got pynched yet?

[j minnich]

>I dunno, gang, is it me or what?  I've had more than ample opportunity to
realize how 
>*off list* some of my ideas and reactions to things are, but am I the only
one who finds 
>this *booksmith* marketing blitz of the list absurdly funny and simultaneously 
>pathetically depressing?  I mean, looking at those pompous trading cards,
with the 
>brooding *literary lionheart* Rick Moody or the *luscious, lilting* Anka
Radakovich, and 
>then the air brushed photo of TRP (did they think the teeth--by far the
most interesting 
>detail in that photo--made our boy look less lionhearted, or less luscious
than a priemier 
>*world-class* author should?).  Am I the only one less than impressed by
Joel Rose's 
>white boy dredlocks (BTW--his--masculine heart *beats too loudly for his
own good*).   
>Please note that I haven't read Moody, Radakovich or Rose, so for all I
know they may be 
>really good writers  (somehow I doubt it, but I am willing to be educated).
>The evening of pynchonalia could be fun, I guess--any listers attending
should let us 
>know how it goes--but at the same time, the marketing angle so far
outshines the literary 
>(assuming there is one), that it might just all be a travesty.  Sheesh.
>
>johnny bummed out
>
>PS  What happens to a culture that can no longer distinguish between the
impulse to 
>communicate and the impulse to market?  Why do I feel like I need to go
read old 
>Herman's CONFIDENCE MAN  right about now?
>


Yeahbut...  lacking opportunities to have readings/book-signings ala David
Foster-Wallace and nearly every other writer these days, what's a bookstore
to do?  If they were using the book to pedal tennis shoes or motor scooters
or soft drinks, then I might be offended.  I haven't visited the web site to
see what they've produced for a trading card yet, but since I live close I
may actually try to make it to the event.  And as far as I'm concerned, any
passing urge to re-read _The Confidence Man_ ought to be indulged.  

j minnich
---------------------------------------------------------------
...The poet is dead.
Nor will ever again hear the sea lions 
Grunt in the kelp at Point Lobos.
Nor look to the south when the grunion 
Run the Pacific, and the plunging
Shearwaters, insatiable, 
Stun themselves in the sea.  
   -Wm. Everson