The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray

John Grisham flings his sequined cape over one shoulder to reveal the bulging muscles of his right arm. He has been working out. His spandex bodysuit hides nothing from the crowd gathered tonight at the Blue Moon Diner. Readers have come in droves to witness the first match of CLAW - the Charlottesville Literati Arm Wrestlers. As Grisham leaps to the platform and begins showboating for his lady fans, the crowd frantically places its bets.

“In it to win it,” yells poet Charles Wright. He slips a $10 bill into the plastic bucket that Grisham’s wife Renee dangles on a stick above the audience.

“The hell he is,” mutters John Casey as he palms a $50 bill to George Garrett, the CLAW referee. “I think Grisham’s been juicing again,” Casey whispers in the ref’s ear. Garrett nods his understanding and then confers with Rita Dove, the celebrity judge of tonight’s tournament.

“And in the opposite corner,” hollers MC Jan Karon, who stands on a chair over her amplifier, “Taking on heavily favored contender John Grisham, aka the Legal Eagle, in a fight for the first bracket trophy, is poet Lisa Russ Spaar, aka the Blonde Bomber!”

“Booo, hisss,” says Charles Wright.

“98-pounds,” says Renee to her husband. “Poetry. Tears. Spaghetti arm.”

Spaar emerges from the bar wearing a khaki flight suit and aviator goggles. Before taking the platform, she works the crowd with Top Gun dance moves. Her own bet bucket passes through the audience like a rambunctious church collection. Spaar’s MFA students stuff her pockets with dollar bills. From the back row, Deborah Eisenberg offers the poet a shot of Jagermeister. Spaar takes it.

The ref blows his whistle. “Competitors, take your seats,” he says. Last minute bets are handed forward through the rows. Grisham stops flexing and puts the top half of his jumpsuit back on. Garrett gives Spaar a hand up to the platform. She lets John Casteen hold her flight goggles and he squeals like a little girl. Spaar assumes the arm wrestling position at the table.

Grisham links his thumb with Spaar’s and squeezes. George Garrett holds their two hands in his own like a holy man giving a blessing. “Wrestlers, are you satisfied with your grip?” The adversaries nod their heads and clench their teeth.

“You’ve met your Waterloo,” says Grisham.

“You’re going down like a clown,” says Spaar.

“The jury says you’re guilty, mama,” says Grisham.

“Saddle up, buttercup,” says Spaar.

“Ready, set, wrassle!” says the ref. But before he can finish saying “wrassle,” the Blonde Bomber has sacked the Legal Eagle’s hand.

“Foul!” cries Grisham, leaping from his seat. Referee George Garrett declares Spaar the winner. MC Jan Karon blasts “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins on her CLAW stereo system. Charles Wright and Renee Grisham scream at Rita Dove, who guards the winner’s trophy in the corner, but Dove says the match was fought “fair and square.”

“This courtroom is corrupt!” shouts Grisham. “I demand a retrial!”

“Shut your jaw and stuff your law,” says the Blonde Bomber, “You are not the king of CLAW.” Spaar’s fans applaud the impromptu poem. Spaar curtsies in her flight suit.

“Round two,” says the ref. “Find your grip.” After a brief shoulder massage from his wife, Grisham reluctantly sits down again. This time he offers Spaar his left hand. Spaar shrugs and switches from her dominant arm. The writers grip up.

“Ready, Freddy?” asks Spaar.

“Don’t try to beat the system,” says Grisham. “Punks always get it in the end.”

“Okey-dokey, smokey,” says Spaar.

“Ready, set, wrassle!” cries the ref.

But before the ref can say “set,” Spaar has pinned Grisham’s left hand to the mat. The diner erupts in cheers for the triumphant underdog. “Order, order!” shouts the ref. “We have a winner!”

“Foul! Foul!” rages Grisham. Rita Dove hands the Blonde Bomber her trophy, a first edition of Leaves of Grass. As Charles Wright subdues Grisham and leads him to the bar, Spaar begins to read.

Today’s Morning News features an essay by Todd Levin in his “Consoles I Have Known” series. Levin is a singularly gifted writer and comedian with a website and a love/hate relationship with video games. In this essay, entitled “Praystation,” he tackles both the phenomenon of Great Writers Who Move to New York City to Be Famous and End Up Writing Shitty Online Copy about Bass Fishing,  and the Chinatown bootleg gaming industry. This is the read of the day unless I write something equally brilliant later, which is unlikely.

