The other thing I’ve done recently is I’ve started a Tumblr blog, entitled Pictures of Food, Daily Outfits, Celebrity Gossip and 10 Productivity Tips!  It is basically an extended joke about the internet generally, and it is also the polar opposite of Accismus.  I think those of you who will find it hilarious are already reading it, but I wanted to let the rest of you know, too, in case you’d like to check it out.

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*Laugh if you want, but I bought that computer for around $400 when I repatriated in spring 2007, expecting it to last me a year until I was employed again and could buy a real one, and instead, it lasted for four years of heavy use with no problems, so, you know.

Following up on my earlier post about Morocco, I am still going, and in fact, am leaving within the week. Turned out the cheapest, easiest option was to fly through London, so my friend R and I are flying out this Saturday night, then flying to Fes Sunday evening, then flying back to London on the 3rd, then home on Saturday the 5th. This trip marks a number of travel firsts for me: it’s the first time I’ve ever traveled anywhere (out of the country) for so short a time (previously, I was in Italy for 2 months and in Asia for 3½); it’s the first time I’ve traveled in winter; and it’s the first time I’ve traveled with anyone. For the first thing, I’m really trying not to be such an American about traveling – I haven’t been out of the country since I got back from Asia in 2006, because I’ve been waiting until the next time I move cities, but now I have decided that I should really try to take a short trip every year, even if I don’t have any money.

I’m mostly worried about the middle of those three concerns – I have no idea at all what to bring. I’m carrying my old pack (which my Dad very sweetly washed for me), but it’s pretty small and can’t hold two weeks worth of clothes, much less two weeks worth of winter clothes. Every other time I’ve traveled, I’ve brought a giant wad of tissue-weight sundresses and a pair of flip-flops.

As to traveling with someone, I think that R and I will travel well together, as we both have the same general philosophy, which is to just buy plane tickets and figure out everything else when we get there. Both of us like to wander around alone, and neither of us are particularly pressured about cramming things in (this weekend, some friends were saying that we have to ride a camel through the desert because it will be our only chance to do that, and both R and I were like, ‘Why would this be our only chance to do that?’). R has expressed some concern about the fact that I am constitutionally unable to speak up if I disagree with something or don’t want to do something, so she’s worried that I’ll tag along with her politely doing things I’m not really interested in. Which, you know, I probably will, but I’ve been doing that since birth, so I don’t see the issue.

I’m mostly just worried about leaving Thomasina for two weeks by herself – she’s going to be so lonely! What if she turns feral? She’s always just on the brink, as it is. My wonderful roommate has agreed to feed her, but I doubt she will spend 30 minutes a night petting Thomasina’s face, like I do. Partly because she actually has a life, and partly because if she gets anywhere near Thomasina, Thomasina will surely bite her. Our impending separation particularly concerns me just now, as we haven’t spent much time together over the past few weeks – I have, very uncharacteristically, been a right social butterfly lately, as it’s January and I’m attempting to combat my seasonal depression the natural way, by faking a manic episode, and meanwhile, Thomasina has been absolutely consumed by her latest project. She has tasked herself with entirely chewing through a 5’x7’ jute rug, which is quite the undertaking for a 2 pound rabbit, and she is pursuing her goal with a dedication and single-mindedness that any of us might envy (above is a photo of Thomasina under my bed, surrounded by the many, many things with which I have provided her for chewing, other than the rug; still, she prefers the rug and I have to respect that). So, we’ve both been busy and a little distant, and I worry she won’t even remember me when I get back.

Anyway!

Naturally, I will blog about my trip here and post photos and everything, so those of you who followed my travel blog but don’t read this one, this is where it will be. But here’s the thing, y’all – I’m not going to post in real-time, because I’m only going for two weeks and I’m not going to spend several hours every other night sitting in an internet cafe, so I’ll post it all when I get back. Sorry, I know that’s not as much fun, but it will be nice to have ready-made content for this blog for awhile. Check back on the 7th or 8th (or, well, 9th).

