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He turns to a staffer and asks, “did you guys know about this?” (They did.) Then he gave a great quote, a classic let-them-eat-cake sentiment which, according to Lyle, ended up on Tom Ammiano’s mayoral campaign flyers. The other legendary \u003ci>Turd-Filled Donut\u003c/i> article was a “scavenger hunt for beer.” For those with the patience to go looking and solve all the clues, a six-pack of Tecate hidden in a floating suitcase tied to a pier was the reward. (The prize was found in two weeks.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the \u003ci>TFD\u003c/i> came to an end, Lyle began publishing \u003ci>SCAM\u003c/i>. Begun as a way to disseminate petty larceny tactics, \u003ci>SCAM\u003c/i> quickly evolved into a firsthand document of struggling to survive at the margins of dot-com and dot-bomb San Francisco. (See also Rebecca Solnit’s book \u003cb>Hollow City\u003c/b> and the documentary \u003cb>Boom: The Sound Of Eviction\u003c/b> for other dispatches from those times.) 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It was a destination that could only be reached after too much fluorescent light and coffee and donuts. Or heroin and meth and box wine. I made it to that lost continent that night for the first time, when “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra came on the old Hunt’s jukebox. Suddenly, all the sleeping men in the shop lifted their heads off the table to sing along…” He takes this metaphor of the mythical 25th hour and accompanies the reader on a tour of the old mission, detailing the wars between police and young Latino men that have been going on in and around Hunt’s since the 1970s. Ssee also “Elegy For The Old Hunt’s,” a poem by Bucky Sinister, about a guy who gets his heart stolen and has to go to the donut shop to buy it back.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as astonishing is “949 Market,” Lyle’s record of a few magical months spent squatting in a huge boarded-up complex of buildings on Market Street. After years and years of protests and fights, Erick Lyle and his regular cohort (muralist Zara Thustra, longtime friend and fellow musician Ivy, and others) decided to make a space dedicated to to “What we’re for, not what we’re against.” “I’m just saying that I’m tired of being expected to self-identify as someone under attack, someone who is powerless and who is being forced out. We wanted to do shows that asked, ‘What do we WANT the city to look like? How can we make it happen? If we really had all the space everyone says they need to do stuff, what exactly WOULD we do with it?’ We wanted to do shows that remind people of the power that they actually DO have.” When they broke in and commandeered the building in the summer of 2001, it had been vacant for twelve years. They painted huge murals, hosted music events and cooked food for a free open-to-everyone cafe. They made the most of their time there, until the day that Lyle was awoken by the cops and led away in handcuffs, in his underwear. As of April 2008, 949 Market still stands vacant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On The Lower Frequencies\u003c/b> is not a perfect book, by any means. I’m baffled by Soft Skull’s decision not to mention San Francisco anywhere on the front or back cover, even though nearly every page deals with the arcana of City politics. Certain passages are repetitive, covering the same material but written at different times. A little more troubling is Erick Lyle’s tendency to view a life of extreme poverty through rose-colored glasses. One could get the sense that the only downside to being homeless and drug-addicted is getting hassled by “Irish cops.” He doesn’t address the fact that many of the city’s homeless end up on the streets as the result of addiction and mental illness, and wouldn’t be living that way if they had any other choice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the pain and degradation of life on the street is something that gets discussed in the media fairly often. What never gets discussed is the part of that life that Erick Lyle revels in, the beauty and grace, the moments of overwhelming kindness and surprising poetry. “I want to walk down the street and ponder the layers of history and the lives that came before…And, late at night, I like to think that somewhere out in those streets and alleys, the tunnels and doorways, and sleepless hotel walls, there is an idea that might save us all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope he’s right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drop by Erick Lyle’s book release party for \u003cb>On the Lower Frequencies\u003c/b> Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 6pm, Music at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street, San Francisco, PH: 415.626.2060. \u003ca href=\"http://www.counterpulse.org/calendar.shtml\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Get full details\u003c/a> (at counterpulse.org).