I was just getting comfortable at last night’s Authors’ Reception when the caterers corked the wine and disappeared the casseroles and the party volunteers began nudging us toward the exits. Disappointed that the hobnobbing had come to an end, I gathered my things and stuck some silver into my purse (just kidding, Casteen), prepared to take my leave in as much unpublished, un-agented glory as I had arrived. Just then, from the heated tent on Carr’s Hill, came twin 12-year-old girls dressed in matching outfits of pristine white. They accessorized with pearl tiaras, silver slippers, and hair that hadn’t been cut since they were babies. “What have we here?” I thought, moving to block their path to the exit.

“Are you elves or fairies?” asked the man beside me.

“We’re humans,” said one of the twins, smiling like her life depended on it. She was evidently used to answering patronizing questions from grown-ups.

“Please tell me you’ve written a book,” I said.

“We’ve written three,” said the girl.

The identical twins make up two-thirds of the author J.B.B. Winner, a fictional composite of the sisters and their father. Together they have written the Strand Prophecy sci-fi series. To promote the books and to inspire their fellow middle-schoolers, the girls tour the nation dancing, lip-syncing, and speaking about literacy. Brittany/Brianna told me the edifying story of how they became authors, a story I later heard her recite word for word on the internet.

“Wow,” I said. “Let me tell you what I was doing in sixth grade. Worrying about tongue-kissing. Wondering if I could avoid it my whole life.”

Because Brittany/Brianna nodded her head with such maturity and understanding, I kept going. “That’s right. I was afraid of tongue-kissing. And then I started getting suspended from school.” B/B’s father hovered just out of earshot, but he was starting to look at me suspiciously. I knew I had precious little time to corrupt these girls and to break down their preternaturally sweet and sophisticated personas.

“So,” B/B said, “Tell me what you do. Are you an author? What is your novel about?” I looked into the kind, interested face that B/B had probably practiced in the mirror before the party, and I forgot my cruel agenda. Someone asking about my novel! I no longer cared that she was 12, or that she dressed like the princess in A Neverending Story, or that her parents had probably read her Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People every night before bed, or had made her watch Hannah Montana interviews and concert videos on loop until she got her act down. I no longer cared because she had asked me about my novel, and we were going to be new best friends, and I was going to tell her about myself until her parents dragged her away from the party to the secret empire-building, underground training lair she shares with her sister and a thousand white stage costumes.

Today The Biological Imperative devotes an entire blog post to a stupid question asked by a bald man at a book reading. And I am glad. It was a silly question and it deserves to be ridiculed on the blogs.

The set-up:

Last night the blind professor, Selvi, and I threw back a few drinks and then attended a Virginia Festival of the Book reading at UVA’s Culbreth Theater. The program - Wayward Sons - featured Colm Toibin and Nathan Englander, both terrific writers. [Englander is not Israeli, as Selvi states on her blog. He’s from New York. But strangely enough, he used to work out in the same Jerusalem gym as Benjamin Netanyahu.] In person, Toibin is eloquent and charming. Englander is spasmodic (a nicer word than “spastic”) and equally charming. After reading from their respective books, they reclined in the velvety green armchairs onstage and fielded questions from the audience.

The stupid question:

Selvi paraphrases the question in question like this: “We Americans come from nothing, we inherit nothing. What influence do your cultures have on your writing?” I would paraphrase it more like this: “Toibin, you’re Irish. Englander, you’re Jewish. Hence you automatically have more culture in your little fingers than all Americans put together. How does that make you feel?”

… continue reading this entry.

A Mashup of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz

The apocalypse comes to a small Kansas farm. Marauding witches terrorize survivors. Because women usually give up when faced with adversity, Auntie Em kills herself, leaving behind her young niece Dorothy and her little dog Toto. They are scared and starving and “each the other’s world entire.” Dorothy harbors hope that other survivors exist to the south. She and Toto begin following a yellow brick road through unknown lands. The Wicked Witch roasts a Munchkin on a spit for dinner. A flying monkey cuts off the Scarecrow’s arm and eats it. When Dorothy reaches the fragrant ocean, she succumbs to tuberculosis and dies on the beach. But at last Toto nears the end of the road. There he catches up to the Wizard of Oz, who pushes a shopping cart full of canned meats toward paradise.

Because I’ve been sick, I’ve only had the energy to bookmark what I would normally blog about. I am feeling stronger today, but the thought of posting anything lengthy makes my Streptococcus flare up. So here are some links - insert writerly charisma where appropriate:

1) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris pummeled You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem in Round Two, Match Two of the 2008 Morning News Tournament of Books. Maud Newton, much like the C.L.A.W. Under the Table Umpire (whose eyes sometimes stray up girls’ skirts), judged this round fairly and squarely. I’m glad that Maud has her blog back after it was hacked by Russian pharmaceutical companies. And I’m glad that today’s bracket winner is a book that I’ve actually read. Although it makes me feel like I should have wagered some money.

