Hiding from the News

Sorry to be MIA for the last two weeks, but I was on vacation. As a result, I'm not completely sure what's still news and what isn't, a somewhat debilitating condition for a blogger. I thought, for example, that I might link to this report throwing cold water on the charges, trumpeted so loudly a few weeks ago, that the British MP George Galloway was secretly working for the Iraqi government. But the article's a few days old, and I suppose they've been chewing it all over the blogosphere since then. It's even possible that the same people who went after the BBC for messing up a few details of the Jessica Lynch story are now going after the Christian Science Monitor for getting this one wrong. Beats me: Like I said, I've been away.

Fact is, I avoided all newscasts while I was gone, did a pretty good job of avoiding newspapers, and took only a couple of spins around the Web. I get the impression that events of enormous importance have taken place in the Middle East, but I'm not entirely sure what they are. I heard about a sex scandal in Britain and about Orrin Hatch saying something stupid in America, neither of which are novel enough to qualify as "news"; and I read that Gregory Peck died. I wasn't even a fan of Gregory Peck, yet news of his demise reached me while news from Iraq did not. With due respect to Mr. Peck, that's what I call a good vacation.

Just before my trip, the lefty site CounterPunch asked a bunch of people, including me, to recommend their favorite novels written in English since 1900. The results were published this past weekend; and since I don't have any more transient prose to recommend, you can treat the books I list there as my reading suggestions for today. Add 'em all up, and you get well over 4,000 pages to devour. Tomorrow I promise to point to something shorter.

Comments

[SM]

IMHO, both Clowes and Chris Ware are overrated. I couldnt finish Jimmy Corrigan.
Chester Brown concluded "Loius Reil" just now & it was terrific. Other good stuff - Seth's Palookaville, Joe Matt's ongoing Peepshow.

[Anonymous]

R.Crumb, R.Crumb, R.Crumb

and, uhm,
R.Crumb

[Jeff Smith]

Nice of them to include both you and Bill
Kaufman ...

Speaking of Bill, when is he ever going to
write for reason again?

Jeff Smith

[Anonymous]

maybe american splendor? but i hear it's going to be a motion picture soon, so oh well 😀 summer movies!

[Warren]

BLECH GAG WHEEZ COUGH COUGH....
Ackkch! What a revolting dung heap of litterateur. Nice to see Asimov and Orwell represented, along with a few others but mostly pure dreck. Most notable however is the complete absence of DUNE, surely one of the ten greatest books ever written in the English language.

[Anonymous]

http://www.brown.edu/Students/OHJC/topology/
http://www.math.hmc.edu/~mmacaule/thesis.pdf

[Anonymous]

Telepathic juggling?
Huh?

[Sting]

Warren, au chaque un son gout, but I consider DUNE one depressing heap of pure dreck. I walked out of the movie, by the way -- right about the time when that fat idiot began floating to the ceiling -- and it wasn't to get a drink of water either.

[Anonymous]

No telepathy here, Anon. We just think alike.

[Xrlq]

Simply replacing the name "Telegraph" with "Monitor" does not address the principal shortcoming of this entry, which claims that the newer Monitor story "throw[s] cold water on the charges ... that the British MP George Galloway was secretly working for the Iraqi government." Insofar as the new CSM story says nothing about the Telegraph's documents (except to reiterate that they are probably genuine), it does no such thing.

[Jesse Walker]

Ahem:

"It's even possible that the same people who went after the BBC for messing up a few details of the Jessica Lynch story are now going after the Christian Science Monitor for getting this one wrong."

There are people out there who apparently believe that proving the BBC was wrong about whether Lynch's rescuers shot blanks is tantamount to proving the original story of the rescue. There are probably people who are making a similar error with the most recent revelations about the MP.

There are even people who believe that how Lynch was rescued, or whether one peace leader was on Saddam's payroll, has some bearing on whether the war itself was worth fighting.

I think it's worthwhile, in limited doses, to keep up with which journalists are botching which reports and who's forging what and all the rest. But that wasn't the point of this post.

[Demo S. Thenes]

I had no idea when I came into this world, that looking for "truth" would be like walking through a jungle, a thicket, thronged with land mines, boobie traps, misdirections, obfuscations, prevarications, misrepresentations, and falsifications.

But then, I should have listened to my teacher, who said, "My son, in your quest, beware of lies and damned lies."

[Anonymous]

oh, mathematic juggling.
i get it.

[Diogenes]

Not quite. Try holding up a lamp, looking for an honest man. (My mistake.)

[Josh]

Jesse -- the same guy who said the CSM's documents were forgeries also said the ones the Telegraph got were probably real. You should probably make that distinction.

[Russ]

Congrats on being the only one with the nerve to put comic books in there.

[Jesse Walker]

Oops! I meant to write Monitor, not Telegraph. Thanks for catching that, Josh -- I'll correct the entry.

[Anonymous]

O.K. your vacation explains one thing. But where is Brian Doherty?

[Jesse Walker]

He's taking a six-month leave to write a book.

[dick]

Clowes is excellent, but I would equally recommend anything by Reason's own Peter Bagge.

[Gerry]

Well yes, there's the BBC HOAX (no other term suffices). But the real reason for my post is to ask you seriously: "Why would you respond to a request from 'CounterPunch', the neo-communist rag and web site?" Too much vacation sun? G.

[Jesse Walker]

Jim: The book is about the Burning Man festival, which Brian wrote about in Reason a few years ago: http://reason.com/0002/fe.bd.burning.shtml

Gerry: CounterPunch has a libertarian streak, and I'm happy to do what I can to strengthen it.

[Chris Puzak]

Warren: what specific books did you have a problem with? It seemed to me that there was a remarkable amount of genre fiction included in the list.

P.S. Anyone who disliked the David Lynch version of Dune should look for the extended version of his movie, which was broadcast as a two part mini-series in the late 80s. It contains a great deal more footage and is a significant improvement over the theatrical release.

[Jim N]

Jesse, what is Brian's book about?

Regarding Dune, the book was great, but I do have to agree with Sting on the movie, which I thought was total garbage.