\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Most Bay Area residents will only ever encounter the underground world of the traveling punk in one way. When visiting San Francisco’s Haight Street or Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, you will likely step over at least one group of unwashed kids in black hoodies, usually with a dog, usually holding up a snarky cardboard sign requesting change for beer or a bus ticket. Most of Good Citizen America takes a brief glance at these kids and sees only urban blight. On the flipside, a recent \u003ci>Harper’s\u003c/i> magazine article by Matthew Power, “Mississippi Drift: River Vagrants In The Age of Wal-Mart” followed a group of punks on an abortive raft trip down the Mississippi. Many romantic references to Huck Finn are made therein. An article I vaguely remember reading when I was fourteen, about squatters in New York’s Alphabet City, made the kids seem like crafty urchins from a fairy tale. I was about ready to hop a freight and go find them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Romance and demonization aside, hidden from view is a thriving, fascinating, off-the-grid culture, and as San Franciscans we live in the middle of it without even knowing. All across America are young people living and eating where they can: scrounging free food from dumpsters, squatting in abandoned buildings, riding freight trains, and doing their best to avoid jail time for graffiti, open containers, shoplifting, trespassing. Done partly out of necessity and partly by choice, the Scam Punk life is all about gleaning a living off the ragged edges of capitalism. Starting in the mid-1990’s, Erick Lyle, calling himself “Iggy Scam,” documented the San Francisco branch of this scene. His illegally xeroxed communiqués from the Scam Punk underground have recently been collected into an honest-to-god book from Soft Skull Press. \u003cb>On The Lower Frequencies\u003c/b> had me so captivated that some strangers in a cafe, noting my completely absorbed state, came over to ask me what it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Erick Lyle/Iggy Scam has produced and written most of the content for two publications. The first was the \u003ci>Turd-Filled Donut\u003c/i>, a free paper distributed via a commandeered corner box, which documented daily life in and around the SROs of Sixth street, where Lyle was living on public assistance at the time. Some favorite articles from the \u003ci>TFD\u003c/i>, (which was popular among punks, other homeless, and outreach workers alike) are reproduced here. One is a fairly astonishing Q and A with then-mayor Willie Brown. When told that food stamps aren’t valid for precooked meals but SROs have no kitchens, Brown expresses ignorance and shock. He turns to a staffer and asks, “did you guys know about this?” (They did.) Then he gave a great quote, a classic let-them-eat-cake sentiment which, according to Lyle, ended up on Tom Ammiano’s mayoral campaign flyers. The other legendary \u003ci>Turd-Filled Donut\u003c/i> article was a “scavenger hunt for beer.” For those with the patience to go looking and solve all the clues, a six-pack of Tecate hidden in a floating suitcase tied to a pier was the reward. (The prize was found in two weeks.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the \u003ci>TFD\u003c/i> came to an end, Lyle began publishing \u003ci>SCAM\u003c/i>. Begun as a way to disseminate petty larceny tactics, \u003ci>SCAM\u003c/i> quickly evolved into a firsthand document of struggling to survive at the margins of dot-com and dot-bomb San Francisco. (See also Rebecca Solnit’s book \u003cb>Hollow City\u003c/b> and the documentary \u003cb>Boom: The Sound Of Eviction\u003c/b> for other dispatches from those times.) Eviction fights, protest marches, neighborhood meetings: Lyle was there for it all. Know those red and green paint blotches that appeared on the side of Mission Street’s Bay View Bank building, after all its tenants were evicted to make room from Bigstep.com, a startup that went kaput in less than six months? You can thank Lyle and a couple friends, who shot paint-filled balloons from a rooftop across the street. The dot-com crash was a fruitful time for the punks: so many abandoned lofts to squat in, so much material excess abandoned. Lyle even got a temporary job at a recyclery, sorting office supplies left behind by disgraced accounting firm Arthur Andersen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On The Lower Frequencies\u003c/b> is worth the cover price simply for two of its longer pieces, each of which documents an aspect of San Francisco history you will never find elsewhere. “Hunt’s Donuts: The Epicenter Of Crime” began as a stapled pamphlet, SCAM number five and a half (I bought a copy in a comic book store several years ago, and it’s now a prized addition to my zine collection). Hunt’s, at the corner of 20th and Mission, best known for its mystifying “OPEN 25 HOURS” sign, ended its days as a notorious bazaar for stolen goods and as the dividing line between rival gang territories. A pharmacy now stands in its place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyle writes, “In long nights at Hunt’s over the years I would, however, come to see that the 25th hour was not a time, but a PLACE. It was a destination that could only be reached after too much fluorescent light and coffee and donuts. Or heroin and meth and box wine. I made it to that lost continent that night for the first time, when “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra came on the old Hunt’s jukebox. Suddenly, all the sleeping men in the shop lifted their heads off the table to sing along…” He takes this metaphor of the mythical 25th hour and accompanies the reader on a tour of the old mission, detailing the wars between police and young Latino men that have been going on in and around Hunt’s since the 1970s. Ssee also “Elegy For The Old Hunt’s,” a poem by Bucky Sinister, about a guy who gets his heart stolen and has to go to the donut shop to buy it back.