Speaking of content and the blog, I’ve never done any sort of metapost about this blog, and this seems like as good a time as any. Remember when this blog was consistently funny? Good times. That was back when I started this here thing, in March 2007, which was about a month after I first moved to NYC. So, it’s been up almost four years, but that also includes the several months during which I took the whole blog down entirely because someone I really admire said something mean to me and it made me sad. To date, the blog has nearly 47,000 views, which isn’t that many, and it consistently gets around 30-40 views a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.

At first, I posted something funny about once a week; then, for a long time, I posted something funny twice a week and something topical three times a week; then, I posted nothing for months; then, I posted a lot of very boring short posts about nonsense because I felt like it; and now I post anywhere from weekly to daily about whatever happens to occur to me.

On July 3, 2007, I posted this about the igoogle teahouse fox theme page. The igoogle team found it and emailed it around, which bumped me up in the google rankings, and to date, this is my most viewed post and most of my traffic comes from searches related to the teahouse fox theme.

On August 18, 2010, I posted this poem, and I made WordPress’s Freshly Pressed page, resulting in my highest viewed day (2,408 views) and my most commented post (96 comments). This is my second most-viewed post on the blog.

My third top post is this one, which is not one of my funnier posts by a long shot, but which is the source of a lot of my traffic, because people overwhelmingly come to this blog after searching for various iterations of “how to meet my dream man,” which is a constant source of amusement to me every time I look at my stats. In fact, the very top search that brings people to my blog, ahead of even ‘accismus’ or anything to do with teahouse fox, is “how to meet the man of your dreams.” Which, all I can say about that is, I am so sorry. I have no expertise on this subject at all, and never claimed to. The only thing I might say? Very gently, here in your ear, just us girls together? Is that if this dream man is so very elusive…perhaps he does not really want to be found. Just saying.

My fourth most-viewed post is this one, which people find by googling the Columbia J-school application test. I wrote this post because Columbia used to have this very multiple-choice test up on their site as a sample of what you would have to take as part of your application, but they removed it not long after I posted this and from what I can tell, they no longer require such a thing, probably because they realized how moronic it was.

My fifth top post is this one, because, YOU GUYS, I cannot even TELL you how many people out there are searching for “Kaley Cuoco diet and exercise routine.” Seriously, people, what is the deal? Get yourselves a hobby!

The sixth is this MySpace Quiz bit, which I only mention because, ha, MySpace, what? People still google that?

So, there you have it. When I first started this blog, I would never have believed that I would one day be the top source on the web for finding the man of your dreams, and for information on Kaley Cuoco’s diet and exercise routine, but life takes you places you don’t expect.

I don’t have any grand insights into blogging or anything. To have a successful blog, you need a topic, and obviously, this blog has no topic at all. I didn’t start it to have a successful blog, though – I just wanted to be entertaining on a small scale, and to have something to do with bits I thought up that didn’t really work in a play or a sketch. When I used to blog really regularly and I had a regular following, I used to freak out when I’d post something and get no positive feedback on it. That made me feel really lonely, and was a constant source of stress. But now that I don’t necessarily have a regular following, the occasional random post that gets a lot of compliments is just a happy accident, but I don’t sit around being all, “Oh, God, why can’t I think of anything funny? What if I can’t ever think of anything funny again?” Which is what I used to do when I was actually pursuing comedy out in the real world, and that’s understandable, but that type of stress for a tiny little blog I write for free is just not worth it, and that’s the answer to why this blog doesn’t feature as many humor pieces as it used to: because there’s nothing in it for ME, you ungrateful little shits!

