the 941

I cruised 41 up into the mysterious waters of Bradenton last Friday, hoping to check out — for the first time: sorry, B-towners! — the city’s Village of the Arts. The neighborhood is the Suncoast’s largest artists’ colony, with 40-plus galleries, artsy shops and more. While I came away a bit disillusioned by the quality of the visual art to be found there — don’t get me wrong, I like mountain streams and flowy female figures as much as the next guy, i.e. not at all — I was shocked to find the best bookstore I’ve ever entered anywhere near here. The Village Bookshop is the real deal: The stacks are thick with new and used volumes ranging from the pop to the obscure; the poetry section is just short of exhaustive; even the creaking floorboards underneath add to the effect. And did I mention shop owner and sharp-witted conversation provider Doug Knowlton, himself a poet (and pictured above, to the right)? Now, I can already imagine the impassioned defenses of Sarasota News & Books addicts and those who enjoy the clusterchuck that is The Main Bookshop.

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Milwaukee’s alt-weekly, Shepherd Express, just did a cover story on David Sedaris, who came under fire a few weeks back for embellishing his stories. Cooper wasn’t happy, but the Shep seemed to be okay with it.

If The New Republic was hoping for a James Frey-styled takedown of Sedaris, however, they didn’t get it. Published last month under the headline “This American Lie,” Heard’s article was received coldly by readers who, given the sensational title, perhaps expected more smoking guns. The Washington Post’s Peter Carlson deemed the piece “truly ridiculous.”

“Brace yourself now,” he wrote, unveiling his summary of Heard’s conclusion: “Sedaris exaggerates for comic effect!

“I’m shocked,” Carlson added, “shocked!”

Sedaris has also brushed off the article.

“For as long as I’ve been going on these tours and publishing books, people have asked, ‘Is every word of what you write true?’” he says. “And I always say, ‘No, I exaggerate like crazy.’ And I’ve said that in interviews, and I’ve said that on stage, and I’ve said it over and over and over again. This guy wrote this article saying, ‘He exaggerates!’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I told you I did.’”

There’s a Q&A as well, which doesn’t delve to deeply (read: at all) into the issue, but that ommission makes the point just the same. Sedaris to Coop: calm down.

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After Alex Heard publicly prosecuted pop culture memoirist and storyteller David Sedaris for crimes against the truth in a recent issue of The New Republic [subscription required], commentators have weighed in on whether or not Sedaris’ offenses are as grave as those of, say, Oprah-boosted liar James Frey. J. Peder Zane shrugs at the affair, defending Sedaris by essentially declaring a special status for humorists: They aren’t bound by the same rules as other “nonfiction” authors (i.e. they can make shit up). Gawker concurs, offering a justification along the lines of, “We all knew it wasn’t true all along.” Sedaris himself weighed in during an interview, calling Heard “incompetent” and claiming he’s never hid the fact that he exaggerated in his stories. Heard fired back, claiming that Sedaris himself confirmed that he had outright fabricated several episodes, rather than simply exaggerating for comic effect. (For the record and in the mood for truthfulness, several of these links come courtesy Zane’s blog, here.) Why are so many journalists jumping to defend someone who sells bullshit as nonfiction?

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I’m in the middle of working on a story about some of the “hidden gems” of the Sarasota School of Architecture (stay tuned, folks!) and just today received a huge boost to my cause: Andrew Weaving’s handsome hardback Sarasota Modern. Loaded with page after page of beautifully rendered photographs � both new and historical � of buildings by the bright lights of the Sarasota School, the book is a rich resource. Essays and notes by Weaving bring cohesion to the jumble of images, helping the layman (i.e. me) understand what made the SRQ style so significant. And while it’s heartening that a lot of these homes are being preserved by the more enlightened amongst us, looking through the pages is a little heart-tugging: It gives you a glimpse at what so much more of Sarasota could look like today with a little more architectural imagination.

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The folks over at HyperArts have long maintained the best online Thomas Pynchon resource site around (including a indeces to all his “major” novels), but they’re also unveiling a full-blown Wiki site to coincide with the author’s upcoming Against the Day. The site should be an excellent way for hungry readers poring over their first editions to collaborate and try to figure out what the hell the dude’s trying to say. If you haven’t already pre-ordered, first, what are you doing with your life? And second, go here.

Update: Got my advance copy of the novel yesterday and eagerly devoured the first 80 pages last night. Superb. Bonus: Pynchon writes what may be the earliest historical “yo’ mama” joke, uttered by the Archduke Franz Ferdinand hisself on the South Side of Chicago circa 1893: “‘Your Mama, she plays third base for the Chicago White Stockings…Indeed, she is so fat, that to get from her tits to her ass, one has to take the “El”! Tried once to get into the Exposition, they say, no, no, lady, this is the World’s Fair, not the World’s Ugly!’”

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My first contribution to The Loaf explored the reasons why The Ringling School of Art and Design might lavish its cartoonists with a harem of top-notch professors, opulent resources, career training workshops, and even a brand-new student center.

What I found? Computer animation is, essentially, a cash cow. Parents send their kids to school with long-term results in mind, and in this respect Ringling is especially appealing: the school�s a hot zone for recruiters, a test tube for future Pixar babies where today�s young animators can easily become tomorrow�s game designers and Disney inductees.