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as astonishing is “949 Market,” Lyle’s record of a few magical months spent squatting in a huge boarded-up complex of buildings on Market Street. After years and years of protests and fights, Erick Lyle and his regular cohort (muralist Zara Thustra, longtime friend and fellow musician Ivy, and others) decided to make a space dedicated to to “What we’re for, not what we’re against.” “I’m just saying that I’m tired of being expected to self-identify as someone under attack, someone who is powerless and who is being forced out. We wanted to do shows that asked, ‘What do we WANT the city to look like? How can we make it happen? If we really had all the space everyone says they need to do stuff, what exactly WOULD we do with it?’ We wanted to do shows that remind people of the power that they actually DO have.” When they broke in and commandeered the building in the summer of 2001, it had been vacant for twelve years. They painted huge murals, hosted music events and cooked food for a free open-to-everyone cafe. They made the most of their time there, until the day that Lyle was awoken by the cops and led away in handcuffs, in his underwear. As of April 2008, 949 Market still stands vacant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On The Lower Frequencies\u003c/b> is not a perfect book, by any means. I’m baffled by Soft Skull’s decision not to mention San Francisco anywhere on the front or back cover, even though nearly every page deals with the arcana of City politics. Certain passages are repetitive, covering the same material but written at different times. A little more troubling is Erick Lyle’s tendency to view a life of extreme poverty through rose-colored glasses. One could get the sense that the only downside to being homeless and drug-addicted is getting hassled by “Irish cops.” He doesn’t address the fact that many of the city’s homeless end up on the streets as the result of addiction and mental illness, and wouldn’t be living that way if they had any other choice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the pain and degradation of life on the street is something that gets discussed in the media fairly often. What never gets discussed is the part of that life that Erick Lyle revels in, the beauty and grace, the moments of overwhelming kindness and surprising poetry. “I want to walk down the street and ponder the layers of history and the lives that came before…And, late at night, I like to think that somewhere out in those streets and alleys, the tunnels and doorways, and sleepless hotel walls, there is an idea that might save us all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope he’s right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drop by Erick Lyle’s book release party for \u003cb>On the Lower Frequencies\u003c/b> Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 6pm, Music at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street, San Francisco, PH: 415.626.2060. \u003ca href=\"http://www.counterpulse.org/calendar.shtml\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Get full details\u003c/a> (at counterpulse.org).\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Ripped from today’s headlines, \u003cb>Reunion\u003c/b> is playwright Kenn Rabin’s story of a convicted sex offender, recently released from prison, who finds a new home with Deb, a woman determined to stand up for his rights and live down her own past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Reunion\u003c/b> premiered at the 8th Annual Best of PlayGround Festival in San Francisco on June 12, 2004.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cast:\u003c/b>\u003cbr>Deb: Delia MacDougall\u003cbr>Gillette: Eric Fraisher Hayes\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Directed by Jim Kleinmann and presented by \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/places/profile.jsp?id=6266\">PlayGround\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>As a child, I learned to conceal my love of fantasy. Reading it was apparently a geeky pastime, and other kids didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm for talking animals and magical forests. These days, it’s a very different story, with pop culture tropes like cute robots and unicorns, artists like Bjork, and a slew of mainstream movie adaptations following in the vastly successful footsteps of \u003cb>Lord of the Rings\u003c/b>. Having cast off my mantle of fantasy shame, I can proudly acknowledge that my literary diet of fairy tales, young adult mysteries like \u003cb>The Westing Game\u003c/b>, and fantasies like \u003cb>The Dark Is Rising\u003c/b> prepared me well to appreciate the half-lit pleasures of \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b>, the lyrical first full-length novel by author Jesse Ball.