hugo Award trophies vary year to year but always feature the finned Hugo rocket (also known in literary works as a penis (dildo, vibrator are also acceptable interpretations)).

Except for 1958. Something very unfortunate clearly happened in 1958 and rendered the science fiction community void of sexual impulse and creative drive:

What happened in 1958?!?!?!???

Posted by: James on August 12th, 2008 at 5:58 am

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In gearing up for Banned Books Week, September 27 - October 4, 2008, I am trying to decide which banned book to read. My right to read isn’t going to celebrate itself.

We all love a good list. Especially a list of books we’re supposed to have read. We scour these lists, smirking in satisfaction at the ones we have actually read, and making mental notes of the ones we think we ought to read.

A list of banned books provides all the things we love about book lists and more. There is something very illuminating about a culture’s puritan biases based on the ill it harbors for certain books.

So which one(s) do I read?

Some books are more obviously likely to raise the ire of certain citizens, like The Homo Handbook-Getting in Touch With Your Inner Homo. And some are a little more peculiarly controversial, like Forever by Judy Blume.

Judy Blume! I actually have a lot more respect for Judy Blume now. Way to go, Judy, getting a book banned. Alright.

Now, most of the banned books on the list seem to be “one of 55 books that parents in Fayetteville, Arkansas are petitioning to have removed from school libraries. The parents, who formed Parents Protecting the Minds of Children, object to the profane language and depictions of sexuality in many of the books and have accused the librarians and other opponents of their efforts of promoting a “homosexual agenda”.

So yeah. We have a small, vocal group in a single community seeking a narrow agenda. Which is their prerogative of course. But it doesn’t indicate that we are on the brink of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. I don’t think I’d want How to Make Love Like a Porn Star by Jenna Jameson displayed too prominently around my ankle biters either. Even if it is a “cautionary tale.”

So which one to read? There are a few surprising ones on the list to be sure.

Bringing Down the House?

All the Pretty Horses?

Barbara Kingsolver?

I think I’m going to play it safe and go with Bless Me, Ultima. It comes with a fabulous story:

“High school students in Norwood, Colorado, staged an all-day sit-in to protest the removal of the novel from a ninth grade English classroom. The book had been removed following parent complaints of profanity and “pagan content” (the book’s title character is an herbal healer). Bob Conder, superintendent of schools, confiscated two dozen copies of the novel and threw them in trash cans, then allowed a group of parents to retrieve the books and destroy them. Conder later apologized, admitting he had never read the novel, which appears on First Lady Laura Bush’s “top ten” reading list for all ages.”

Posted by: James on August 11th, 2008 at 6:30 am

Filed under: Books, news
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Sand sculpture is an under appreciated art. And we here at Authwhore seek to promiscuously “read” a diverse spectrum of neglected “texts.” Like books. And sand sculpture.

With graphic novelist’s prominence on the rise, I was recently fielding candidates to fill the vacuum of artists groveling for respect.

I shamefully failed to mention sand sculptors. Their work is sheer poetry in sand and deserves passing acknowledgment from the most insignificant of web logs.

Notice the jaunted flip flop on the left foot. Such thoughtful detail distilled in sand is truly breathtaking.

Posted by: James on August 8th, 2008 at 10:35 am

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You know the times are getting tough when bums start asking for “a couple of bucks” instead of “spare change.”

This is the situation we’re in folks, it is not pretty, and it’s the situation I was in a few days ago right before I came home to find a piece of atrocious mail on my foyer, having been shoved through the mail slot by some schoolboy prank punks. Or a disgruntled postal worker.

You know the times are getting tough when disgruntled postal workers start shoving New Yorkers through your mail slot instead of raking their places of employ with bullets from an automatic assault rifle.

This is the situation we’re in folks, it is not pretty, and it’s the situation I was in a few days ago as I came home, having fended off a wobbling vagrant asking me for “a couple of bucks” instead of “spare change,” and found the single most disgusting piece of art I have ever seen in my life, “Night Cap” by Kim DeMarco:

You know the times are getting tough when American publications have to resort to silly puns and plays on words to sell us their pulp. In the good old days of yellow journalism they’d start wars, now they just smear some sloppily thrown together, half-baked image of a swimmer at night wearing a swim cap and call the drivel “Night Cap.”

Oh how clever.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

This is the situation we’re in folks, it is not pretty, and it’s the situation I was in a few days ago as I came home to be insulted by this mindless humor. When will American publications be brave enough to engage in some serious satire and culturally relevant commentary on the world we live in?

When?

I know what a nightcap is. It’s a drink; a libation one imbibes prior to retiring to the bedchamber.

You know the times are getting tough when American publications have to resort to weak homonyms.

It’s as if Obama is treading water? Is that what you’re saying?