Finally, looking back over my entries, here are some of my favorites over the years that don’t get that many views, and a few I’d forgotten about, but still made me laugh:

• Community Rules for Separate Commons, Communal Living Experiment for Introverts
• Further Excerpts from Susan Sontag’s Journals and Notebooks
• Don’t Give Up On Your Dreams
• At Home with the Woolfs, Part One (If you think you’re missing something on this post, you’re not.  I have no idea why the hell I wrote it, or what it’s about, or why it’s “part one,” but for whatever reason, I still think it’s funny.)
• Elizabeth Bennett’s Missed Connections
• All My Friends Are Turtles:  The Unpublished Journals of April O’Neil
• While I’m At Work, and You Are Home Alone This Summer
• The Inexplicably Furious Mannequins of Macy’s (This actually does get a number of views – strangely, a lot of people Google Macy’s mannequins.)
• I’m a Sucker for Arts
• Norton Recommends Some Updates
• Spring Wardrobe Purge (This post gets some hits, too, mostly from people searching for “how to pee in wrap pants.” Also, wow, how thin am I in these pictures? My face looks huge! This was when I was eating nothing but Clif bars because I was trying to finish a play and the only way I could make myself finish it was by quitting eating altogether, because otherwise, I would spend all the time I was supposed to be writing thinking about what I might have for lunch, so finally, I was like, ‘Well, you’re never having lunch AGAIN, how about that? Now finish your damn work!’ That play turned out to be really awesome, and everyone loved it, but it was never produced because I suddenly decided that I hated the theater and abruptly quit everything and stopped speaking to everyone. It’s possible that I sometimes self-sabotage just the teensiest bit.)
• Am I a Poor Listener, or Should You Just Shut Up:  A Primer for Party Conversation
• Proposed Renovations
• I’b Sig

Anyway, it’s been a great four years, everyone! Thanks for reading!

Ok, so I’ve just noticed something about my writing, both here and other places and  it’s really driving me nuts, but I just don’t know if I can fix it.  I use the word ‘just’ all the time.  Over and over and over.  I mean, it is just everywhere.  And the more I pay attention to it, the more I seem to use it, and I would just quit it except that in a lot of cases, the sentence really seems to require it for…I don’t know, just for phrasing or a pause or a qualification or something, or maybe it’s just such a part of my speech now that I just can’t quit it.  I don’t think I say it that much; I think it’s just in my written speech.  I’m a big ‘like’ talker in real life, which is embarrassing, but which I also can’t really help at this point.

Anyway, sorry about all the justs!  I just can’t help it.  They’re like bedbugs up in here – I didn’t notice them creeping in and now they’re just all over everything.  I’m working on it.

Wells Tower interviewed Barry Hannah (RIP) for the October 2012 Believer, and Hannah says, of teaching writing students:

I tell these students there’s no use in revising something that’s bad.  I believe that, for short stories.  It’s brief, very brief, from four to twelve pages, getting something done.  I don’t believe in rewriting this one goddamned story.  If the first draft is no goddamned good, it’s no good.  It’s stupid to revise it, to me.  The first draft has got to be loaded with most of it.  Does it not?  It can’t just be a shell of what’s going to be.  I think it’s got to be exciting.

That’s refreshing to hear.  I’m a terrible workshop participant, because 9 times out of 10, the only thing I can think to say to people is, “This really doesn’t seem much worth messing with.”  I feel the same way about my own stories.  It’s just that 99 out of 100 stories are so slight.  You have to keep looking for that 100th story; anything else wastes everyone’s time and makes people depressed about the state of fiction.

The writing community has been largely negative about this article by Laura Miller in which she slams Nanowrimo and other efforts to encourage writing, but I pretty much agree with everything she says.

So I’m not worried about all the books that won’t get written if a hundred thousand people with a nagging but unfulfilled ambition to Be a Writer lack the necessary motivation to get the job done. I see no reason to cheer them on. Writers are, in fact, hellishly persistent; they will go on writing despite overwhelming evidence of public indifference and (in many cases) of their own lack of ability or anything especially interesting to say . . . it’s the readers who are fragile, a truly endangered species. They don’t make a big stink about how underappreciated they are; like Tinkerbell or any other disbelieved-in fairy, they just fade away.

