You Can’t Challenge Forward Progress

The very observant among you may have noted the disappearance of one or two events previously scheduled under the convenient heading “Events” elsewhere on this site. For reasons of logistics I have had to withdraw my participation from certain readings that I would otherwise have been delighted to attend. The time machine promised me by a Mr. Wells has not yet moved beyond stage alpha, or aleph (one is regrettably unfamiliar with time machine argot).

Beyond these mundane matters lie even more mundane matters. I’m working on a short review of Lydia Davis’ recent translation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary for a new venture that promises great things: The Los Angeles Review of Books. So new is LARB, I should add, that its website, as I type these words, is laid out in lorem ipsum, which my neighbor’s cat Cicero insists is a corruption of something he? she? originally scratched or spat. The Review is scheduled to launch sometime in April.

Anyone interested enough to have continued reading this far might like to know that I am making good progress on my next novel, but I should warn you that I’m writing it in French, for no particular reason other than that I can. Working title: Mémoires d’outrecuidance. That is a joke. The working title, I mean. Joking. Admirers of Chateaubriand may now mop their brows in relief.

I don’t like to talk much about my film work, mainly because it’s not very interesting, but I see little harm in disclosing the fact that I’m currently working on the script for a talking animal movie. It’s about an animal that can talk. Just like a human. Revolutionary.

I’ll probably post a Guided By Voices story up here in the next several weeks because, you know, give the people what they want. Or something.

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