The 2008 Olympics are such a contrived spectacle of disappointment and corruption and since no one cares about them, they might as well be held at night? Is that what you’re saying?

The fervor over the Olympics and the Obama campaign has been so intense that everyone needs to just chill and have a nightcap? Is that what you’re saying?

Posted by: James on August 3rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm

Filed under: Covers, Politics, news
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I am outraged by the most recent New Yorker cover.

Gutless savages feasting on innocent animals. Torturing them in boiling water. This is water boarding gone bad! Those poor shellfish. You carnivorous cowards! Gargling on your Pinot Grigio, laughing in selfish oblivion like a bunch of demented beasts in a Ralph Steadman drawing. If only he had visited a clambake instead of the Kentucky Derby! Or a crawfish boil! Fish Fry!

What does the New Yorker think it is with this pretentious, caddy New England humor? Will next week bring a culturally relevant pictorial on the satiric elements of clam chowder? And what, no bibs? The Red Lobster should sue your pants off, New Yorker. This kind of glib image is an insult to all that makes America great. And all that makes greatness American.

But what is really offensive about the most recent New Yorker issue is that for the first time that I’ve noticed, they moved the movie criticism before the book criticism. And this after the Los Angeles Times has pulled its stand-alone book reviews in order to slop them in with the detritus of entertainment and home improvement advice.

Posted by: James on July 30th, 2008 at 8:47 am

Filed under: Covers, Politics, news
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Barack Obama is my guy.

Understanding that any politician who was perfectly aligned on the issues I value would be unelectable, he’s got my vote.

Understanding that I am in agreement with Hunter S. Thompson when he said, “And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?” Barack is my lesser of two evils in the 2008 election freak show.

A lot can, and has, been said of Obama’s faults. All that rhetoric without substance. All that inexperience. Sure, inexperience. Voting for the inexperienced will get us either a Bill Clinton or a George W. Bush. Not just a double-downer sideshow, but a roulette wheel on a geopolitical scale. With nuclear warheads instead of chips.

And for all of the books I read, I am constantly, stubbornly (call it hope, optimism) flabbergasted by world leader’s oblivion to fundamental devices such as irony.

And so it was with great disappointment that i was dumbfounded by the Obama Camp’s reaction to The New Yorker’s latest cover satirizing the Conservative Right’s ignorant and racist portrayal of Barack Obama and his wife. (Fox News called her a “baby’s mama,” and referred to her preference for bumping fists in casual greeting as a “terrorist fist jab.”)

I had such high hopes of Obama transcending his predecessors almost-laughable ignorance to things like Irony and Satire. I expected the intolerant, fear-mongering, puritanical evangelical/conservative/right to lash out at such an image, but Obama had to jump right into that mob and declare the cartoon “tasteless and offensive.”

No.

No, I’m sorry Barack Obama Camp (Barack Obama, spokespersons, advisers, gurus, speech writers, strategists, supporters, and the majority of my country who seem to be bothered by this), this is America, we are Americans, and that is just a cartoon. We have weathered The Simpsons, Ren & Stimpy, South Park, and Beavis and Butthead, and a plethora of bad art and amateurish imitators. We will not get caught up in senseless rioting and murder over a cartoon. We understand art and we understand things like irony and satire and sarcasm and The Freedom of Speech!

We have values, we have ethics, and we will stand up for what we believe in. But this? This is a cartoon! There are many tasteless things out there to be offended about, but this is just not one of them.

Shame on you Mr. Obama for such a crude and misguided response. Stop pandering! Stop groveling to the center!

I may have to vote for Ralph Nader.

Posted by: James on July 14th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

Filed under: Covers, Politics, news
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So Franz Kafka. We all read The Metamorphosis in high school.

He also wrote The Trial, Amerika, and The Castle.

I’m reading The Castle right now so this caught my eye: the secretary of Kafka’s friend and literary executor, Max Brod, recently died and now experts will be able to examine documents of Kafka’s that the secretary had refused to share with the world.

These papers of Kafka had just been gathering dust as this secretary had “doggedly refused” to share them.

Why did she refuse to share them? And why doggedly? The literary community is on the seat of its chinos. There must be something juicy in them thare parchments!

But wait.

“The authorities have warned that the damp in [the secretary's] flat and the hoards of dogs and cats she kept may have damaged or even destroyed the papers.”

What?

Gross.

Good luck to whatever graduate student or museum intern charged with this task.

No thanks.

I have been enjoying The Castle very much, thank you, despite the fact that Kafka died with the manuscript ending mid-sentence and Max Brod finishing it. These damp, moldy, urine and shit-soaked documents may provide insight into Kafka’s literary intent, but who’s to say?

The grad student in the haz mat suit with tongs. That’s who.

I told you reading is sexy. When the pages aren’t saturated with cat scat.

Posted by: James on July 10th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Filed under: Books, Writers, news
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