What�s interesting about this phenomenon, apparently, is the sheer newness of it all. I was recently surprised to read that animation has not always been a lucrative industry; actually, it used to be no more a beacon of success than, say, oil painting or ceramics.

Neal Gabler, senior fellow at USC�s Annenberg Lear Center for communications, just released a new book on Walt Disney, already being hailed as the man�s definitive biography. (Seriously. Since it hit shelves a little under a week ago the media�s been all over this shit.) We�re all familiar with the Disney lore � the megalomania, the child-hating, the anti-Semitism, the post-mortem freezing (urban legend, Gabler informs us) � but what may come as a revelation is the fact that aside from Snow White, Walt Disney Studios was not only seen as a novelty enterprise; it was losing money, film after film. (Well, 1941�s Dumbo made money, but only because its budget was purposefully low. A few days ago, I hit Blockbuster for proof, and yes it looks thrifty.) In fact, it wasn�t until its 90s revival, when production started on little-girl porn like The Little Mermaid, that the studio started turning any profit. The Magic Kingdom was a desperate attempt in the 1970s to make up the difference.

Gabler�s book is outstanding. But long � 880 pages! For those interested in easing into it, I highly recommend Salon.com�s abridged sneak preview. But really, it should be required reading for Ringling�s incoming computer animation class, many of whom are destined for four years of coddling by the administration. It�s the only way we can smack some humility into �em, I say, or at least castrate their egos � one Type-A art student at a time.

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So Orhan Pamuk has won the Nobel Prize. I haven’t read Pamuk, so I can’t really comment on the justice of the award, but you gotta admire the way he stood up to his own government for his right to call genocide “genocide,” despite legal action against him. The Nobel committee cited his “quest for the melancholic soul of his native city” (Istanbul) and his discovery of “new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures” as the reasons for the award. I’ll have to add him to my to-be-read shelf. The Nobel isn’t the end-all, be-all like most people think � Vladimir Nabokov didn’t even win the thing, for crying out loud! � but it’s still the biggest literary prize going, so congrats on the win, Orhan. And thank God the thing didn’t go to one of that overrated American duo, John Updike and Philip Roth.

In other nerd fare, finalists for the National Book Award have been announced and I’m quite pleased to see Richard Powers’s name on the list. His novel The Echo Maker drops tomorrow and I can’t wait to pick it up. Taylor Branch, who visited the Suncoast earlier this year, is nominated in the nonfiction category as well.

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This week’s piece on resident moose-and-squirrel trapper Harv Hollek makes note of his fledgling career as a novelist, but it seems only fair that I give the ol’ man his due. Harv’s second book, Uzbek Option, hit bookstores last January; his first — if Airleaf’s breathless PR site is to be believed — already has Hollywood in its thrall; and a third’s on the way. I’ve been assured that Quinn Rafferty, the author’s loveable sharp-shooting adventurer, plays a prominent role throughout the series.

Last week, I picked up a copy of Bishkek: Lust, Greed, Murder (still in print!) at Sarasota News & Books for my own review…

And well, well, well: from its molten-hot opening encounter with a Slavic prostitute at the Shermertyevo Airport to its polyamorous subplot involving the (aptly named) Simon Ho, and into home with a concluding idyll in Moscow (”‘You are getting bigger by the second, my love…’”), all 342 pages glisten with lurid detail and are — the perv in me is pleased to announce — gloriously semen-stained. (”Some of it’s too porn-y for my wife,” Harv confessed last week over lunch. “But all of these experiences are the truth. You’ll find it all in Kyrgyzstan!”)

It’s quite a read. For the puritans among us, however, here are a few alternatives — equally transcontinental and no less adventurous, but happily bereft of Hollek’s in-your-face cock talk:

The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, by Chingiz Aitmatov (widely considered the Kyrgyzs national literary treasure)

This Is Not Civilization, by Robert Rosenberg

The Lost Heart of Asia, by Colin Thubron

Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure, by Bartle Bull

The Hunter, The Hammer, and Heaven: Journeys to Three Worlds Gone Mad, by Robert Young Pelton

Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, by Robert D. Kaplan

The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy, by Robert D. Kaplan

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia, by Rebecca West

Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert, by William Langewiesche

…Come on guys, which ones am I missing?

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It’s a heavy-hitting fall in the literary world. Jonathan Franzen just emerged with a memoir, The Discomfort Zone, which The New York Times at least thought just made the guy seem like a dick. Cormac McCarthy (the novelist lauereate of the blood-soaked American countryside) releases The Road in just a couple weeks. The book is a break from McCarthy’s past oeurve; the story details the trek of a man and his young son across the blasted wasteland of a post-apocalyptic world. With a similarly thrilling premise, Richard Powers’s The Echo Maker sounds promising as well. No doubt as brainy as past classics from Powers like Galatea 2.2 and The Gold Bug Variations, Echo is worth getting excited about.

But really, the real reason to be a breathing human being this fall is the return of Thomas Pynchon. The Man’s novel, Against the Day, is only number six in a 40-plus-year career and his first since 1997’s Mason & Dixon, making the publication a genuine event. Add this to the fact that in my mind, Pynchon has few (if any) literary peers in the past century and you have a very special book indeed. Expect to see any news about the publication (however trivial) to be touched on here. I haven’t been this excited about a new book in a long, long time.

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