The Mumpsimus

A grand time was had by all at Readercon this year, and it was a great thrill for me to get to see one of my oldest friends in the writing world, James Patrick Kelly , as guest of honor -- honored so well and appropriately. The two panels I was on seemed to go well, though I arrived at the con only half an hour before I was on the "Triumphing Over Competence" panel and hadn't quite adjusted yet, so my contributions were few. Adam Golaski did a fine job of moderating, but it was a tough topic to focus in on in a way that would lead to real insights. Saturday's "The Career of James Patrick Kelly" panel felt much more successful to me, and one of its strengths was the diversity in the backgrounds of the panelists -- we had all discovered Jim's writings (and Jim himself) at different times and in different ways. Of course, afterward I thought of many things I should have said instead of what I did, in fact say, but I probably talked too much anyway, so i...

The latest issue of BOMB magazine includes a conversation between Jonathan Lethem and Lydia Millet -- it's unfortunately not online, but it's so good that it's really worth the price of the magazine to read it. One of the best interviews I've read in a while. Here's a sample: Jonathan Lethem: I was recently reading an essay by Mary McCarthy, a quite brilliant, free-ranging one that she first gave as a lecture in Europe, called "The Fact in Fiction." At the outset she defines the novel in quite exclusive terms, terms that of course made me very nervous: "...if you find birds and beasts talking in a book you are reading you can be sure it is not a novel." Well, as the author of at least one and arguably two or three novels with talking animals in them, I felt disgruntled. McCarthy is one of those critics whose brilliance dedicates itself often to saying what artists shouldn't do -- like the equally celebrated and brilliant James Wood, wit...

The Jonathan Lethem/Philip K. Dick event at Cooper Union was a real delight. It began with Max Rudin , publisher of the Library of America , announcing that a second volume of PKD's novels will be released from the LOA in August 2008, also edited by Lethem. He rattled off the titles of the five novels quite quickly, but -- assuming I heard him correctly and nobody involved with the book changes their mind between now and then -- the included novels will be: Martian Time-Slip Dr. Bloodmoney Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said A Scanner Darkly Now Wait for Last Year Lethem then read some excerpts from his introduction to the selected stories collection from a few years ago (which, Lethem informed us, would not be released in paperback because the paperback rights to the stories are owned by somebody else) and the whole of his own story "Phil in the Marketplace" . Lethem then answered a number of questions from the audience. I took some notes, but missed as much as I got...

Jonathan Lethem is going to be at Cooper Union on Thursday night, and according to Galleycat he will be revealing the contents of the second Library of America collection of Philip K. Dick's novels. I'm going to try to be there, and will report as much as I can back here. For those of you in the NYC area, here's the info (from the Cooper Union website ): Jonathan Lethem: Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s Lecture and book signing Thursday, September 27, 6:30 pm The Great Hall 7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue Free Acclaimed writer Jonathan Lethem is the editor of a selection of novels written by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick from the 1960s. Dick left behind more than 160 short stories and novels when he died in 1982. Many of his tales have become successful films, such as Blade Runner and Minority Report . Lethem bundled four of Dick's novels into one book to give a new generation the opportunity to discover Dick's futuristic visions. Jonathan Le...