There’s already more worthy literature out there than a single person could possibly get through in a lifetime of reading – and also, no one is even reading anything at all, apparently – so the question inevitably arises, why be so insistent about writing more of it?  And the answer for most aspiring writers is, “Because I deserve to have interesting days full of thinking and creative labor rather than boring days full of dull labor, and also, I deserve for other people to pay attention to me.”  To paraphrase Carrie Fisher in When Harry Met Sally, everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor and should be doing something creative, but they can’t all.  I’m not excusing myself from that; I mean, I “write,” too.  What else are you going to do?

But in general, I think writing teachers could afford to be a lot more discouraging.  The ones I’ve had were all incredibly encouraging, and, with very few exceptions, they should not have encouraged what I was writing at the time.  They should have told me to burn it and bury the ashes, and that if I ever had the gall to trot out something similarly lazy, vapid and dishonest for their review, they’d have me expelled.

If you’re not familiar with The Morning News, be sure to look around.  I’ve been a daily reader since 2002, and have posted here about their yearly Tournament of Books, among other things.

1. Gail Collins. The New York Times was long overdue for a female columnist who wasn’t Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins is more than the Times deserves: tart, smart, funny and perceptive, her takes on the issues of the day are both informative and cathartic. I just checked out one of her books, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, but have only read the first chapter so far. I’ll let you know how it is. Also, in addition to her columns, Collins’s conversations with David Brooks are a treat. I have to confess, in the past, I have occasionally liked David Brooks, but he’s been heinous lately, and as his tenure at the Times goes on, he contradicts himself ever more blatantly. I dearly love a good journo fight, and Matt Taibbi (an occasional guilty pleasure for me, I’ll admit – his reportage may be spotty, but sometimes you just need a good, unapologetic rant) has lately been picking Brooks’s columns up in his teeth and shaking them back and forth until their necks snap.

2. The public library. I like to write in my books, dogear them, and read them in the shower, so for years, I insisted on buying books and keeping them in piles along my baseboards. But I don’t make that kind of money these days, and have finally learned to make good use of the public library. Yes, the inability to write in the books is a serious handicap, but otherwise, I am a total library convert. There’s a small branch near my house, and I can order whatever I want through the system to be delivered there, and they notify me by email when my holds are ready. Best of all, you can renew your books on the computer, and as long as nobody puts a hold on them, you can renew them indefinitely (I’ve renewed one 12 times already). And all for not one red cent (not counting city taxes). Beat that, Kindle.

3. Susan Schorn’s McSweeney’s column. I go back and forth on McSweeney’s, and particularly on their columnists. Some are good, some are boring, many have long outlived their original gimmick, good for only a post or two, but weirdly extended. But one of their new columns, Susan Schorn’s meditations on martial arts, self-defense, anger, weakness, and related topics, is fantastic – and not just because I’m into karate lately. I agree with Schorn about everything, and wish she lived next door to me, so that I could bother her all the time (and all of her other humor pieces are great, too). Speaking of karate:

4. Shotokan karate. I have been training at a local dojo since August (I’m currently a yellow belt), and I am obsessed. Fantastic exercise, and a wonderful outlet for pent-up aggression, karate is sport, art form, self-defense training and a study in focus and discipline, all in one. I try to make three classes a week, and, while I still couldn’t beat up a four-year-old, my kiai has deepened from Chihuahua to Rottweiler.

5. Jezebel and The Awl. I am putting these together, because my enjoyment of them is similar. For some reason, when Jezebel debuted, I immediately decided that I didn’t care for it. I can’t remember what about it offended me, because I’ve really been enjoying it lately. In addition to the progressive and feminist news alerts, there are hearty round-ups of celebrity gossip. And while I am not interested enough in celebrity garbage to actually read up on it, I must admit, do I want to know when Brad and Angie finally break it off, or when Lindsay Lohan ODs in a club bathroom, or when somebody has a major weight reversal? Yes! Yes, okay? I do want to know that! I admit it! But I don’t need to know the deets – I just want a headline and a photo, and that’s what Jezebel delivers. Now, The Awl, helmed by former Gawker editor, Choire Sicha (aka the only person who ever wrote for Gawker that I actually liked), is a hilarious, well-written chronicle of all things that would particularly interest…well, Brooklyn dwelling, underemployed pseudo-writers like moi. Plus, it is one of those lovely, rare blogs in which the commenters expand on (and often outshine) the posts. Kinder than Gawker and sharper than The Gothamist, The Awl fits just right.  If I could only read one blog, this would probably be it.

