Amazon Censorship Story # (Who is Keeping Track Anymore?)

There is always reason to hate Amazon. During the Greaves scenario, they kept his Pedophile Guide up for the sake of free speech. Then they removed it. Then the guy got arrested. Then they removed incest erotica. Then Selena Kitt got mad.

The latest victim of Amazon's so-called guidelines is Kyle Michel Sullivan.

Kyle Michel Sullivan is an erotica writer, as well as a screenwriter. His is the author of books such as The Porno Manifesto and Bobby Carapsi. But what came under attack were his "rape titles": How To Rape A Straight Guy and Rape in Holding Cell 6. In a letter sent by Amazon to Sullivan:

Dear Publisher,

We are contacting you regarding the following DTP titles that you have submitted for sale in our Kindle store:

          How To Rape A Straight Guy (ASIN B003ZYFCA6)

          Rape In Holding Cell 6 (ASIN B00403N14A)

During our review process, we found that your titles contain content that is in violation of our content guidelines. As a result, we have removed the books from our store.

Please note that if you continue to submit content that violates our content guidelines, we may conduct a general review of your account.  Actions resulting from such a review could result in a termination of your account.

You may reply to title-submission@amazon.com if, after reading our content guidelines, you believe this decision has been made in error.

Best regards,

Amazon.com.

Of course here are Amazon's guidelines. And of course, no one at Amazon has read the books in question.

Mainly, Amazon argues that Sullivan's work is porn. And since it is porn, they--as a store, refuse to sell it, as is the right of any store. But of course, it being Amazon, there is no clear definition of porn. This is not porn (well not hardcore anyway); this is "gay interest", and this is definitely not fetish. Why Amazon refuses to sell porn is of course another question. If were talking about porn films, they're missing out on big money. Likewise, with "porn" books--mainly hardcore literary erotica--they are missing out on more money because with the digital age, comes discreet reading. Either way, they do not have a clear definition. What is obscene, and what is not and in whose eyes? Who is anyone to judge the value of sex scenes in a piece of work. If they deem an erotica piece as art, how is it "art" compared to a scene that is called porn.

Sullivan wrote a letter back, giving several excellent points, exposing Amazon's uneven censorship: (the full letter below)

Dear S------,

I'm at a loss as to understand how my books violated your content guidelines.  They are not pornographic and have solid stories and meaning behind them.  The sex in them is not that much more detailed than what you find in Jackie Collins' and Judith Krantz's novels, all of which can be found in a library.  Also, you carry items that celebrate the torture and murder of women (see "Saw2" "Hostel 2" (oops) where a naked female is strung upside down and butchered so her blood can bathe another naked female lying under her) and the gleeful slaughter of human beings ("American Psycho", for example).

"How To Rape A Straight Guy" has a very provocative title, yes, and its narrator, Curt, is a very in-your-face sort of guy who thinks he can get even with the world by assaulting men.  But it winds up hurting innocent people and destroying him.  I even have a moment of foreshadowing in it, where Curt as a 6-year-old boy watches a cousin of his torture a dog until it bites him, then the boy's father kills the dog and goes off to buy another one.  The moral of the whole book being, if you treat a man like a dog his whole life, you shouldn't be surprised if he bites you.  And the sad reality is, when he finally does bite back, he's the one who's punished.  Does that sound like porn?

"Rape In Holding Cell 6", both volumes, is about corruption in the judicial system, and its main character, Antony, is investigating the brutal rape and murder of his lover in the county jail.  He finds a legal and political system that thinks it can get away with anything and nearly drives himself insane in his quest for revenge, a quest that threatens to harm the innocent as well as the guilty as he becomes exactly what he hates.  Does that sound like porn?

You pulled my titles because that reporter at the Fox affiliate labeled my book pornography.  If you actually HAD done your research, you'd see that they do not fall under that category.  I can see them being viewed as erotica because the sex is very intense...and not at all sugar-coated...but that's it.  And they were on Amazon's website being offered for sale for years without a problem.  So will you also be removing other books once viewed as porn, like "Ulysses" and "Henry and June" and "Lolita"?  Will you continue to offer DVDs of movies that depict the torture and rape of women, like "Straw Dogs" and "A Clockwork Orange"?

