Scott Edelman
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What we talk about when we talk about mad-cow disease

Posted by: Scott    Tags:      Posted date:  September 17, 2008  |  No comment


I’ve noticed a number of bloggers linking recently to the amusing McSweeney’s article “Selections from H. P. Lovecraft’s Brief Tenure as a Whitman’s Sampler Copywriter,” but I prefer the magazine’s piece that spoofs my favorite Raymond Carver short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”

Check out “What We Talk About When We Talk About Mad-Cow Disease,” by Steve Lohse:

Dan, Cheryl, and Clare were all vegetarians once but not anymore. We were having a barbecue. Dan and I were standing by the grill while Cheryl and my wife, Clare, were up on the patio, talking.

“The only thing that makes me sad about veal is when it’s overcooked,” I said. I was trying hard to be funny.

What I won’t be eating today

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  food, Iron Man    Posted date:  September 16, 2008  |  No comment


Spotted in the supermarket—Iron Man chocolate!

IronManChocolate

Feeling human and unalone

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  David Foster Wallace    Posted date:  September 15, 2008  |  No comment


Thanks to E. E. Knight, I was alerted to this interview with David Foster Wallace which originally appeared in Salon back in 1996.

I was particularly taken by this passage, which grows even more poignant in light of the author’s recent suicide:

What do you think is uniquely magical about fiction?

Oh, Lordy, that could take a whole day! Well, the first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don’t know what you’re thinking or what it’s like inside you and you don’t know what it’s like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way. But that’s just the first level, because the idea of mental or emotional intimacy with a character is a delusion or a contrivance that’s set up through art by the writer. There’s another level that a piece of fiction is a conversation. There’s a relationship set up between the reader and the writer that’s very strange and very complicated and hard to talk about. A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I’m sitting in a chair. There’s real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn’t make me feel less lonely.

There’s a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I’m in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don’t with other art.

I’m saddened that the art Wallace loved wasn’t enough to keep him from feeling so alone as to have saved him.

But I guess it’s naive of me to even think that it could.

Gwen! Stacy! Returns!

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  comics, Gerry Conway, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man    Posted date:  September 11, 2008  |  No comment


Yesterday was the 56th birthday of Gerry Conway, the writer who killed and then brought back Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man—which makes this the right time to share another hidden bit of comics history.

When Gwen Stacy returned in the final panel of the May 1975 issue of Amazing Spider-Man, this is what readers saw in the published issue.

GwenStacyReturnsOriginal

But what those who weren’t lucky enough to be working in the Marvel Bullpen at the time never saw was the alternate version originally handed in by artist Ross Andru. (more…)

Where you won’t be seeing me

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  conventions, World Horror Convention    Posted date:  September 10, 2008  |  No comment


I have been dithering for months about whether or not I had both the time and the money to make it to this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Calgary, and after much wavering, I finally decided that I will not attend. I just canceled my hotel reservation.

So those of you who thought you might see me there … well … won’t.

The Living Dead is now live

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  John Joseph Adams, my writing, zombies    Posted date:  September 8, 2008  |  No comment


The Living Dead—a reprint anthology consisting of more than 230,000 words of zombie fiction, including my Stoker finalist “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man”—has just been published.

To promote the book, John Joseph Adams has launched a Web site coinciding with the release. Go there to find complete text of the introduction and four of the anthology’s 34 stories, plus excerpts of several of the other stories.

TheLivingDead1Cover

You can read the opening of my story there, which represents its first U.S. publication, as it originally appeared last year in Pete Crowther’s UK-based magazine Postscripts.

But I’d also like to point you toward one of my all-time favorite stories by another, Adam-Troy Castro’s “Dead Like Me,” which is available online in its entirety.

I first read that story in Castro’s collection A Desperate Decaying Darkness, and I’ve probably read it at least a dozen times since. It’s a powerful and moving tale, and if you’ve never read it, you should go and do so now.

After which you should buy the entire book, of course!

