Neil Young’s GREENDALE comes to print

Iconic rocker Neil Young wasted no time in crafting a response to the launch of the war in Iraq, and the larger political and cultural forces he saw motivating it: the concept album Greendale came out in August, 2003, a mere six months after the first attacks were launched. Since then, Young has recrafted the story of Sun Green and her family into a live rock opera, a film (which he directed under the pseudonym Bernard Shakey), and, of course, a website (though, as you might expect, not the usual promotional site).

Books: You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up

When we reviewed the book The Husbands and Wives Club: A Year in the Life of a Couples Therapy Group a few weeks back, we wrote: “Here are five couples who reject — albeit under the firm hand of a skilled therapist — the notion that there are only two acceptable narratives when it comes to talking about your own marriage: the long-walks-on-the-beach love story, or what [the author] calls the “resigned farce” — husbands and wives alike joking about their domestically useless/sexually burdensome/nagging spouse.”

What we talk about when we talk about boobs, part 2

On Monday here we introduced the book Uncovered by Jordan Matter, and featured four of the women in the book. Today we feature four more portraits and interviews.

Em & Lo: How did you two end up taking part in this photo shoot?

Mike: I heard about the project somewhat based on my working as a figure model, as a male, I would clearly not qualify but mentioned it to Mary. She agreed to pose and wanted me to pose with her as well.
Mary: And I am always up for a trip to NY.

What we talk about when we talk about boobs

We have to admit, when we first heard about Jordan Matter’s book Uncovered — topless portraits of more than 80 normal women (i.e. not models), all shot in public in NYC — we were cynical. First of all, it’s hard to get past the fact that Jordan Matter is a dude, who spent six years photographing topless women. Sure, some of the women are old enough to be his grandmother and there is an impressive range of body types featured. Still, we found it hard to get excited by the whole “embrace your body” message coming from a guy. Plus, while some of the jokes in the photos work, like the woman standing topless in front of a street stall selling knock-off bras, some — like the woman walking home from the office, topless with pearls from the waist up, corporate from the waist down — gave us second-hand embarrassment.

But then we started interviewing the women who participated in this project, and reading their personal statements that accompany their portraits in the book, as well as the awesome forward by Susan Seligson, author of the memoir Stacked: A 32DDD Reports from the Front (who, to her surprise, ended up posing as well). And our cynicism started to crumble. Also, turns out it’s legal to be topless in the city — who knew?! Seligson writes in the foreward:

“For all the lusting, leering and hooting my breasts have attracted, exposing them of my own volition seemed to shift the power base. When I remove my top and bra on a city street, if anyone is the aggressor it’s me alone. How can I be the victim if I stage a pre-emptive strike? The experience left me feeling upbeat and somehow victorious, and the effect lingered for days.”

Werner Herzog reads childhood books and analyzes Waldo

Ryan Iverson has been casting a shadow over the Internet’s collective warm memories of books from our childhood with his droll parodies of Werner Herzog reading “Curious George” and “Madeline.” Most recently, he explicates “Waldo” or rather “Voldo,” as Herzog ponders the dilemma of “a man unstuck from place and time…his only lifeline to his [...]

50 best author vs. author put-downs

The Examiner lists the “50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time” where opinionated and cranky famous authors apply their gift of words and gab to criticize their fellow writers. Here are some of my favorite put downs: 4. Edgar Allan Poe, according to Henry James (1876) An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark [...]

Books: The Husbands and Wives Club

Before we started reading The Husbands and Wives Club: A Year in the Life of a Couples Therapy Group by Laurie Abraham (based on this NYT mag cover story), we had a number of preconceived notions. (1) Okay, so other people’s therapy might be interesting when Gabriel Byrne plays the therapist on HBO, but real-life couples and real-therapy therapy? It’s a miserable thing to say about other people’s marital troubles, but they can be so boring. (2) Group couples therapy? Isn’t that a little ’70s? (3) Wouldn’t you want to throw yourself off a bridge after a year of being embedded in five couples’ marital misery? Would you ever be able to have happy thoughts about the institution of marriage again?

How to correctly pronounce authors’ names

The downside of an analog reading experience is that books don’t give you definitions of words you don’t know nor does it provide the proper pronunciation for author names. Here’s a handy cheat sheet for the latter issue. The only author I intentionally mispronounce is Ayn Rand’s name. I’ve known the correct way for a [...]

Men are from Mars, blah, blah, blah…

Oh, isn’t it fun to talk about how men are from Mars and women are from Venus? It’s like we’re practically two different species! And once almighty “Science” comes down from on high and explains these differences as natural, well then you better suit up because the inter-galactic, inter-species war of the sexes is going to be fought for a loooong time. And so it is with neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine’s new book “The Male Brian: A Breakthrough Understanding of How Men and Boys Think,” her follow-up to her 2006 “The Female Brain.” It’s already on it’s way to best seller status (it’s number #150 on Amazon) — for this is the stuff talk shows are made of! Why, men are practically born to cheat!