2) This wild guy, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, is attending next weekend’s Virginia Festival of the Book. I can’t wrap my head around Joe Bageant. I know he’s some kind of mad genius. I think we share a few social and political ideals. I stand in awe of the subtitles to his rant-like essays, i.e. “Freedom vs. Authority under the 40-foot pulsating rainbow vagina.” He might be the answer to all of America’s problems. He might also be too fundamentally liberal for me. Did I just say that? Blame the sickness. In any case, it will be fun to watch him drink martinis and start fights with some of the more right-leaning members of the book festival.

3) In an essay called “What Makes Mathematics Hard to Learn?,” Marvin Minsky states that one of the reasons for the difficulty is math’s “linguistic desert.” In other school subjects, students learn thousands of new words each year. In math, the vocabulary is limited when it doesn’t have to be. I think it’s interesting that Minsky cites language as something that can help inspire kids to learn numbers. The math and English geekdoms are not so incompatible after all.

4) Finally the editors of the brand new Scoff Magazine: For the Discerning Philistine updated their site. It’s about time the 1,000-foot-tall Palomino who spell-checks the thing introduced herself.

5) My amazing grandmother Bunny is going to talk in Williamsburg, Virginia next week about her time in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services) during World War II. This morning I found a WAVES website devoted to telling the stories of veterans. Now I understand why my grandmother feels the need to assert that she did not “bat her eyelashes or bat her tail around” to get ahead in the military. Those WAVES were hot. And they went through boot camp. And they looked even better in uniform than the men. Take that, Hitler.*

I am sleepy now. War is exhausting.

*Why do I always want to say “Take that, Hitler” as if I had anything to do with his downfall? Being born in 1980 makes me feel so ineffectual sometimes. But not as ineffectual as being born a monkey.

Ashley Alexandra Dupre has her finger on the pulse. Hooker books sell.

Seriously, writers. How psyched are you to be coming to Charlottesville, Virginia? Can you believe the Festival is almost here, practically on top of us, like the imminent eruption of a volcano? Can you believe that in just TWO WEEKS you will be consorting with local people and students in a sedate, literary atmosphere? Can you stand it? God, I’m excited.

I want all you writers to enjoy yourselves in Charlottesville so you will return some day soon with more deep thoughts and dollar bills. I want you to spend your Festival of the Book time not only talking about books (bleh, right?), but also absorbing some local flavor. In keeping with this sentiment, I invite you to a sleepover at my house lasting Wednesday through Saturday nights. If you haven’t already booked a hotel, please come over. I will serve a continental breakfast between 7 and 11 every morning. I don’t think the Omni does that. At least not on paper plates.

I also want to offer you dining advice. Whether you’re in the mood for Spanish, pan-Asian, diner, French, gastro-pub, or Mexican food, we have a restaurant for you. I will escort you to the finest restaurants in town in exchange for a free meal. If you want to survey the culinary territory in advance, cVillain has the best restaurant gossip. You can also check out the C-Ville restaurant listings, but they haven’t been editorialized. Please write to me before you try to eat out on your own.

Bookstores! We have a bunch, but the best one to get lost in is Daedalus on the Downtown Mall. New Dominion is right around the corner from Daedalus if you’re interested in buying books nobody else has handled or possibly sweat upon while running on a treadmill.

Coffee shops! Writers have an uncanny ability to sniff out coffee shops when they’re on assignment out of town. But I like C-Ville Coffee. Wireless access, cute barristas, and no hipsters* (because the manic kids climbing on the giant wooden turtle have run them off).

I need advice on what additional advice to offer. What more do you writers need besides food and books and places to laptop? We have a sex boutique, but I really want you guys to keep the weekend clean. We have some Thomas Jefferson odds and ends, but I’d prefer you to focus on me. Oh! I almost forgot booze. We have plenty of places to drink booze, but stay away from the UVA bars unless you are a 21-year-old literary prodigy who also likes Jagermeister. Come downtown with me. I will show you where the mature intellects hang out. In Eliot Spitzer’s pants! HAHA!

*Although - full disclosure - sometimes I wear my skinny jeans.

