Joan, can you explain what is going on with the GOP meme that is now popping out of the mouth of talking heads and pundits like Contessa Brewer and Chris Matthews? They're saying things like: "I don't know if Americans will like it that he's drawing big crowds in Europe" and "Well, the Germans don't vote for our president." What kind of bizarre argument is being pushed here? It makes no sense to me at all. Why wouldn't we be proud of an American politician being greeted well over there, just as we were mortified when Mitterand met Reagan and confided to an aide, "Je n'ai jamais rencontré un tel idiot."

The Rove machine is working beautifully and once again steering our discourse, or at least infecting it. The GOP starts griping that Obama being well received in Europe will somehow be seen deprecated by Americans--it may even be some kind of insult! Then the pundits and talking heads start joking about it and even saying idiotic things like, "Well, the Germans don't vote for our president" in a mixture of huffiness and arrogance. Chris Matthews even shares, "I was talking to somebody in LA who wondered if it was a good thing to be acclaimed by Germans." The comment, which he chortled through, is so fatuous it doesn't need parsing. And now, even Salon is repeating this ridiculous charge. Since when have Americans objected to our politicians being treated well abroad? I do not believe that anyone in the Obama campaign buys into this nonsense.

What a strange thing for a novelist to say! It's so very anti-intellectual. Must I believe in the ordeal of consciousness (cf. Dorothea Krook) to get with The Golden Bowl? Or "blood knowledge" to get with Women in Love? What pretentious nonsense.

I'm a novelist, Jewish and big fan of Waugh, whose Brideshead Revisited I've read four times. The mini-series isn't "glacially slow"--it's dreamy and hypnotic because it's all about seduction. I adore the novel, despite Waugh's mid-1950s disclaimers. It's in part a poetic, sad story of decline on many levels; it's the tale of thwarted passions; the portrait of the education of an artist. And it is very beautifully written: a paragon of nostalgia. I don't have to believe in Catholicism remotely to be thrilled by what Charles Ryder seems to feel at the end of the novel. It's an epiphany and I believe it utterly--for him. Waugh's world in the novel, his values, aren't necessarily mine nor should they be. I don't read for confirmation of what I feel and believe--but to travel into other realities. How disappointing for a reviewer to privilege limited horizons as Bayard does.

You know what truly is remarkable?

That the polls are close when Obama is relatively unknown and mixed-race, with low visibility and racism working against him.

McCain is a lauded war hero and a senior senator; it's remarkable he isn't doing much better than Obama.

All this talk about Obama not being able to 'clsoe the deal" is like the nonsense spouted during and after the primary campaign: women won't vote for Obama, Hispanics won't vote for Obama blahblahblah.

Let's see what the polls say in September after both conventions.

I see Salon is paving the way for nationwide tributes to The Prince of Darkness. He's always been a nasty piece of work, vicious and reductive, and he outed Valerie Plame and denied it, but a brain tumor apparently turns him into one of the good guys. His death from cancer, if that's what happens, should transform him into a saint and I expect CNN and the Washington Post to do a mourning full court press. Perhaps the printed Post and its web site will revert to Victorian style and have black borders to indicate their sorrow.

Are you kidding? Maybe the sex is boring but she's clearly performing fellatio and having intercourse. I suppose the third man in this bland orgy is meant to be a joke when his hand reaches up. As is the whole idea of men sharing a woman also sharing a beer.

Ugh.

OMG, he looks like he went to the Nancy Reagan Academy of Dramatic Arts where he got an "A" in Worshipful Gazing.

As an author and reviewer, I actually do pay attention to blurbs. If someone is a blurb whore and loves to see his or her name everywhere, it's a strike against the book if that author's name appears on a jacket. Likewise, if I know for a fact that a blurb is fake--because the blurb's so-called author told me that she never writes the blurbs attributed to her--I'm less well disposed to that book. It may not be fair, but it helps weed books out. But blurb hysteria aside, what really turns me off is excessive or gimmicky push from the publisher.

My favorite personal blurb story is when a best selling author told me she didn't blurb books though she had loved my novel The German Money. When I shared this with a savvy friend in publishing, he reminded me that when she was starting out, someone quite famous blurbed her and she had been riding that particular blurb for years.

And you know what? It didn't matter. The boutique press publishing my novel quickly sold English and German rights, I got an English tour, a German tour, it was a BookSense 76 pick and it generated lots of speaking engagements for me here in the US.

CODA:

What's missing in Rebecca Johnson's piece is the mania authors often feel, the desperation, the hunger to get just the right blurb from the author we admire most because otherwise our entire career will be doomed. That's how quietly hysterical we can become. If the piece had had that kind of juice, it would have moved me. Knowing publishing as I do after 19 books, it seems way too lackadaisical.