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A dreamlike literary thriller, \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b> plunges readers into a dubious reality that seems to have been distilled from the burdens and escapist tendencies of our modern society. Elements of the fantastic and of the absurd pepper the narrative, which concerns one week in the life of James Sim, who stumbles across a mysterious conspiracy that may or may not threaten a doubting nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b> gets going as James Sim is taking his Sunday walk and encounters a dying man in a park, who tells him the desperate details of a conspiracy unfolding on the lawn of the nearby White House. Sim has been trained as a mnemonist, able to remember in detail everything he sees, which comes in handy as he investigates the dying man’s story. The novel follows a common plot outline from thrillers of decades past: A bewildered protagonist meets a mysterious and fetching young woman. The young woman turns out to be the daughter of the man who is the powerful, shadowy figure at the center of a mysterious conspiracy carried out by an intimate circle of male colleagues. The protagonist must deal with a steady stream of secret notes, numerous lies and half-truths, and the occasional death as he fumbles his way towards an ambiguous truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sim’s character is developed at a leisurely pace, introduced as a pondering sort of soul. Left a largely blank canvass, he emerges as a somewhat naïve figure who makes a few errors in judgment, forcing the reader to cringe slightly, but also to identify with him. A series of vignettes illuminates some hazy and emotional episodes from Sim’s childhood. Upon re-reading the book, I realized just how much rumination on childhood is inserted into a generally fast-moving plot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A series of suicides taking place on the lawn of the White House is the only reference that places \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b> in the United States or in any other modern nation. Very soon, Sim arrives at a wealthy estate that is removed from the routines of normal, daily life, where the inhabitants abide by a set of elaborate rules governing conversation, dress, and even naming conventions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the series of dreamlike scenes that intersperse the main narrative remove us from modern society as Sim’s childhood is presented in an otherworldly light. These scenes, in which Sim talks with his best friend, an invisible talking owl, are hardly a whimsical throwaway, as the author develops a melancholic theme on childhood and its relationship to truth and clarity to complement and interact with the main narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Author Jesse Ball’s lyric yet spare style brings a finely balanced melancholic emotion to the journey of James Sim, reminiscent of Murukami’s finest works (at least in the English translations). A tension quietly builds as Sim enters the eerie country house and encounters a gently bizarre landscape of characters who share names but not their meals, quarters but not a social life. Even though very little explanation is given, even less might be desirable, leaving the reader to independently interpret the themes of lies and responsibility, childhood and honesty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many have remarked on Ball’s genre subversion of the thriller, I was equally struck by how organically he integrates elements of children’s fantasy into \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b>. The nonsensical wordplay of Lewis Carroll and the dimly-lit foreboding of Susan Cooper are as strongly evoked as the bewildering complexity of Thomas Pynchon. \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b> is almost pitch perfect in technique, and approaches greatness in substance. I expect Ball will only continue to develop his talents, fine-tuning his unique amalgamation of plot and style in the forthcoming \u003cb>World’s Fair 7 June 1978\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As a child, I learned to conceal my love of fantasy. Reading it was apparently a geeky pastime, and other kids didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm for talking animals and magical forests. These days, it’s a very different story, with pop culture tropes like cute robots and unicorns, artists like Bjork, and a slew of mainstream movie adaptations following in the vastly successful footsteps of \u003cb>Lord of the Rings\u003c/b>. Having cast off my mantle of fantasy shame, I can proudly acknowledge that my literary diet of fairy tales, young adult mysteries like \u003cb>The Westing Game\u003c/b>, and fantasies like \u003cb>The Dark Is Rising\u003c/b> prepared me well to appreciate the half-lit pleasures of \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b>, the lyrical first full-length novel by author Jesse Ball.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A dreamlike literary thriller, \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b> plunges readers into a dubious reality that seems to have been distilled from the burdens and escapist tendencies of our modern society. Elements of the fantastic and of the absurd pepper the narrative, which concerns one week in the life of James Sim, who stumbles across a mysterious conspiracy that may or may not threaten a doubting nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b> gets going as James Sim is taking his Sunday walk and encounters a dying man in a park, who tells him the desperate details of a conspiracy unfolding on the lawn of the nearby White House. Sim has been trained as a mnemonist, able to remember in detail everything he sees, which comes in handy as he investigates the dying man’s story. The novel follows a common plot outline from thrillers of decades past: A bewildered protagonist meets a mysterious and fetching young woman. The young woman turns out to be the daughter of the man who is the powerful, shadowy figure at the center of a mysterious conspiracy carried