This year the Virginia Festival of the Book assembled, as usual, a spectacular forum of literary luminaries from all over the world. Unfortunately the festival recruiters inadvertently overlooked a handful of Charlottesville authors. Here are the local writers who I think deserve to be featured in the festival next year. Recruiters, take note.*

1. Daniel J. Meador - Meador may be best known for being a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia School of Law, but he is also the author of three novels: His Father’s House, Unforgotten, and Remberton. Additionally, he wrote the memoir At Cahaba, a fascinating account of Meador’s childhood in an Alabama ghost town plagued by floods. The book is especially interesting considering its degree of visual detail, constructed purely from memory. Meador has been legally blind for several decades.

2. David L. Holmes - Recent recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award at the College of William & Mary, Professor Holmes is also the acclaimed author of the 2006 book of American religious history, Faiths of the Founding Fathers. Always a professor first and a writer second, Holmes has still managed to make a literary name for himself in the field of religious studies. He is currently working on a sequel to FotFF in which he explores the poor church attendance of Ronald Reagan, the Quaker origins of Richard Nixon, and the spiritual lives of the rest of the post-World War II presidents.

3. John Grisham - Much like J.D. Salinger, this local recluse rarely gives interviews, publicizes his books, or leaves his Charlottesville estate, hence we are forced to speculate on what Mr. Grisham, a writer of obscure legal thrillers, even looks like. Is he young? Old? Married? Does he have UVA basketball season tickets on the floor of John Paul Jones Arena? We will never find answers to these questions until the Festival of the Book lures Grisham from his misanthropic hidey-hole.

4. Jocelyn Johnson - Every time I suffer from another hysterical pregnancy, I think of Jocelyn’s terrific short story Pseudocyesis (PDF). And as a special bonus, her husband Billy Hunt is the official photographer for C.L.A.W. - the Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers.

5. Matthew Farrell - Farrell runs the Hypocrite Press, an independent local publishing company devoted to “the underground subculture of downtown Charlottesville.” Publishing the prose of playwright Joel Jones, the cult Robitussin saga Concerning Big Fun by Gus “The Gus” Mueller, a brand new book of C-Ville short stories, as well as Farrell’s own “literary-satirical” fiction, Hypocrite Press makes virtually no money, but it maintains its artistic integrity. “And isn’t that what’s important?,” says the girl who is holding out for a six-figure book contract.

* PS I have also cleared my schedule for the end of March, 2009.

I just found this Radar interview between Emily Gould and Sloane Crosley. Crosley is a New York-based book publicist whose first collection of essays, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, debuts next month. Sloane wins me over with her chick lit remarks reproduced below. Even though my first novel has only been published in my dreams, I still prepare myself mentally for the pink cover marketing blitz that will inevitably be attached to it (in my dreams). It’s hard to be a woman writing women these days without being branded a chick lit author, but Sloane has a healthy perspective on this lazy marketing strategy.

Radar: [Your story] made me think of your book as a sort of useful counterpoint to chick lit—like, “this is how it really is to be a single twentysomething girl in Manhattan; it’s not all madcap hijinx and Cosmos and love triangles” (though sometimes it is those things; rarely Cosmos). But you also must have been aware that you were treading into some heavily trafficked territory when writing about being a bad bridesmaid, etc. Are you wary at all of being lumped in with books on the pink shelf?

Sloane Crosley: It’s such a massive lump at this point. I might have been more worried five or 10 years ago when the concept was first being identified, coined, and marketed. But now it seems like if you just pick up a pen and have breasts (not that anyone I know is actually picking up pens with their breasts, in case that’s confusing), then people are predisposed to think what you produce as chick lit. And if it’s in the first person? Forget it. Since the stereotype has grown so widespread it’s almost pointless to be fearful of it. It’s out there, it sells a lot of perfectly good books to the people that want them, and there’s no getting around it. I know mine’s not the same, so hopefully it’ll be okay. For one thing, it’s the details of what an individual life is really like that can save a book from the Cosmo trap, especially in the essay format. Plus, it’s not like I have a giant martini glass on my cover with, you know, a miniature sparkling stiletto in lieu of an olive.

It’s funny, at Vintage we reissued Lorrie Moore’s Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? with a new cover, a decade after it was first published, and some tiny paper reviewed it as if it had just come out. It was fascinating because they condemned it as trafficking the same territory as the “pink shelf” books. And I thought, this is Lorrie Moore, damn it. How far have we let this thing get that there are to be no more plotlines about female friendships or the opposite sex or coming of age or self-reflection at all? I think the only way to avoid the label of which you speak would be to write a novel in which a woman sits in a room painted black, speaks to no one for 400 pages, and keeps a gun in one hand and a scotch-stained copy of The Executioner’s Song in the other. Even then, she’d probably have to use a pseudonym.