New Yorker analyzes readers’ bookshelves

The New Yorker’s blog “The Book Bench” has recently been poetically analyzing their readers’ bookshelves from the photographs they submit. Here, they interpret Italian reader Maria Sepa’s: From the celestial sphere, knowledge, immaterial at first, rains gently into the minds of men; from there it falls onto the pages of books; and from there it [...]

Everything you wanted to know about marriage but were afraid to ask

Neither one of us ever read Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love (soon to be a movie starring Julia Roberts) — we were both faintly annoyed by the idea of being along for the ride while some over-analytical divorcee worked through her problems on paper. But then Curtis Sittenfeld’s review of Gilbert’s Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peach with Marriage convinced us that Gilbert was a smarter, funnier, more insightful, and less annoying writer than we’d assumed. She was right: Committed — a sequel of sorts to Eat, Pray, Love — is a compelling take on marriage and its discontents. Sure, at times it feels like being along for the ride while some over-analytical affianced woman works through her issues on paper. In fact, it feels like this a lot of the time — but it is only very occasional annoying. The memoir is likeable for multiple reasons, but here are five of our favorite relationship tips that we took away from it (whether or not Gilbert intended them that way):

“Off the Set: Porn Stars and Their Partners”

Photography duo Paulie & Pauline are coming out with a new book in April called “Off the Set” which features porn stars and their partners in intimate, non-porn moments. Paired with the images of the ten couples are essays by the photographers and some of their subjects, actual love letters, and stories that humanize people often thought of as sex machines. We asked Paulie and Pauline to give us some background on a few of the images from the book (which you can pre-order from Amazon):

“This cover photo is of Digital Playground contract star Jesse Jane and her husband Rich. Her given name is Cindy, which is just perfect because she reminds us of sweet little Cindy Loo Hoo from How The Grinch Stole Christmas! She’s a tiny slip of a thing, especially when she’s standing next to her husband, who could easily be mistaken for a Na’vi from Pandora if you painted him blue. We photographed them one hot summer morning at their home outside Oklahoma City earlier this year.

Kermit the Frog is a terrible boyfriend

Julie Klausner’s new memoir, I Don’t Care About Your Band, is one of the funniest books about dating we’ve ever read. And this is coming from two women who are kind of sick of (a) memoirs and (b) books about dating. Her book will remind you that dating can always get worse — but fortunately, the worse the date, the better the story it’ll eventually make. (If nothing else, you’ll be comforted by the fact that your blind date was never arrested for kidnapping.) Here’s an excerpt in which she compares Kermit the Frog to skinny hipster bad boys/bad boyfriends:

Covers of J.D. Salinger

One blogger collected over 20 different covers to recently deceased author J.D. Salinger’s influential book “Catcher in the Rye.” It’s interesting to see the wide ranging approach designer took in coming up with covers in re-issues of this seminal book. In addition, The New Yorker opened their archives, typically available only to paying subscribers, so [...]

Sustainability books: Cambridge ranks the top 50

Got a favorite book on sustainability? One that changed your view of our relationship to the environment? In my case, Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael series, and Ray Anderson‘s Mid-Course Correction all opened my eyes to ideas of more sustainable relationships between the economy and the environment.

Hannah Seligson – A little bit married

We recently spoke with Hannah Seligson about her new book “A Little Bit Married: How to Know When It’s Time to Walk Down the Aisle or Out the Door”:

Why did you write this book? Personal experience?

Of course! I’m my own guinea pig. After my first round of being A Little Bit Married, I became intrigued by this new dating pattern that I saw practically every 20-something friend of mine ebb in and out of. Here were these relationship that fifty or sixty years ago would have most likely culminated in marriage, but today often do not. So the book is an attempt to understand why that’s the case.

Katie Roiphe vs. Steve Almond

Last Sunday, in a big NYTimes think piece, sexual mores writer Katie Roiphe accused Dave Eggers and his fellow male American literary contemporaries of being too into cuddling (like that’s a bad thing):

The younger writers are so self-­conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically un­toward. For a character to feel himself, even fleetingly, a conquering hero is somehow passé. More precisely, for a character to attach too much importance to sex, or aspiration to it, to believe that it might be a force that could change things, and possibly for the better, would be hopelessly retrograde. Passivity, a paralyzed sweetness, a deep ambivalence about sexual appetite, are somehow taken as signs of a complex and admirable inner life. These are writers in love with irony, with the literary possibility of self-consciousness so extreme it almost precludes the minimal abandon necessary for the sexual act itself, and in direct rebellion against the Roth, Updike and Bellow their college girlfriends denounced. (Recounting one such denunciation, David Foster Wallace says a friend called Updike “just a penis with a thesaurus”).

