Ed Gorman's Blog, page 271

Twittering

I have zero interest in Twitter. Hell I'm not even sure what a Blackberry does. But given the last three days in Iran I sure see the value of the Twitter as a means of communication when a government tries to shut everything down. Here's an excerpt from a Galleycat story today.


Douglas Rushkoff on Twitter and Totalitarianism

In a new essay, author Douglas Rushkoff praised the power of Twitter and Facebook in Iran--arguing these tools will lead to "the end of totalitarianism."

At the Daily Beast,

Duchess of Death, the new Agatha Christie biography

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Duchess of Death: The Biography of Agatha Christie by Richard Hack was sent to me in galley. I gave it the usual fifteen page test and found that I couldn't stop reading it. Richard Hack has done a fine and substantial job with his new book on Christie. He was kind enough to answer some questions.


You've written books about Ted Turner, Michael Jackson, J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes. Agatha Christie doesn't seem to fit on the same shelf. What attracted her to you as a subject?

1. It is true th

Sunday clips

Here are some excerpts from the Sunday newspapers.

1. I have to say I don’t know what Wald is talking about. The Beatles always struck me as pretty bland and very white (exceptions for me: Revolver and Rubber Soul) but the Stones? The Animals? Eric Clapton? They couldn’t exist without black music.

Elijah Wald: How The Beatles Destroyed Rock `n Roll reviewed by Erik Himmelsbach in the Los Angeles Times

Wald explains that the Beatles did in fact destroy rock 'n' roll by creating a schism between w

Funny people

Thanks to everybody who responded to my list of funny/unfunny comic stars. As I suspected the people we like and dislike varies widely except for an unlucky few who include Robin Williams and Sasha Baron Cohen.

Bob Levinson mentioned Shelly Berman, a man I considered a true artist probably because we seemed to have a matched set of neuroses. Berman was a performance artist as much as comedian, holding the stage as a man for whom every hour was a battleground of frustration, grief and rage. Thes

Five Unfunny Funny People

I heard a radio piece about comedians of various kinds and in the course of it realized that some of the most celebrated don't strike me as funny at all. My opinion only of course.

Don Rickles. A pathetic hack whose act has existed on hype since day one ("He insulted Sinatra!"). He's not very bright and his insults are witless and the bathos he uses at the end of his show--I'm just kidding folks, God I love ya!--is stomach-turning.

Dave Barry. Bland, obvious, with no real sense of people or everyd

Raymond Chandler's movie appearance

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Chandler's double identity
Adrian Wootton on a writer's secret cameo

Bit part ... Raymond Chandler (sitting) in cameo in Double Indemnity

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of legendary American crime scribe Raymond Chandler, whose seven completed novels, including The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye profoundly changed crime fiction and crime movies. The success of his novels - The Big Sleep was first to be published in 1939 - led Chandler to try his hand at screen

Four

Bob Randisi Tagged me

4 movies you would watch over and over again:

The Third Man
Madame Bovary (Chabrol version)
Sunset Boulevard
The Apartment

4 places you have lived:

Minneapolis
Chicago
Des Moines
Cedar Rapids

4 TV shows you love to watch:

Seinfeld
The Office
30 Rock
The Rockford Files

4 places you have been on vacation: (I hate to travel)

Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Door County, Wisconsin
Lake Michigan
My back yard

4 of your favorite foods:

Tuna fish
Spinach salads
Pancakes
Cooked asparagus

4 Web sites you visit daily:

Mr. Monk and The Dirty Cop; Gorman

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Any novel that can make me laugh out loud six or seven times in the first chapter is one I'd recommend without qualification. And good as that first chapter is, MONK AND THE DIRTY COP only gets better partly because of the central idea's ingenuity and partly because of the wit with which it's used.

The set-up here is that Monk is forced out of the police department because the city's finances are in such bad shape. But maybe Captain Stottlemeyer is also a little tired of sharing the credit for so

Dick Lochte

Dick Lochte brought posted an interesting response to the blurb debate on Rara-Avis:

One of the more important benefits of blurbs (and reviews) is that they
impress publishers, which means that your book will get a bigger, better
push. Several seasons ago, an unpublished writer submitted a crime fiction
manuscript and included "endorsements" from several "gold standard," usually
non-blurbing authors, including, AIR, John le Carre and Joe Wambaugh. The
book was purchased for a lot of loot. Then it was

Blurb and Blurbers

On Jun 3, 2009, at 5:22 PM, rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> Regretting a blurb is like regretting that cigarette you gave to a
> guy in the street. In other words, it's cheap.

Must be why I distrust blurbs -- they're cheap. Don't inhale.

I put more value in words, I guess.

When I see a blurb, I always hope it's from a legit review or other
source. But too often, it's just a premixed, premeasured endorsement
from one brown noser to another; a circle jerk of thumbs-up. A recent
book I've read feature