Author: jbenton

August: Granta for sale. October: Granta sold, to my new favorite 43-year-old Swede with a PhD in Estonian anthropology and a milk-carton fortune.
I’ve written about my affection for Granta before. And even though it’s known largely for debuting promising authors of fiction, my love comes mainly on the nonfiction side of the register. As editor Ian Jack writes in this retrospective, about the magazine’s earliest manifesto: “[It] speaks from a different age, when ‘literature’ was confined to fiction, the literary essay, and poetry. The paradox is that it was Granta, through [editor Bill] Buford’s early championing of forms such as the travel account, the memoir, and reportage, which did so much to expand the idea of what ‘literature’ could be or do.”
I hate the word “reportage.” It stinks of Gallic pretension, and presumes a sort of artistic reserve above plain old plebe “reporting.” But Buford and Granta did a lot to make my occasional literary aspirations conceivable.
In other news: Buy Vincent Gallo’s sperm — the racism’s free! And the Go! Team live on KEXP. “Ladyflash” is a particular standout.

Know your Smurfs. I bet you don’t know the full story of Smurfette. O, dark minx!

Celebrities playing table tennis. Sometimes, it’s just what it sounds like.

Congrats to my old high school buddy Anthony for the publication of his first book.
Cool band of the day: Dengue Fever. Aside from being named for one of my very favorite tropical diseases, they’re a self-proclaimed mix of surf music, ’60s Cambodian pop, and Ethiopian music. Their album sounds supercool — loungy, but with the sort of druggy haze that Ethiopian music gives you.
The last time I wrote about Ethiopian music here, I said this about Getatchew Mekurya: “Picture a Quentin Tarantino movie whose climactic scene features John Travolta nervously making an opium deal in the back room of some Turkish bath. This would be the soundtrack.” Move the opium deal from Istanbul to a back alley near The Quiet American‘s Continental Hotel and you’ve got Dengue Fever.
Finally, speaking of Graham Greene, I remember why I love The Super Friendz so much every time their song “Machine Green” pops up on the iPod. Gotta love those lyrics:
So tell me, who’s your favourite author? Mine’s Graham Greene
He started with the start and kept his sentences lean

Here’s my story from today’s newspaper, the product of the rare Sunday shift I had to work yesterday. Featuring a rare “Josh Benton” byline. (I’m supposed to be “Joshua Benton” in print, but I guess the weekend editors didn’t know.)

Proof that a good name never dies: GMC is set to debut a new eight-passenger car-ish thing called the “Acadia.”
I can only hope it will look as supafly as its predecessor, the Pontiac Acadian, available only in Canada starting in the 1960s. (And getting progressively uglier as time marched on.)

Some random music notes:
– Band I should probably be ashamed of feeling affection for: Failure, a sort of paint-by-numbers mid-’90s L.A. alt-metal band. I totally dug Magnified, their second album, which I got as a freebie sent to my college paper.
(By the way: Doesn’t this biography of Failure co-leader Ken Andrews read like it was written by a slavering fanboy? I’d always thought of Allmusic as having some editorial standards, but this reads like something that’d get overwritten on Wikipedia. “The career development of Andrews…is an amazing testament to his intelligence, talent, and commitment to recording rock music at only the highest level”? Really? I mean, I like his band, but…really? Or this, on Failure’s mediocre last album Fantastic Planet: “although practically unknown, a record considered by a small but extremely passionate group of followers as the post-grunge bookend to Nevermind“? Huh?)
– Classic performer who indie kids should pay more attention to: Stevie Wonder. Seriously, go listen to Innervisions. Just the 26th best album of the ’70s? I’d sacrifice a lot of Neu and Eno to save this from the big magnet eraser in the sky. The handholding swirl of “He’s Misstra Know-It-All”? The burble-funk organ of “Living For The City”? The seduction soul of “Golden Lady”? Essential, as is just about everything he did from 1972 to 1978.
(By the way, if you’re ever wondering if an impossibly creative stretch of your career is coming to a close, ask yourself: Am I considering recording an album entitled “Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants”? If they answer is yes, your time may have run out.)
(By the way, this is a good site for reviews of ’70s funk albums.)
– Album I’m ashamed I didn’t know existed until a couple days ago: Tete a Tete, the “secret” (to me at least) Calexico album, recorded in 2001 with the French Amor Belhom Duo under the name ABBC. I’ve no idea if it’s any good; I’m mostly ashamed because I’m a proud (and annoying) Calexico completist. Note to self: Must track down. Speaking of my annoying completism: the set list from the 10/29 Calexishow around these parts — songs 1, 2, 6, and 8 being unreleased numbers we can probably expect on the new album this spring.

I have such a huge journocrush on Dana Priest. She’s just so damned good. With most good stories I read, I can at least conceive of getting them myself — I can see where the leads developed, how the info came out, et cetera. But pieces like this are just beyond me.
(Maybe it’s a regular crush too: she’s pretty cute.)

The liberal anti-anti-Wal-Mart backlash. I’ve expressed my comparatively pro-Wal-Mart feelings before here. I grew up in a Louisiana town too small for a Wal-Mart — and trust me, the town fathers would have killed to get one.
My biggest problem with Wal-Mart critics is that their real complaints often aren’t about labor practices or trade with China or employee health care. They’re about class, pure and simple: a disdain for poor rural people and the things associated with them. Throw a thin veneer of “style” and hipsterness on top of it — in other words, call it “Target” instead of “Wal-Mart” — and they’ll gladly rave about the convenience and bargains. It’s the same bullshit reflex that afflicted so many of the people I went to Yale with.
I have relatives who have tried really hard to get jobs at Wal-Mart because they’re considered a better place to work than the other options available. When I lived in Louisiana, I did a ton of shopping there. I just went to the newly opened Wal-Mart supermarket in my Dallas neighborhood for the first time, and let me tell you — it was miles nicer than the safely middlebrow Albertsons I’ve shopped at for four years.
As one guy puts it in the comments to that post: “boy…talk about some typical, ignorant, stereotypical limousine liberal comments on this thread…as someone who actually grew up poor…fuck you.”

Why Google Book Search is awesome:
“‘Joshua Benton,’ Ethan Podell spoke. ‘Are you prepared to earn your passage unto our great master? Our [sic] you a worthy servant of Satan?'”
With writing and spelling that good, it really makes you wonder why it’s only self-published.
Oh, and this:
“‘Everyone, this is Josh Benton, he’ll be joining our group.’ Leesa opened the meeting.
“Josh sat on the small metal chair with legs open and slouched over his legs. He wore a baseball cap pulled low onto his forehead and tilted on an angle. Angry gray eyes glinted from under the brim, giving each member a hostile once-over.
“‘What brings you here? A big burly guy like you couldn’t have been raped,’ Kim asked, noted for her aggressive nature.”
It turns out that this “Josh” fellow is instead a rapist who — and this is where things get strange — was ordered by his judge to attend group counseling sessions with rape victims. Because, you know, that’s just what a bunch of rape victims want — a rapist in their counseling midst.
Some times, I wonder if I’m ready to write a book. Seeing writing like this really bucks me up at times last that.