out by an intimate circle of male colleagues. The protagonist must deal with a steady stream of secret notes, numerous lies and half-truths, and the occasional death as he fumbles his way towards an ambiguous truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sim’s character is developed at a leisurely pace, introduced as a pondering sort of soul. Left a largely blank canvass, he emerges as a somewhat naïve figure who makes a few errors in judgment, forcing the reader to cringe slightly, but also to identify with him. A series of vignettes illuminates some hazy and emotional episodes from Sim’s childhood. Upon re-reading the book, I realized just how much rumination on childhood is inserted into a generally fast-moving plot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A series of suicides taking place on the lawn of the White House is the only reference that places \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b> in the United States or in any other modern nation. Very soon, Sim arrives at a wealthy estate that is removed from the routines of normal, daily life, where the inhabitants abide by a set of elaborate rules governing conversation, dress, and even naming conventions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the series of dreamlike scenes that intersperse the main narrative remove us from modern society as Sim’s childhood is presented in an otherworldly light. These scenes, in which Sim talks with his best friend, an invisible talking owl, are hardly a whimsical throwaway, as the author develops a melancholic theme on childhood and its relationship to truth and clarity to complement and interact with the main narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Author Jesse Ball’s lyric yet spare style brings a finely balanced melancholic emotion to the journey of James Sim, reminiscent of Murukami’s finest works (at least in the English translations). A tension quietly builds as Sim enters the eerie country house and encounters a gently bizarre landscape of characters who share names but not their meals, quarters but not a social life. Even though very little explanation is given, even less might be desirable, leaving the reader to independently interpret the themes of lies and responsibility, childhood and honesty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many have remarked on Ball’s genre subversion of the thriller, I was equally struck by how organically he integrates elements of children’s fantasy into \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b>. The nonsensical wordplay of Lewis Carroll and the dimly-lit foreboding of Susan Cooper are as strongly evoked as the bewildering complexity of Thomas Pynchon. \u003cb>Samedi the Deafness\u003c/b> is almost pitch perfect in technique, and approaches greatness in substance. I expect Ball will only continue to develop his talents, fine-tuning his unique amalgamation of plot and style in the forthcoming \u003cb>World’s Fair 7 June 1978\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Last year, readers of the web magazine \u003ca href=\"http://www.themorningnews.org/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Morning News\u003c/a> submitted their favorite fiction titles from 2007. The top 16 were selected to compete in the site’s fourth annual running of the books, better known as the \u003cb>Tournament of Books\u003c/b>. It started a few weeks back with a crowded field, packed with well-known favorites and dark horse contenders. In each “match” a single judge read both books, then picked a favorite to advance to the next round. \u003cb>ToB\u003c/b> ‘commissioners’ weighed in from the ‘sidelines’ and an informal straw poll allowed the unwashed masses to have their say. There were brackets and even betting (for charity). It’s no accident they do this during March Madness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As always, there were some surprises. Marianne Wiggins’ \u003cb>The Shadow Catcher\u003c/b> made it all the way to the semi-finals, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thenwecametotheend.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Then We Came To An End\u003c/a> took out the National Book Award-winner, and judge, \u003ca href=\"http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/judges.php%22\" target=\"offsite\">Elizabeth Kiem\u003c/a> dismissed Roberto Bolaño’s \u003cb>The Savage Detectives\u003c/b> in just a couple sentences. That sent judge and \u003ca href=\"http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Elegant Variation\u003c/a> blogger, Mark Sarvas, into a state, and caused him to drop Vendela Vida’s \u003cb>Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name\u003c/b> (which Kiem had preferred over BolaBolañoo) the very next round.