[Note: Movable Snipe is a week-long feature wherein two writers read and evaluate five blogs, sending each other one letter a day. This week's Snipers are Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel. Michael Helke's first letter can be accessed here.]
Yo, Michael. Or Helke, I guess. Do people call you Helke? Some people call me Fi, which is an unfortunate diminutive, given the odds that one Fi deserves another, as in Fi-Fi, though I guess the renown agent Fifi Oscard manages with it just fine. Brrr, it’s cold. I’m up at Yaddo at the moment, and Yaddo is great, barring your first-night dinner when you have to chat with strangers who are, in all likelihood, smarter and more accomplished than you.
Luckily, I got here the day after Anna Nicole Smith died. Celebrity death brings people together. We were all wanting to know how she went. None of us were moved. That paragraph where Orwell talks about discrepant responses to tragedy? He was moved—slayed—by news of the Titanic’s demise, and finding it ironic that events of greater significance and cataclysm had left him cold. Not so much here. Sure, that guy who runs her fansite is wrecked, but I’m guessing most people are not losing their lunch over it. But then most people in this country are not losing their lunch over North Korea, either, and them’s fighting words since half the people in North Korea have not eaten lunch since 1954.
You see this stuff on Drezner about Korea’s revising its admittedly half-assed commitment to nuclear nonproliferation? This guy’s blog scares the crap out of me. Except for that he got Sox tickets. Or that he’s Jewtalking about cheap tickets alongside a post about North Korea blowing up the world.
Do we know yet how ANS died? Interesting that you mention Primo Levi since I was just talking to a friend about people who survive unspeakable horrors only to die prematurely. Did Levi kill himself? Some think he did. Same with Sebald. Did ANS? After all that? Why O.D. now? Post-partum? Enough is enough? You shouldn’t struggle with drug abuse and die. If you’re gonna die, anyway, you should just give into it. I’m not being cynical, either. One of the worst things for an addict struggling to recover is to die on drugs. Wait, I’m getting sad about her death, oh no!
Kismet: You’re talking Paris Review, Gourevitch is en route to Yaddo, I hear, and the excellent Mark Sarvas is stumping for TPR’s new compendium of interviews. I miss George. And yeah, I heard about his dirty novel. But I think it’s apocryphal. Still, the man got around. He was good friends with the Hef. Took me to the mansion, once. There were peacocks. And a small arcade with video games and padded rooms for purposes illicit and randy. Randy! No one has ever seen George’s dirty book, far as I know. But then I know little. Like: Clive James. Have I ever ready any Clive James? Nope. Did I think he was a basketball player before you wrote me? Could be. Did I read the lead post on Crooked Timber about all the books Maria has read since January 1 and despair?
Who is this Maria? Oh, wait, I see who she is. She’s hot. She’s up on Disraeli and Gladstone. I think I just finished Spawn 11. Happily, I just came across mention on 3 Quarks Daily of Pierre Baynard’s prophylactic, How to Talk About Books that You Haven’t Read. Phew. Now I can sleep easy. Thanks, 3 Quarks! Hey, the etymology of the name of this website is fancy. "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" You know, there used to be a bar by George P’s house called Finnegan’s Wake. George persuaded them to get the name right. And they did. They actually changed the name.
Which brings me to the more important matter of things you should not have read, ever, chief among them my stupid piece about pornography. Please take note of the date on that thing. 1998, maybe. Whenever I go on a blind date—and I’ve been on several—the guy always Googles me first, reads the thing on porn and sees fit to bring it up. Where was Clive James, center for the Heat, when I needed him? And where is he now?
I think the work I’m attempting at the moment sucks. I should probably just go find this freakish kangaroo man and inbreed. Wow, is he freakish. He’s featured on Nerve’s roundup of weird shit online. At least I think that’s what’s happening on this website. Hard to say. Between the sans-serif jamboree and my new kangaroo boyfriend, I just can’t tell what’s happening anymore. Cheer me up, Michael. F.
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One scene in particular, set at the aforementioned strip club, left me roaring in laughter.
His idyllic existence is one day broken when a team of heavily armed men turn his house into dust in an attempt to kill him, it’s up to him then and a few old friends to try and get to the bottom of the mysterious kill squad.
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