6. Amanda Palmer. The former Dresdan Doll has an awesome solo album. Plus, she’s engaged to Neil Gaiman, and showed up at The Golden Globes with her boobs and her pit hair out. She’s a fucking badass.

7. Small, well-done, original blogs. Tiring of sprawling, massive, constantly updating blogs, I have lately been discovering small, creative, focused sites that do one thing and do it well. Edith Zimmerman writes hilarious very short stories. Tom Oatmeal (who I found through EZ) makes milk come out my nose. And firmuhment is continually brilliant and original – scanned documents that inspire essays, short stories, and humor. I’m not sure if firmuhment is a single author deal or a team effort, but every post has obviously had a lot of work put into it, and I appreciate that.

8. Firefox’s new skins. I spent the lion’s share of my day staring at my browser, so anything that makes it more visually appealing makes me happy. Firefox’s new skins are a small adjustment that, surprisingly, makes a big difference. Currently, I’m enjoying Spring II. Goes well with my igoogle theme.

9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I resisted getting into this back in high school when everyone was super into it, and haven’t gotten into it since, because I didn’t want to consume seven seasons of TV. But my coworker has them all on DVD. Uncle, okay? I’m through six seasons already, and ready to register as an official member of the Joss Whedon fanbase. In addition to the overall awesomeness of the series, I enjoy identifying basic karate moves in the fight choreography.

10. My new phone. After three shameful years of hitchhiking on my parents’ family plan, I finally ponied up and got my own phone plan, and a phone with a full keyboard and a camera. And man, it makes a huge difference! I no longer wince at the sound of a text message arriving: it doesn’t take me a year to peck out a response anymore, and my phone looks cool and is really fun to use. And yesterday, when my brunch coffee came in a giant bowl with no handle, I was able to document it quickly and easily, no forethought required.

11. My rabbit, Thomasina. Thomasina is so freaking adorable!! And I love having a pet! This was a good move. She’s my little pal, and she does hilarious things and entertains me, and she’s cuddly and fun. Right now, for example, I am trying to write, and she is collapsing her little grass hut on top of her head, and making eyes at the rabbit she thinks lives in my closet mirror! OMG, she’s a gas. I won’t work at all today.

Prose loves reading, and this book makes you want to read, even if her devotion to meticulous close reading makes the entire endeavor seem as exhausting as it is exhaustive. Personally, I am not a close reader. I am a frantic reader. While I appreciate Prose’s call to read less and better, I can’t get over feeling like I’m racing the clock. There are only so many books you can get through in a lifetime, and there are an infinite number of books I really want to read. Since graduating from college, I have never once reread a book, which is, of course, a shame. If anyone should feel at leisure to read closely and carefully, it would be me, as I currently have nothing but free time, but still, I read quickly, in gulps. Which, incidentally, is the best way to read non-fiction (or at least, to read non-fiction for informational purposes).

But fiction is about the read itself. Prose says, of reading Chekhov on a long daily bus commute during a particularly dismal period of her life:

Reading Chekhov, I felt not happy, exactly, but as close to happiness as I was likely to come. And it occurred to me that this was the pleasure and mystery of reading, as well as the answer to those who say that books will disappear. For now, books are still the best way of taking great art and its consolations along with us on the bus.

Banks:

A true novelist. . . has no thought of his or her audience. . . . Not when submitting oneself to the discipline and rigor and tradition of the history of the form, which require that one be at all times wholly honest and nonjudgmental and as intelligent as possible – that one be, as Henry James prescribed, a person ‘on whom nothing is lost.’

Prose:

The polemicist, or the theorist, or the strategist would have trouble with the stance that Chekhov identified as basic for the artist. That is, the notion that writers must admit they understand nothing of life, that nothing in this world makes sense, so all a writer can do is to try and describe it.

