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No sooner do I leave than Columbia begs me back. A tentative date for a return to B&N is set for mid August. I’ll keep everyone posted. Meanwhile, I have a personal message for James Frey, who’s rumored to be shopping around a young adult sci-fi novel:

I’m willing to give you a chance, Frey, despite the bad rep surrounding A Million Little Pieces. But let me warn you on behalf of all readers the world over. No tricks this time. This is a novel, right? So forget the 15 percent fact/fiction ratio. I’d better not find one shred of reality in this forthcoming title. I mean it. Seriously. One single sentence remotely based on your own life, anyone else’s, or the real world in general, and I’m hunting you down personally for a refund.

To specify: I want no Earth-based life forms or anything conforming to the laws of science as we know them. Write new laws of science, and they’d better be consistent. Gravity shmavity. Everything must be completely made up from scratch. And you don’t get away with giving people bumpy foreheads or pointy ears and calling them an “extra-terrestrial species.”

Michael Bay has purportedly been picked to direct a film or three based on this book, the first of a planned series. I can see that gorilla tanking now. Imagine the last Star Trek movie, except James T. Kirk gets way drunker a lot more often and crashes the starship Enterprise into Vulcan, and that’s how the planet dies. A transformer goes back in time to save the planet but gets distracted by Megan Fox. “Red matter” no longer causes black holes but can be injected into the veins for an immense high.

Today I continue my homage to Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson. If you’re going to plagiarize, do it with style. I also feel that most discussion of the recent death has hit all the wrong notes. So I give you a fine work of prose fit for the occasion. The person we need to eulogize MJ himself is long dead. Anyone recognize this?:

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the mall, and cried incessantly: “I am looking for Michael Jackson! I am looking for Michael Jackson!”

As many of those who did not believe in Michael Jackson were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. “Have you lost him, then?” said one. “Did he lose his way like a child?” said another. “Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated?” Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

“Where has Michael Jackson gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?

What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left?

Are we not dancing through an infinite space? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying the man in the mirror?

Do we not smell anything yet of Michael Jackson’s decomposition? Kings too decompose…How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves?

I will tell you. Carbonated. It works best. Gets out all kinds of stains.

Must we not ourselves undergo it simply to be worthy? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us – for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still travelling – it has not yet reached the ears of fans.

We are all waiting for the words to sink in. And when they do…Oh, will it be ugly. Stock up on canned goods while you can and enjoy the Internet. Barricade your doors, and trust no one.

I was reading a CNN piece on what Michael Jackson’s death did to the Internet, and happened across what I thought was a particularly savage joke:

One Wikipedia prankster wrote that Jackson had been “savagely murdered” by his brother Tito, who had strangled him “with a microphone cord.”

Really? Not even Colbert or Stewart would go for the jugular that quick. The fake wiki’s got me thinking about Jackson’s legacy, so to speak. When JFK died, president jokes died with him. But after 9/11 some of my friends were cracking twin tower jokes within a week. “Hey, there’s still the twin towers in my pants.” How should one have responded? Oh, well that makes me feel better. Looks like our culture has changed a lot.

So should we hold a funeral, wake, or such for Jackson jokes? What about a holiday or vacation? Which ones should we retire? Which ones will stand? Take a look at this article and let me know what you think: Jackson Jokes Stop, for Now.

“Atlanta Magazine’s Teresa Weaver calls the book ‘mesmerizing’ and says the ’story is so gently told, in a setting so beautifully grim, it’s easy to forget this is a debut novel.’” For more talk, go here.

The novel’s officially out. So. Know how, every year, NPR stops their programing to beg for donations? Well, I won’t do that but I will throw up a link to my book page on Amazon: Go straight to my Amazon page. Disregard the Aug 31 date. People have already ordered from the site and received their books.

One more signing in Columbia at the B&N (Forest Drive) this Sat at 2 pm. Anyway, quick thanks to everyone who came to the book launch at if art and the lunch reading at the State Library. Regular blogging will resume shortly.

Wired editor and the author of the forthcoming, Free, Chris Anderson has been drawing fire for lifting passages from Wikipedia and using them in his book. The Virginia Quarterly Review has the story.

Okay, sorry. I didn’t write that, folks. My fault. Let’s try again:

In the course of reading Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion, $26.99), for a review in an upcoming issue of VQR, I have discovered almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources. These instances were identified after a cursory investigation, after I checked by hand several dozen suspect passages in the whole of the 274-page book.

Okay, stop. Again, sorry. Didn’t write that, either. I truly apologize and hope to make it up to everyone. Let’s go again:

Chris Anderson is the editor for Wired Magazine, a prominent tech journalist and a long-time advocate of the “free” business model. His upcoming book, entitled “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” has been the talk of many in the tech sectors as it deals with the idea of giving content away for free and then earning a living through other means.