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether you agree with any of these calls is kind of beside the point. Kiem’s comments on why she chose Vida over Bolaño (“[T]hese days, I?m all about immediate gratification and simple pleasures”) really get to the heart of what makes the \u003cb>ToB\u003c/b> worth following. Bolaño’s novel is a sprawling, exhilarating read, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and certainly nobody’s idea of a “simple pleasure.” In any other award horse race, an imposing monolith like \u003cb>The Savage Detectives\u003c/b> would probably run the table, because the group-think of awards committees tends to gravitate toward gravitas. Remember how PISSED people were with that 2004 National Book Awards shortlist? There’s an expectation that the “big” awards are somehow supposed to judge a book’s “importance.” But what’s enjoyable about following the \u003cb>ToB\u003c/b> is that importance is one criterion among many others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another innovative wrinkle of the TOB is that it allows the peanut gallery to pipe up at exactly the right moment. In any other competition on earth, the battle-scarred semi-final victors (\u003cb>Then We Came to the End\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao\u003c/b>) would saunter into their championship match. But no, the \u003cb>Tournament of Books\u003c/b> has its Zombie round, in which two reader-favorites are resurrected and pitted against the semi-final winners. That means an undefeated book can be unseated in the final moments of the competition, which happened with Tom McCarthy’s \u003cb>Remainder\u003c/b> coming back from the dead to defeat the collective “We” of Ferris’s novel. Diaz still has to face a resurrected Bolaño (what a match-up!) before the final match next week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cb>ToB\u003c/b> has a bit of fun with the inherent absurdity of literary awards, picking one book over another is always going to be an apples, oranges, and personal taste proposition. Instead of holding the judging behind closed doors in a smoke-filled room, why not make a spectacle of such an absurd process? This talk of public spectacles and smoke-filled rooms begs the question: why don’t the presidential primaries work more like the \u003cb>ToB\u003c/b>? Maybe \u003ca href=\"http://www.atomfilms.com/2008/kung_fu_election/index.jsp\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Kung Fu Election\u003c/a> wasn’t so out of left field. Well, perhaps not, since it seems like the democratic side is already stuck in its own protracted “zombie” round. In any case, my attention is wandering. What’s great about the \u003cb>ToB\u003c/b> is that it gets people talking, and reading, and arguing, and hopefully reading some more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final round is today, March 31, 2008. Visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Morning News\u003c/a> to find out what happens next.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>I have been ruined by reading. And if you are bothering to read this, you probably have, too. Are you miserable when stuck somewhere, like on a train or an airplane, without a book? Does the idea that our nation is full of non-readers fill you with nameless dread? Do you have obsessive habits that dictate how you select and care for your reading material? Although the culture loves to crow that reading is good for you –“fun-damental,” in fact — let’s face it, a serious reading habit can also be more than a little creepy. This is the thesis of Mikita Brottman’s hilarious, tongue-in-cheek “indictment,” \u003cb>The Solitary Vice: Against Reading\u003c/b>. In making her argument that being an obsessive reader makes one socially awkward, she holds herself up as an enthusiastic, unapologetic Exhibit A.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book’s title comes from a Victorian euphemism for masturbation. Reading, Brottman argues, has more in common with masturbation than with any other leisure activity that humans routinely engage in. Think about it. People often tell half-truths or outright lies about how often, and what, they like to read. The act of reading absorbs your full attention, and cannot really include another person (two people could read side by side, and often do, but you’re not really sharing the experience.) Usually, it’s an occasional diversion, a pleasant relaxing activity. But for some people reading can become a lifelong, compulsive — albeit highly enjoyable — addiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obviously, Mikita Brottman isn’t actually AGAINST reading. She wouldn’t be a writer and Oxford-educated English professor if she was. But she does encourage us to take a few steps back and be more realistic in what we expect an avid reading habit to do for us. There’s no solid evidence, she says, that reading a lot of books will make you a smarter, better, or more interesting person. “Yes, books can take you to wonderful places, but they can also leave you stranded there, alienated and unemployable, lonely and classless, isolated from other human beings, even from your own memory, your own experience of yourself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sounds pretty harsh. But not so harsh in the context of Brottman’s own life. She recounts a lot of cringe-worthy anecdotes from her 1970’s Yorkshire adolescence, a time when she spent so much time in the attic reading Victorian romances that she has stronger memories of story plotlines than of the events in her own life. Brottman contends that there’s something about the act of reading, specifically, that caused her dreamy isolation — although she sounds pretty similar to kids obsessed with \u003cb>World Of Warcraft\u003c/b>, or the \u003cb>Rocky Horror Picture Show\u003c/b>, or any activity in which the lonely and the shy get to pretend to be someone else for a while. At least those kinds of activities involve a shared experience with other people. When you read a book, you can only read it alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was almost ready to dismiss Mikita Brottman as a weirdo. But then she hooked me in with Chapter 2: “In the Stacks,” which can