The second group, while often agreeing with the first, tends to focus more on the revolutionary potential of the written word, and on the absolute indignity and intolerability of censorship. Both groups essentially agree with each other: the job of writers is to mirror what is true, and nothing – no cause or party or regime or nation or event – that impedes this truth-telling can be tolerated. So that when Orhan Pamuk (whose essay was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting) writes about Turkey, he is writing what he sees in the society where he lives. Whether or not he intends to make an overtly political statement (and if his book is to be of any interest, hopefully, making a political statement would not be his purpose in writing it), his work might still be censored by those who don’t agree with or like the reality it reflects.

Pamuk:

Whatever the country, freedom of thought and expression are universal human rights. These freedoms, which modern people long for as much as bread and water, should never be limited by using nationalist sentiment, moral sensitivities, or – worst of all – business or military interests. If many nations outside the West suffer poverty in shame, it is not because they have freedom of expression but because they don’t. . . . Yes, we must be alert to those who denigrate immigrants and minorities for their religion, their ethnic roots, or the oppression that the governments of the countries they’ve left behind have visited on their own people.

But to respect the humanity and religious beliefs of minorities is not to suggest hat we should limit freedom of thought on their behalf. Respect for the rights of religious or ethnic minorities should never be an excuse to violate freedom of speech.

The only form of activism appropriate for writers (when they are acting in the capacity of “writer” rather than, say, that of “citizen”) is witnessing, and it’s pretty much impossible to write anything of merit without witnessing. On that, it seems all these contributors agree.

Gordimer:

The extremity of human experience does not make a writer.

Updike:

To be sure, as a citizen, one votes, attends meetings, subscribes to liberal pieties, pays or withholds taxes, and contributes to charities . . . But as a writer, for me to attempt to expand my artistic scope into all the areas of my human concern, to substitute nobility of purpose for accuracy of execution, would certainly be to forfeit whatever social usefulness I do have.

After twenty-two years, it seemed a little bit coy to still be playing the Canadian card. I felt like the butt of the joke about the proper lady who, when asked if she would have sex with a strange man for a million dollars, allows that yes she would do it. But when asked if she would do the same thing for a can of Schlitz and a plastic sleeve of beer nuts, reels back with an affronted, ‘What do you think I am?’ to which the response is, ‘Madam, we have already established what you are. Now we’re just quibbling about the price.’

On page 7, Barbara Bush the Younger is described (to absolutely no point whatsoever) as “W’s liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter.” Particularly gratuitous, as Rakoff’s real beef is with Barbara, Sr. (page 8: “Stupid fucking cow.”).

Admittedly, on page 8, we do have a derogatory physical description of a man: “The hairy-knuckled, pinkie-ringed lawyer for a Vietnamese fellow behind me….” No mention of the man’s genitals, of course, or sexual appeal or lack thereof, but still, not exactly a flattering comment. But then on page 9, we’re back to women, describing a “Russian woman in her early forties” who has the misfortune to be standing on line nearby:

She wears painted-on acid-wash jeans, white stilettos, and a tight blouse of sheer leopard-print fabric. The sleeves are designed as a series of irregular tatters clinging to her arms, as if she’s just come from tearing the hide off the back of an actual leopard. A really slutty leopard.

It’s safe to assume that leopard was also female.

But here on page 9, we also have our first woman appear without being described physically, or with any tossed-off, irrelevant sexual slurs attached to her person. This is Agent Morales, who interviews Rakoff for citizenship. Then, by page 11, we’re on to Rakoff’s friend, Sarah (who, based on her introduction as “a self-described civics nerd,” I’m assuming is Sarah Vowell), and nobody describes their friends as pointless and/or distasteful vaginas, so we’re in the clear.

And that’s it, for the rest of the book’s 222 pages: no more offensive comments about women, at least not that reached out of the pages and slapped me, like these first ones. In fact, I really enjoyed the book after page 10. The essays were tart, well-written, observant and entertaining. Why the packed in slurs up front?