However, even before the book has been officially released, it has become mired in controversy. Waldo Jaquith of the Virginia Quarterly Review (VGR), a literary review journal associated with the University of Virginia, noticed similarities between some passages in Anderson’s book and other sources. After putting some passages through Google, he found over a dozen instances where it appears Anderson copied content from Wikipedia as well as other sources. These allegations were furthered by Edward Champion on his site, who compared several more passages from other books and blog posts. This has sparked a firestorm of controversy on both Twitter and the comments section of the VGR post.

Um, okay. So I’m starting to get confused. Did I write the above passage or not? I can’t remember! Here’s what I think happened: I cut & pasted those sections from other online journals and then removed the quotation marks without much thought as I drafted this blog post. Silly me, ha ha. Please don’t judge too harshly. After all, I only hold a BA in English, and a master’s degree in writing. I’ve only worked as a freelance writer for a handful of newspapers and other tiny little publications. Oh, and I teach writing – and I’ve published in a few journals. (And I have a novel just released.) So I’m off the hook, right? Not like I work for a huge, internationally renown magazine that you can find at B&N as well as many grocery stores.

Oh, wait. That sounds familiar, too. Here’s what Chris Anderson told The New York Times:

Mr. Anderson said in a telephone interview. “Mea culpa.” He said that he originally had put the Wikipedia material in quotations, but that he and his publisher had not been able to agree on a format for citations. When he took the passages out of quotations, he failed to attribute Wikipedia or rewrite the material in his own words. “That’s my screw-up,” he said.

Now I’m getting depressed. So I can’t even plagiarize originally? Indeed, no. I’ve plagiarized Anderson’s plagiarism. The horror. Here, let me redeem myself. I’ll give you links to the original sources I’ve used. There, and there.

Hey. This is, like, the easiest blogpost I’ve ever made! Now, let me point out some ironies. First, Anderson’s selling his book on the merits of “free content” for $25. Does he plan to post the whole thing online? Also, I’ll bet making everything you write free sounds pretty good if all you do is sew together Wiki notes. Me, though, I think I’ll hoard my single digit royalties from book sales. Not that I’m complaining. These days to have a book published at all is a huge accomplishment, along the lines of landing on the moon without a rocket.

Now I’ll ponder whether or not I can legitimately fail freshmen for slipping big chocolate bar chunks of uncited wiki into their final papers. Hmmmmm. Herrmmm. Tick tock, tick tock. Yeah.

Oh, and Michael Jackson’s dead. More on that soon. Not that I plan to make fun of Michael Jackson for being dead. Or that I ever made fun of Jackson. In fact, when I was seven I almost got into a fight with some kids who were making fun of him. Well, the hole gets deeper with every word. Doesn’t it?

I’m glad to hear Sanford’s back home, safe and sound, from his trip. This ordeal has got me thinking of all the great jokes South Carolinians can expect in coming months. First: California’s governor says “I’ll be back;” Carolina’s govy leaves you wondering. Second: Fall off the radar for a few days and your friends will say, “We thought you’d pulled a Sanford. Ha, ha!” The Simpsons will manage a Sanford slap. Colbert, being from South Carolina himself, is bound to weigh in.

To readers who’ve never lived in South Carolina: Really, this isn’t as nuts as it sounds. We’re used to absurdity. We watched Sanford drag a bunch of hogs into the state house. Remember? We’ve also dealt with the likes of Maurice Bessinger, and let’s not forget where Bob Jones University is. When Lisa Simpson wails, “I don’t want to be a gamecock,” we took that one to the chest. America, why do you always laugh at us? Besides, governors get paid to do weird stuff. Read the fine print of their contracts. Our politicians, I believe, were still dueling each other well into the nineteenth century.

And now for the lit news we’ve been waiting for. Simon & Schuster announces that Dick Cheney will publish a memoir. I haven’t heard the title yet, but I’ve got several suggestions – all of which involve his first name. By the way, Cheney’s not the only Bush boy to have a book deal in the works. From my fav newspaper, The NY Times:

Mr. Cheney, who had been looking for a publisher for about two months, joins a roster of Bush administration figures writing memoirs, including President George W. Bush; his wife, Laura; former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.; former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Karl Rove, the former presidential political adviser.

That’s right. Collect them all! Man on man, does that sound like a lot of dry prose. Think I’ll wait for these to hit audio. Of course, we don’t read them for their style or narrative arc. We’re on the lookout for truthiness.

Since I blog about books, I know you’re all waiting for the Where’s Waldo? Give you a rain check.