only be described as Library Porn. The Bodleian Library at Oxford is part of the UK’s “library of legal deposit,” meaning it houses a large percentage of all the books ever published in Britain. The stacks are “eleven stories deep, connected by underground passageways. The process of retrieving a book, like some occult ritual…began with the librarian putting a copy of your order slip in a sealed tube and sending it down a pressurized vacuum chute to the basement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brottman recounts tales of sex and death inside libraries, and stories of impoverished intellectuals evading detection and living among the shelves. “I knew a graduate student at Oxford, a philosopher who…lived in his library carrel for over a month, peeing into an empty milk carton…” (Whoa.) My favorite part of the book comes later in that chapter, when she shares the responses from a survey she sent to friends, asking them the details of their reading habits. When she asked if people ever dog-eared or wrote notes in books, she got responses like “I’d seriously punch someone who dog-eared my books;” and “Dog-earing…is analogous to twisting the arm of a child.” How people organize and catalog their libraries and how they decide what to read next really does have a whiff of religious practice, or maybe mental illness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second half of the book is where Brottman lost me. She veers away from the central premise and dives into long analyses of her favorite genres of book, all of them allegedly trashy and bad for you. She dedicates a chapter each to serial killer true crime books, Hollywood tell-alls, gossipy author biographies, and psychiatric case studies. Although you might learn more than you ever wanted to know about the Yorkshire Ripper, or Philip Roth’s divorces, the main point about human reading habits kind of falls by the wayside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And though I’m aware that Counterpoint (the book’s publisher) is a small indie publishing house without a lot of money to throw around, they’d be well served by setting aside a little cash to hire a professional graphic designer. My enjoyment was marred by odd margins and badly reproduced photographs (some of them so dark or so low-res and pixillated that you can’t tell what the picture is supposed to be.) That, plus the inclusion of a bunch of amateurish drawings in a dozen jarring styles made the book look confusing — until I read the acknowledgments, wherein Brottman thanks an illustration class at the Maryland Institute College Of Art, where she teaches, for all their help with the book — a generous gesture, but a really bad idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brottman wavers a bit, but her point is made. When you really start to look at it, the behavior of the avid reader appears more and more insane. Why, for example, do people pretend to have read certain books when they haven’t? (It’s such a widespread phenomenon that a book called \u003cb>How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read\u003c/b> is currently a bestseller.) “You wouldn’t pretend to know your way around Chicago if you haven’t been there,” Brottman points out. Her recommendation for those of us ruined by reading is pure sacrilege — “Don’t give in to your prejudices; don’t read books just because you feel you “ought to,” because they’ll be “good for you;” do it because you can’t help yourself.” In other words, stop pretending that reading is a noble pursuit, and just read what you want, when you want. As a hopeless book addict and pusher, I couldn’t agree more.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I have been ruined by reading. And if you are bothering to read this, you probably have, too. Are you miserable when stuck somewhere, like on a train or an airplane, without a book? Does the idea that our nation is full of non-readers fill you with nameless dread? Do you have obsessive habits that dictate how you select and care for your reading material? Although the culture loves to crow that reading is good for you –“fun-damental,” in fact — let’s face it, a serious reading habit can also be more than a little creepy. This is the thesis of Mikita Brottman’s hilarious, tongue-in-cheek “indictment,” \u003cb>The Solitary Vice: Against Reading\u003c/b>. In making her argument that being an obsessive reader makes one socially awkward, she holds herself up as an enthusiastic, unapologetic Exhibit A.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book’s title comes from a Victorian euphemism for masturbation. Reading, Brottman argues, has more in common with masturbation than with any other leisure activity that humans routinely engage in. Think about it. People often tell half-truths or outright lies about how often, and what, they like to read. The act of reading absorbs your full attention, and cannot really include another person (two people could read side by side, and often do, but you’re not really sharing the experience.) Usually, it’s an occasional diversion, a pleasant relaxing activity. But for some people reading can become a lifelong, compulsive — albeit highly enjoyable — addiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obviously, Mikita Brottman isn’t actually AGAINST reading. She wouldn’t be a writer and Oxford-educated English professor if she was. But she does encourage us to take a few steps back and be more realistic in what we expect an avid reading habit to do for us. There’s no