Inside the Marvel Bullpen

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  comics, Don McGregor, Marvel Comics, Michelle Wolfman, Roger Slifer    Posted date:  September 7, 2008  |  No comment


When Irene and I went through our old photo albums earlier this week as part of our anniversary celebration, I found a few photographs taken in the Marvel Comics Bullpen during the mid-’70s. So get ready for another flashback …

First up is me at my desk, in a picture probably taken in 1976. My sleeves are rolled up and I’m ready to work. I could probably figure out the exact month and year by tracking down the dates of the issues on the wall of covers behind me, but I’ll leave that exercise for some other time.

Next up is a group shot. That’s me standing with Bonnie Smith, while Chris Claremont kneels between us and takes a photo of our photographer. We’re bracketed by my future wife Irene Vartanoff on the left and Roger Slifer on the right. (more…)

Big John

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  dreams, John Verpoorten, Marvel Comics    Posted date:  September 7, 2008  |  No comment


In a dream this morning, Irene and I were working for the same company, though I had no idea what it was or what we did there. We were getting ready to leave for the day, but before we did, I had to find my jacket.

When I finally did, it was one of my leather ones, but sadly, it was covered with a white mold. I looked further and found a second one of my leather jackets, and that one was also covered with mold. As I began wiping away the mold, someone walked by out in the hallway, and I when I turned I was startled to see that it was John Verpoorten. He was hectoring some poor freelancer for being late with an assignment.

JohnVerpoortenDream

“But … he’s dead,” I said to Irene. (In the real world, John, who’d been the production manager at Marvel Comics, died in 1977.)

Irene explained to me that it had become the fashion nowadays for people to disguise themselves as John. Everybody was doing it. Only those of us who’d known John could see through the disguise.

The bogus John moved on, and Irene and I moved out into the hall. Paul Levitz was there, who in the real world I’ve known since the early ’70s, as this photo proves. This Paul was the Paul of today, though, and I suddenly realized that the office we were in belonged to DC Comics, and that I had just started working on staff there.

I asked Paul whether I’d now have to salute him, and jokingly raised my fingers to my forehead. (Paul had edited some of my comic-book stories when I freelanced for DC, but unlike Irene, I was never on staff, so this was the first time he’d officially be my boss.) He said that it wouldn’t be necessary.

And then I woke.

Shell shocked

Posted by: Scott    Tags:      Posted date:  September 6, 2008  |  No comment


A drenching storm passed through here this afternoon, and once it had passed, Irene and I stepped outside to check whether any trees or large branches had come down, as sometimes happens when it gets wet and windy.

We didn’t get far, because here’s who we found no more than a dozen feet from our back deck.

September2008Turtle

Until I knelt to snap its picture, its neck protruded and all four feet were out, so I was obviously making it nervous, even though I tried to stay down at its level and made no threatening gestures. I retreated and watched from a distance until it was comfortable enough to start moving again.

This has been our best year ever for encountering turtles in the wild. (Well, not counting all those we came across in Tokyo’s ponds last year.) I think I’ve spotted at least six this summer, each at a different spot on our property or the adjacent road.

September 4, 2008

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  Irene Vartanoff    Posted date:  September 6, 2008  |  No comment


Since in my previous post I shared a photograph of the happy couple on our wedding day, I thought I should let the world see what 32 years has done to us.

Due to a dreaded deadline doom, we celebrated close to home in a subdued, though still joyous, way.

(Subdued compared to our celebration of the 25th anniversary, anyway, which began with a backyard party for 125 people and ended in the Galapagos Islands!)

2008AnniversaryScottandIrene

We had dinner in Inwood at a local, non-chain, family restaurant, played 18 holes of miniature golf, and then wore ourselves out with several energetic rounds of air hockey, the last of which always leaves us laughing hysterically.

Then it was a night spent going through old photo albums, and remembering all the twists and turns, both good and bad, which brought us here, still smiling.

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