The November/December 2008 issue of The Believer contains a fascinating article by art critic and historian Lawrence Weschler about the rivalry between artists Robert Irwin and David Hockney.

In an essay titled “The Paralyzed Cyclops: Mediating a Vivid, Decades-Long Argument Between Two Giants of Contemporary Art,” Weschler details the differing points of view held by these two artists, and how they’ve debated them without actually ever meeting: (more…)

Over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowan, professor of economics at George Mason University and at the Center for the Study of Public Choice, has aggregated the various year’s best lists which have started to pop up online.

Here are the four titles he’s dioscovered appearing most frequently:

2666, by Roberto Bolaño

Nothing to be Frightened Of, by Julian Barnes

The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel, by David Wroblewski

You can find him snarking on them all here.

John Joseph Adams, editor of the zombie anthology The Living Dead—which reprints my Stoker-nominated piece “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man”—has just released the following trailer in support of the book.

Watch—and then buy!

Stan Lee was at the White House this morning, where he was awarded the 2008 National Medal of the Arts. Said Laura Bush, “These medals recognize great contributions to art, music, theater, literature, history, and general scholarship.”

According to the official transcript of the event:

MILITARY AIDE: Stan Lee. (Applause.) The 2008 National Medal of Arts to Stan Lee, for his groundbreaking work as one of America’s most prolific storytellers, recreating the American comic book. His complex plots and humane super heroes celebrate courage, honesty, and the importance of helping the less fortunate, reflecting America’s inherent goodness.

(The medal is presented.) (Applause.)

Reporter Jan Freeman writes about the difference between “amused” and “bemused” in The Boston Globe:

Merrill Perlman, who writes the Language Corner column for the Columbia Journalism Review, posted an entry on bemused several weeks ago, objecting to the sentence “Obama shrugged off McCain’s attacks with a bemused smile.”

“If the last six months of Nexis citations are any guide,” she wrote, “more than half the people reading this think, as the above writers did, that ‘bemused’ means something like ‘amused.’ But it doesn’t.” Perlman, formerly director of copy desks at the Times, believes that “unless Obama was ‘confused,’ or ‘muddled,’ or ‘puzzled,’ he was not ‘bemused.'”

Joe Queenan writes in an essay titled “Enough With the Sweet Talk” in The New York Times that the main problem with book reviews isn’t the wrongly negative critique but rather the falsely effusive one:

Books are described as being “compulsively readable,” when they are merely “O.K.”; “jaw-droppingly good,” when they are actually “not bad”; “impossible to put down,” when they are really “no worse than the last three.”

Authors are described as a cross between Madame de Staëland and Arthur Conan Doyle, or are said to write like Charlotte Brontë on acid, or have out-Dostoyevskied Dostoyevsky and checkmated Euripides, when they are more of a cross between Candace Bushnell and Ngaio Marsh, or write like Willa Cather on Robitussin-DM, or have been narrowly out-Mavis Gallanted by Mavis Gallant, and were lucky to play Edna Ferber to a draw.

I’ve always said that I’d rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I’m not, but now it strikes me that I wouldn’t mind some unearned praise now and then …

The December 2008 issue of Esquire also includes an article by writer Tom Junod on scientist Mark Roth that brought back unpleasant memories of Chris Crawford, the speaker at the 1998 Sante Fe Nebula Awards Weekend who emptied the room with his insistence that there was a great divide, nearly impossible to cross, between science and the arts.

He raised hackles by going on and on (and on and on and on) about how scientists could never understand creativity, and creative types couldn’t understand scientists.

All of this in front of an audience filled with professional science-fiction writers who were also working scientists … or vice versa.

Anyway, the following statement in the Esquire profile reminded of that uncomfortable moment:

It’s a weird thing about scientists—you would think that they would love science fiction. But they don’t. To admit that you get your ideas from science fiction, if you’re a scientist, that’s, like, career-threatening, man …

I don’t know whether this is something Junod overheard Roth actually say, or if it’s only something that Junod is intuiting from his lengthy interviews, but … what the—? This passage goes against everything I’ve ever heard.

I’m trying to decide whom to blame for this bizarre statement, Junod or Roth. But at least one of them is way off.

I dreamt last night that I was staying at a beach house with friends, among them John Clute, Paul Di Filippo, and the character Rajnesh Koothrappali from the TV series The Big Bang Theory (as opposed to Kunal Nayyar, the actor who portrays him).

Those of us who aren’t Indian are cooking up our specialties so that Raj can experience other cuisines. I wish I could remember what John and Paul whipped up, but I can’t. However, I decided to make bagels, which my real-life self hasn’t prepared in a while, but which I once used to bake quite often.

I tore through the small kitchen looking not only for the proper ingredients, but also for the correct implements, such as cookie sheets and a pot big enough in which to boil the bagels. But I couldn’t find them, and so I suddenly found myself transported to the streets of Queens, where I’m searching for what I need.

I end up buying them from an old Japanese lady, and wake during the transaction, never making it back to the beach house.

So no bagels for you, guys!

As part of the celebration of Esquire‘s 75th anniversary year, the 75th page of the December 2008 issue of the magazine contains brief quotes from what the staff considers to be the seven greatest stories they’ve ever published, with a link pointing to the complete stories.

In addition to Tom Wolfe’s “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson, Yes!” (which I’d read over over again in the collection The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby back in college when I thought I was going to follow in Wolfe’s footsteps) and Norman Mailer’s “Superman Comes to the Supermarket” (which is not about the superhero, but rather the Kennedy/Nixon debate), they’ve posted the full text of Gay Talese’s classic personality piece from the April 1966 issue, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”

For those of you who’ve never read the piece and don’t understand why you should care, well, aside from the fact that it’s wonderfully written, it also includes a cameo by Harlan Ellison, who went head-to-head with the Chairman of the Board and lived to tell the tale. (more…)

Or at least that’s what Jim C. Hines had to say in his piece over at Genreville titled “And the Award Shall be Known as … The Dangerfield.”

While I agree that writers such as Terry Pratchett deserve more love, I squirmed a bit at the passage in which Hines put forth the premise that the reason science fiction ignores the funny when it comes to awards is because “deep down we’re still that awkward genre trying to work up the courage to ask Romance out on a date, and hoping the Mystery and Thriller jocks don’t stuff us into our locker.”

A funny line, but I don’t buy the premise, so to me it came off sounding like something I’d expect out of the misguided Michael Itzkoff. After all, the Oscars also slight comedy, but no one claims that’s because Hollywood has a lack of self-esteem.

I think the reasons are far more complex. Humor isn’t forced to sit at the children’s table because science fiction is ashamed of it. Instead, I think it’s because most people underestimate comedy, thinking it easier than more serious writing, when in fact, humor is perhaps far more fragile and delicate, and an argument could be made that it’s even more difficult to pull off. Competently written serious narratives can sometimes squeak by even when a passage is slightly off, but nothing bombs as badly as a bad joke.

So, yes, Terry Pratchett deserves all the awards he can get. But the fact that he doesn’t have a groaning shelf of trophies has nothing to do with our shame.