Bookstorm

Do you round up or round down?

• Have you ever wondered what I look like? Well, now you know. Sort of.
• The New York Review of Books has a two-part podcast of Michael Chabon talking about the Democratic National Convention. Possibly related: where were all the whores?
• The new issue of The Believer is live. Of particular interest (and, of course, because it's free online): "The Henry Ford of Literature."
• I meant to link to this sooner, but here's Jenna Jameson on what she's learned: "George Bush has read my book. Don't act like he hasn't."
• Quiet Earth reviews the screenplay for Cormac McCarthy's The Road: "To be blunt, the script is a complete stunner. It is a devastating masterwork which, I'm glad to report, has been written with absolute devotion to the original novel."

Sarah Palin or no, it wasn't like I was going to vote for the Republican presidential ticket anyway, but here's something to consider:

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin's first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. "They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her," Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to "resist all efforts at censorship," Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

In 1996, Ms. Palin suggested to the local paper, The Frontiersman, that the conversations about banning books were "rhetorical."

If you wanted to make a case for the most violent novel of the twentieth century, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian might be a good place to start. But it's compelling because it's not violence for the sake of violence; there's a beautiful, biblical aspect to the imagery, as if it all leads to salvation. McCarthy completely subverts the western novel, portraying his characters not as heroic cowboys, but as depraved, testosterone-fueled scumbags who operate on an entirely different moral plane than most. Witness the end of chapter four, where a ragtag band of soldiers is slaughtered, in graphic detail, by Comanches, and you have the sense that this is only to tip of the iceberg, that McCarthy is going to lead you to a hell worse than any you can imagine. Worse than The Road? Possibly. I've yet to talk with a reader who came away from The Road without being fucked up in some fashion--I loaned my copy to Nicole, and I'd love to find out how much it fucked with her--and Blood Meridian, after fifty pages, is making that book look like a walk in the park on a beautiful spring day.