The Mumpsimus

Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous . —Nathanael West, Day of the Locust 1. I want to say a few words in praise of the Amazon Prime show Patriot , which I never would have watched without a friend saying how strange, surprising, and affecting it is. Because of work and life, I haven't been able to read any fiction more than the occasional short story for a month or so now — my brain is pulled in too many other directions for me to hold a novel's details in mind — and few movies or tv shows have felt like anything other than loud wallpaper. This state of mind probably contributed to my appreciation of Patriot , as its mood fit so well with my own moment. Patriot  does not seem to have gathered many viewers, at least not among people I know or critics I read. (Amazon, like other services, doesn't release viewing numbers, so we can only use anecdotal evidence to guess about popularity or lack of it.) Season 1 got noticed here and there, Season 2 less ...

Paul Tremblay and I were emailing recently, but I didn't realize until I read his comment on an excellent blog post by John Scalzi that Paul's second novel, No Sleep till Wonderland , is 1.) being published today, and 2.) published by Henry Holt, a subsidiary of Macmillan , which means that for the moment it's not being sold on Amazon.com.  (Yes, there are copies available from third-party sellers -- these are probably review copies, and they send no royalties to the writer.) The first day of a novel's publication should be a day of celebration and joy, not a day when the world's largest monopolistic bookseller refuses to sell your book because they're in a spat with another massive corporation. I don't know Paul well, and I haven't read his novels, but I've read his short fiction and met him a few times.  His story "The Two-Headed Girl" is included in Best American Fantasy 3 .  He's a nice guy and a good writer. So here's ...

Every time Amazon flexes its muscle to reveal just how powerful its monopoly is (cf. the latest brouhaha ), I grow a bit more uncomfortable making all the book title links on this blog ones that go to Amazon and, through their Associates program, send back some spare change to me.  I mean, I know I'm immoral for using Amazon so much, but I've already admitted to being a pox upon the bookselling body in general.  In most of my choices as a consumer, I'm a pox upon the entire world, a blight of bourgeois indifference, a hemmorhoid on the......  Well, you get the idea. But what about you?  Why should Amazon be the only choice you have when following a link to find out more information about a book, and possibly to order a copy for yourself?  Why should I force you to be the same sort of immoral pox-blight-hemmorhoid as I? I've stuck with the Amazon Associates program for, as I said on David Moles's blog , reasons of inertia and of not knowing of...