Erotica author puts the naughty bits back in fairy tales

photo via Foxtongue

Did you know that fairy tales used to be pretty X-rated? But then the Brothers Grimm et al deleted all the dirty parts — the party poopers! — to make them more family-friendly. Not unlike Anne Rice’s late ’80′s Sleeping Beauty trilogy, the new book In Sleeping Beauty’s Bed: Erotic Fairy Tales retells 15 stories with all the missing naughty bits filled in by author Mitzi Szereto’s imagination (and yes, Cinderella is about foot fetishism, natch). Each of the tales is prefaced with an introduction detailing its history and the sexual culture in which it was first written. (Now we just want to know which scholar is going to take it upon him- or herself to dig up the dirty originals…) It’s the perfect holiday gift for someone who’s been naughty and nice this year. Here’s an excerpt from Szereto’s retelling of “The Turnip” tale — we guarantee you’ll never look at this root vegetable in the same way again…

Happy birthday James Thurber, author of “Is Sex Necessary?”

Thanks to The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor on NPR today, we learned it was James Thurber’s birthday (12/8/1894-11/2/1961). He was a celebrated American writer and wit, best known for his short stories and cartoons in The New Yorker. While on staff there, he shared a small office and became great friends with E.B. White (hey, just like we became great friends when we worked and shared a desk at the online mag Nerve). Together the two wrote “Is Sex Necessary?: Or Why You Feel the Way You Do” (1929), the first prose book either of them had published (hey, just like we wrote our first book together, “The Big Bang”!). Of course, ours was a true-blue sex manual and theirs was a parody of sex manuals — a hilarious send-up of the new “sexologists” on the scene back then, like Freud and his compatriots. And while ours goes into shameless detail (there’s a chapter on fisting, fer chrisakes), their’s never really gets to the sex at all — and that’s its genius.

Twilight leaving you hanging? Try vampire erotica.

Depending on whom you ask, the lack of sex in the Twilight saga is either the essence of its appeal or its greatest flaw. If you’re squarely in the latter category, then you might want to turn to the new book The Sweetest Kiss: Ravishing Vampire Erotica, edited by D.K. King, to satisfy your blood lust. It contains all the naughty stuff that the Twilight vampires would probably be getting up to if Stephanie Meyer wasn’t so, you know, Mormon. Here’s a taster (sorry…) from one of the stories in the collection, “Red by Any Other Name” by Kathleen Bradean, which combines S&M and power play with vampire lovin’:

Jonathan Littell beats off stiff competition at Bad Sex Awards

Turns out we were wrong in our Roth prediction — this year’s Bad Sex Award ended up going to Jonathan Littell for his novel The Kindly Ones. Other fancy-pants runners up included Paul Theroux, Nick Cave, Amos Oz, and John Banville. The judges said very nice things about Littell’s novel — which was originally published in French — calling it “in part a work of genius.” However, lines such as “I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg” clinched the award for The Kindly Ones. Perhaps it came off better in the original French? The award was presented at the — chortle chortle — In & Out (Naval & Military) Club in St James’s Square, London, where 400 guests congratulated themselves on being both highbrow and hilarious on the topic of sex.

In the winning passage (below), Littell is inspired by ancient mythology, to somewhat disastrous results.

Britain’s Bad Sex Award pits Philip Roth against Nick Cave

photo via the Los Angeles Times

If there’s one thing the Brits are good at, it’s laughing about sex, whether it’s lowbrow, bum-pinching humor — paging Benny Hill — or the highbrow upper echelons of London’s literary society. The cool kids in the latter category are definitely at the Literary Review magazine, with their annual Bad Sex Awards. The announcement of the selections each year leads to a flurry of bad-pun headlines in the British press — “stiff competition” being a favorite phrase (Benny Hill would be proud!). Past nominees have included such heavy hitters as Gabriel García Márquez, Norman Mailer and Salman Rushdie. This year’s shortlist is no different, including John Banville, Paul Theroux, singer-turned-writer Nick Cave, and Philip Roth. The only surprise with Roth is that it took him this long to make the cut.

Kanye West glows in the dark

Love him or hate him, one thing is for certain: you’ve talked about Kanye West this year. He’s the arrogant buffoon who bullied a teen girl in front of millions. He’s the rap star who at the top of his game turned his back on hip-hop’s school of thought and made a techno-pop album where he sings. He’s remarkably annoying.

Penguins continue to wage war on family values

photo by Paul_Mannix Guess which book, according to the American Library Association, is the title most often requested to be removed from schools and libraries in the U.S.? Give up? For the third year in a row, it’s And Tango Makes Three, which is a guide to building your own bomb while smoking crack and attending [...]

How to build business sustainability from your cubicle: Tim Sander’s Saving the World at Work

What were you thinking about on September 16, 2008? Green business ideas probably weren’t at the top of the list… September 15 was the day that Lehman Brothers went belly up, and you were probably more focused on your portfolio and savings. As such, Tim Sanders’ book Saving the World at Work (released on — you guessed it — September 16) got buried under talk of a second Great Depression.

Sanders and publisher Doubleday decided to give the book another go, and relaunched it on September 16th of this year. I’m glad they did: while the title led me to believe I was going to be reading another “how to” book on greening the workplace (which is not a bad thing), Sanders goes well beyond tips on saving paper and electricity.