Teh Internet is Full of Cool Things: Author! Author! Edition
Hit and Run habitue and recidivist commenter Alan Vanneman has a book out that sounds pretty interesting to this old literature grad student (I even bought the Kindle edition earlier today). Here's the Amazon description:
Author! Author! contains two short stories and a novella, with famous authors as the leading characters. In "The Transfiguration of W. H. Auden," the great poet dies and goes, not to heaven, but someplace better. Victorian England! In "The Man Who Met Joyce Carol Oates," an admirer discovers that encountering genius is not without peril. In "The Apotheosis of John Updike," the poet of suburbia encounters catharses without number west of the Hudson.
Vanneman's blog, which includes links to his excellent film essays at Bright Lights, is here.
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Nick, no one posted yet because Vanneman is not only universally disliked here but, he is also a talentless hack. Just ask to suck his dick already.
Stop being mean or Virginia Postrel will call you a jerk.
I hope that jerk isn't going on the cruise.
Speak for yourself, Marshall.
I got no problem with Vanneman.
You, on the other hand, are acting like a real troll.
Telling Gillespie to suck someone's dick?
What, do you think you own the place?
[Vannemen, shaking, wipes a tear from his cheek]
'Well, at least Ken likes me.'
I really never got the Vanneman hate.
Dude disagreed with me.
So what?
That's what the site's for!
Outreach.
Welch, Gillespie and company go out and hit the airwaves to rope in all the nonlibertarians they can--and expose them to libertarianism...
And our job is to chase them away as soon as they get here?!
There are some people who frequent this site that are seriously fucking confused.
And saying shit like that to Gillespie?!
Tony doesn't even do that. I wonder what it feels like to be more trollish than Tony?
Ken Shultz|2.5.14 @ 9:42PM|#
"I really never got the Vanneman hate."
Hate I reserve for Tony; Vanneman gets disdain.
He shows up once every several months, posts a comment as if the point were self-evident and disappears.
Twit? Yeah, that pretty much defines how he acts here. The other stuff I've read by him isn't worth returning to.
If I found this book in the dentist's waiting room, I'd probably grab the 2YO National G instead.
Vanneman is not only universally disliked here but, he is also a talentless hack.
So basically he is just like everyone here
Taboola is the devil.
Stop making fun of my name!
If I ever finish my slashfic novel, Dr. Tannis's Lab Rat Genocide, I fully expect you to hawk it for me, Nick.
Just in case anyone makes the mistake of considering buying this book, here's a link to the Amazon page for one of Vanneman's other books, a fan fiction of Sherlock Holmes.
A review:
It has a 1.5 star average. Why is Reason pitching this book? Are you trying to get readers of this blog to waste money?
Also, from Vanneman's blog that Gillespie linked:
Now I'm actually kind of pissed. This hack attacking an absolute great like Flannery O'Connor? That is some bullshit right there.
If you don't shut up about Vanneman, he'll come here to remind us of how he voted against Reagan. Twice!
I often find myself in the position of having to defend Rand against her dimmer critics, but the one that I agree with wholeheartedly is O'Connor. O'Connor couldn't compare to Rand as an intellect, but she was a fine, brutal author. And was she right about the aesthetics of Rand's didactic fiction--Rand was a great essayist and a terrible, preachy novelist.
And leave it to Anal to squander a few seconds of ephemeral life to tell us that Author XYZ is "overrated," as though a consensus can be accurately established (I doubt Anal has read much Hayek) and is an actual opinion in itself. Thanks, Anal, for blessing the world with your educated take on Flannery Fucking O'Connor.
Irish, you ignorant slut, value is subjective. Some people like to use their limited resources to trade for samurai swords. Others prefer fossilized elephant dung. Others yet prefer to buy books written by a glib troll named Anal.
Suum cuique, or something.
I demand a post on the Warty Hugeman Chronicles.
I can't believe he got his filthy paws on Auden.
Rock and Roll never forgets dude, ever.
http://www.Anon-Works.tk