This just in. The book ripping-off Holden C will not be published, at least in the US. But the question on everyone’s mind is this: How much does anyone besides Salinger and his lawyers care? I guess JD California, who wrote the knockoff, probably does quite a lot. Personally, I’m used to bad sequels. Must say, I loved the continuation of Gone with the Wind. What was it called, Butler takes a Wife? And who could forget the retrospective on A Hundred Years of Solitude, Another Hundred Years of Solitude? But Spielberg and Lucas should sue each other for the last Indiana Jones film. In other news, political strife tears apart Iran.

Which makes me think. California had the wrong idea. Here’s what Catcher in the Rye needs: In addition to my book on Palin, I’ll also begin a new project entitled Reading Catcher in the Rye in Tehran. I’m going to fly out to Tehran tomorrow, find a nice park bench, and read the epic coming of age story aloud. Meanwhile I’ll keep a journal of what happens. You see, knocking off one book is easy. Knocking off two takes style. Hmm, wonder if I’ll get sued for posting a Salinger pic on my site. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Thursday I drove to Summerville for an interview with “Palmetto People,” which will run on July 6. The interview took place inside the Henry Timrod library. If you aren’t up on Southern poets, Timrod was dubbed the poet laureate of the Confederacy and spent most of his time suffering. He’s buried in Columbia, right across from my favorite place – Cornell Arms Apartments. You can read all of his poetry online, just about, although people like Ray Bradbury hate that:

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

Bradbury supports old fashioned public libraries, not those meaningless Internets. In fact, that’s the focus of a recent New York Times story (from which I just quoted). The author of Fahrenheit 451 will rescue a California county’s library system single-handed, even if the system is more than half-a-million dollars in debt and could conceivably close. Wait a second. I thought Fahrenheit 451 was about the intense, nearly erotic pleasure one feels while dousing great heaps of books with gasoline and burning them, or increasing the air temperature in a room until books spontaneously burst into bright sexy flames. Did I miss the irony? Maybe I should read the second half.

Bradbury also says that, “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years” and then went on to publish three books a week for 50 years.

Bradbury does know that colleges and universities have libraries, right, and that college students read books (hopefully)? And that colleges and universities give scholarships now?

Paul Muldoon shocked the world earlier this week (or at least Americans) by saying on The Colbert Report that poetry has intrinsic value. Even on greeting cards. The insular world of poetry should embrace the greeting card. Imagine that. Sharon Olds could handle Hallmark’s Valentine’s Day line, Yusef Komunyakaa could take on birthdays, and Charles Simic could run Christmas.

On a related note, John Stewart had an intelligent and witty debate with Mike Huckabee about abortion. Colbert and Stewart, will you come visit my English 101 and 105 classes this fall?

Barack Obama committed insecticide the other day, slapping a big housefly dead on CNBC. “I got the sucker,” he said and pointed to the camera. “You want to film that?” And so the camera man (I mean…camera person) zoomed in on the dead bugger, which lay on its back.

PETA was a bit upset, and so they sent a letter to the Prez and some kind of humane fly catcher. Not even Titus Andronicus, who cut off his own hand and fed his mortal enemy’s two sons to her in a pie, would do such a thing as kill a harmless fly. So I quote from Shakespeare:

But how, Barack, if that fly had a father and mother?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
Poor harmless fly,
That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry!
and thou hast kill’d him.

Barack, perhaps you will say, “Pardon me, sir; it was a black ill-favor’d fly, Like to the empress’ Moor; therefore I kill’d him.”

To which I would say, O, O, O,
Then pardon me for reprehending thee,
For thou hast done a charitable deed.
Give me thy knife, I will insult on him;
Flattering myself, as if it were the Moor
Come hither purposely to poison me.–
There’s for thyself, and that’s for Tamora.
Ah, sirrah!
Yet, I think, we are not brought so low,
But that between us we can kill a fly

And now you can watch the dubbed version

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m now writing an unauthorized Sarah Palin biography, tentatively entitled Palin Fire. Great material the past few days as Palin went all pit bull on Letterman for making a joke or two about one of her daughter’s getting knocked up by A-Rod and something about Spitzer. Palin made allegations that Letterman implied the statutory rape of her 14-year-old daughter and said that this sick “so-called comedian” was contributing to the acceptance of abuse and misogyny in our culture.

Speaking of the statutory rape of 14-year-olds, I wonder if Palin has read or heard of Lolita? It’s a filthy book but might put Letterman’s joke about A-Rod knocking up one of her daughter’s into perspective. In fact I heard that Letterman’s next guest is none other than Nabokov. CBS has hired a necromancer who’ll disinter the late Russian-American author and re-animate his corpse. The week following, Jeremy Iron will be the special guest. Iron will reflect on how much “fun” he had playing Humbert.

I’ll preempt Palin on this matter. I say now that Letterman has really, really crossed the line. Making sick jokes is one thing, but I won’t stand for disturbing the dead.