So, the moral here is: writers and editors (whether male, female, gay, straight or other): when you have your manuscript all ready for publishing, go through at least the first twenty pages or so, with an eye to how you describe or comment on any women mentioned, as contrasted with how you describe or comment on any men. If you note that every, single woman you bring up is described as a slut, a bitch, a stupid bimbo, a nag, or has been physically detailed for no specific reason (ugly, fat, wart-faced, saggy-boobed, clothes too tight, past her prime, sex on legs, etc.), and that every man is described in terms of his personality traits and actions, then think about whether or not you genuinely want half the population to toss you and your book right out at that point. Because not all readers are as patient as I am. A lot of women won’t make it to page 11. And I’d like to think some men wouldn’t either.

I really don’t direct the above rant particularly at David Rakoff. His is only the most recent book I’ve read to follow this off-putting pattern. But really, Don’t Get Too Comfortable is great otherwise. Rakoff is a sharp and articulate social satirist, and his targets aren’t the easy ones. If there is a unifying theme to these essays, I would say it is what we desire and what we buy, and why, and what we tell ourselves about it, with occasional diversions into the weird and often unpleasant things people like to do for fun. He has drawn a bead on class hypocrisy, and conspicuous consumption. He covers foodies, high fashion, fasting, plastic surgery, cryogenics and Puppetry of the Penis. He goes along on a Playboy shoot, attends a midnight scavenger hunt in Manhattan, forages for edible plants in Prospect Park and works as a pool boy at an upscale resort. He waits outside the Today Show, visits Martha Stewart’s crafts department, and shadows the director of the mystifying Log Cabin Republicans.

Fun stuff, all. With the above-mentioned caveat, I’d recommend it.

Lethem was raised by a well-known painter. His mother died when he was 13. He lived in a commune for part of his upbringing. He spent his childhood surrounded by his parents’ Bohemian friends, and went to an arts high school in New York with a bunch of other students who have gone on to be known names. They were raised in an interesting place by interesting people, and taught from a young age that they were bound to be interesting themselves. In the same way as some people are raised in wealth, others are raised in art, and all these writers, playwrights, actors, etc. were to the manor born. There’s nothing wrong with Lethem’s writing or what he’s writing about, and it’s not like he’s never left New York – why, he went to Bennington, then lived in California! – but yet, I was bored by his well-written meditations on the various movies, writers and filmmakers that shaped him, as well as his experiences in a Brooklyn not sufficiently long gone to be so nostalgic about (Lethem was only about 40 when this essay collection was published).

You do not have to live an interesting life in order to be an interesting writer. Perhaps you have to live an interesting life to be an interesting personal essayist, however, or, barring that, at least be really funny. Certainly, you can write great fiction no matter how narrow and dull your circle, and Lethem has mostly been feted for his novels, none of which I’ve read, although I plan to at some point. Reading these essays, however, made me feel like I was sitting in a grad school MFA workshop listening to everyone read essays about being graduate MFA students, and reminiscing fondly about those long-ago days when they were but callow undergrads.

John Leonard in the New York Review of Books:

I’m glad to learn from The Disappointment Artist that Lethem’s father is more interesting than Dylan’s was; that his mother, unlike Dylan’s, didn’t abandon her boy out of narcissism; that Jonathan, unlike Dylan, has siblings. And I am sorry that none of us can fly, besides which we’re opaque. But it is time this gifted writer closed his comic books for good. Superpowers are not what magic realism was about in Bulgakov, Kobo Abe, Salman Rushdie, or the Latin American flying carpets. That Michael Chabon and Paul Auster have gone graphic, that one Jonathan, Lethem, writes on and on about John Ford, while another Jonathan, Franzen, writes on and on about “Peanuts,” even as Rick Moody confides to the Times Book Review that “comics are currently better at the sociology of the intimate gesture than literary fiction is,” may just mean that the slick magazines with the scratch and sniff ads for vodka and opium are willing to pay a bundle for bombast about ephemera.

But all of it makes me itch. Welcome to New Dork! We have been airpopped and multimediated unto inanity and pastiche.