solid evidence, she says, that reading a lot of books will make you a smarter, better, or more interesting person. “Yes, books can take you to wonderful places, but they can also leave you stranded there, alienated and unemployable, lonely and classless, isolated from other human beings, even from your own memory, your own experience of yourself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sounds pretty harsh. But not so harsh in the context of Brottman’s own life. She recounts a lot of cringe-worthy anecdotes from her 1970’s Yorkshire adolescence, a time when she spent so much time in the attic reading Victorian romances that she has stronger memories of story plotlines than of the events in her own life. Brottman contends that there’s something about the act of reading, specifically, that caused her dreamy isolation — although she sounds pretty similar to kids obsessed with \u003cb>World Of Warcraft\u003c/b>, or the \u003cb>Rocky Horror Picture Show\u003c/b>, or any activity in which the lonely and the shy get to pretend to be someone else for a while. At least those kinds of activities involve a shared experience with other people. When you read a book, you can only read it alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was almost ready to dismiss Mikita Brottman as a weirdo. But then she hooked me in with Chapter 2: “In the Stacks,” which can only be described as Library Porn. The Bodleian Library at Oxford is part of the UK’s “library of legal deposit,” meaning it houses a large percentage of all the books ever published in Britain. The stacks are “eleven stories deep, connected by underground passageways. The process of retrieving a book, like some occult ritual…began with the librarian putting a copy of your order slip in a sealed tube and sending it down a pressurized vacuum chute to the basement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brottman recounts tales of sex and death inside libraries, and stories of impoverished intellectuals evading detection and living among the shelves. “I knew a graduate student at Oxford, a philosopher who…lived in his library carrel for over a month, peeing into an empty milk carton…” (Whoa.) My favorite part of the book comes later in that chapter, when she shares the responses from a survey she sent to friends, asking them the details of their reading habits. When she asked if people ever dog-eared or wrote notes in books, she got responses like “I’d seriously punch someone who dog-eared my books;” and “Dog-earing…is analogous to twisting the arm of a child.” How people organize and catalog their libraries and how they decide what to read next really does have a whiff of religious practice, or maybe mental illness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second half of the book is where Brottman lost me. She veers away from the central premise and dives into long analyses of her favorite genres of book, all of them allegedly trashy and bad for you. She dedicates a chapter each to serial killer true crime books, Hollywood tell-alls, gossipy author biographies, and psychiatric case studies. Although you might learn more than you ever wanted to know about the Yorkshire Ripper, or Philip Roth’s divorces, the main point about human reading habits kind of falls by the wayside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And though I’m aware that Counterpoint (the book’s publisher) is a small indie publishing house without a lot of money to throw around, they’d be well served by setting aside a little cash to hire a professional graphic designer. My enjoyment was marred by odd margins and badly reproduced photographs (some of them so dark or so low-res and pixillated that you can’t tell what the picture is supposed to be.) That, plus the inclusion of a bunch of amateurish drawings in a dozen jarring styles made the book look confusing — until I read the acknowledgments, wherein Brottman thanks an illustration class at the Maryland Institute College Of Art, where she teaches, for all their help with the book — a generous gesture, but a really bad idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brottman wavers a bit, but her point is made. When you really start to look at it, the behavior of the avid reader appears more and more insane. Why, for example, do people pretend to have read certain books when they haven’t? (It’s such a widespread phenomenon that a book called \u003cb>How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read\u003c/b> is currently a bestseller.) “You wouldn’t pretend to know your way around Chicago if you haven’t been there,” Brottman points out. Her recommendation for those of us ruined by reading is pure sacrilege — “Don’t give in to your prejudices; don’t read books just because you feel you “ought to,” because they’ll be “good for you;” do it because you can’t help yourself.” In other words, stop pretending that reading is a noble pursuit, and just read what you want, when you want. As a hopeless book addict and pusher, I couldn’t agree more.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
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"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"perspectives": {
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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},
"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/reveal",
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"rss": "http://feeds.revealradio.org/revealpodcast"
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