I ask that Amazon reconsider this.  My books are not pornography and should never have been labeled as such.  According to the Supreme Court, "in Miller v. California , 413 U.S. 15 (1973) (The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Roth, supra, at 489, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." (Emphasis added.)

Please have your panel look further into the matter and reconsider your actions.

Thank you,

Kyle Michel Sullivan

Furthermore, Amazon has not just stopped carrying the print titles. They have gone ahead and deleted these purchased ebooks off readers' Kindles: no hassle to the consumer! As Sullivan writes: "next year I'm going after Amazon, and starting at the top of the fucker's food chain, not the scum-laden bottom." While I'm always hesistant to agree with anyone who compare themselves to Joyce or Nabakov, I have to agree with him.

Make a New Years Resolution: stop buying from Amazon. As a major corporation, they cannot be trusted to further art or free speech (How can a corporation ever be trusted with that?) Buy local. Or buy indie. (One of his banned title his also available on BetterWorldBooks--buy porn, support a writer, spread literacy, all in one click [also, they have it down as nonfiction...])

Indie Lit Award 2010: The Short List!

The Indie Lit Awards short list was announced today! The judges for each category have selected 5 books. From these, the winner of the first annual Indie Lit Awards will be chosen in February. Unfortunately, the mystery category seems like a no go this year: "[w]e were not able to get a team to cover Mystery, so this will not be an award category this year," says the website. But any book blogger interested in being on the panel next year should visit this page.

Congrats to all the short listed titles!

GLBTQ
Annabel by Kathleen Winters
Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Krakow Melt by Daniel Allen Cox
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by David Levithan and John Green
Scars by Cheryl Rainfield

Literary Fiction
C by Tom McCarthy
Great House by Nicole Krauss
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Room by Emma Donoghue
Safe From The Sea by Peter Geye

Nonfiction
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
At Home by Bill Bryson

Speculative Fiction
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
Kraken by China Mieville
Dante’s Journey by JC Marino
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
The Passage by Justin Cronin

What You Didn't Read in 2010

The end of the year calls for end-of-the-year-lists. The problem I have is that I don't read as much as a should/could (about a week or so per book), and I am not reading all books published in a single year (I am glad I don't, I would have to read this...).

But I have always prided myself in reading what others are not. I hate crowd sourced books. I hate people telling me how I should me reading a piece ("this book is about so and so...") Reading, I have always thought, was an intimate, self-absorbed activity, akin to masturbation (you should read Solitary Sex by Thomas W Laqueur, GREAT book on the cultural history masturbation, including a chapter on reading...what do think all those reading women in those calender are doing?). Also, I am an attention whore, and if I can get to a trend before anyone else, I feel better about myself.

Thus, this is not a list of top books of 2010. Instead, it's a list of books I really liked, but you probably never read. I don't even rank this, it's just a list in alphabetical order (by author's last name) of books you probably missed out on in 2010. It's a short list I have to say (I like to balance my reading with stuff I should've read, stuff I discovered in used bookstores, and stuff that was published this year), but it's something...

1. Quiet As They Come by Angie Chau

Why You Didn't Read It: Ig Publishing who?

Why you need to read it: "Chau is a writer of frightening skill. Her understated stories pulls at the heart, yet remains unsentimental."

A Taste of Chau:

"Camp wasn't too bad thogh it was a different world from the city. In our neighborhood, I fell asleep to the steady chop of helicopter blades on ghetto birds. Drunken whoops in the night meant there weas a party or a fight but certainly a sign of life outside our apartment walls. Ambulance sirens were a reminder that someone was rushing to help someone else out. At camp, there was just a lot of open air."

2. Hello Kitty Must Die by Angela Choi

Why You Didn't Read It: Asian girls with sick minds make bad publicity.

Why you need to read it: "...Choi is funny and pitch perfect, writing the type of debut you stay up all night to read."

A Taste of Choi:

"It all started with my missing hymen.

One Week before my twenty-eighth birthday, I decide to take my own virginity with a silicone dildo coated in two-percent Lidocaine gel.

Silicone dildos are the best. Firm, smooth, easy to clean, and most importantly, you can boil them in water. We Chinese folklove to boil things."

3. Krakow Melt by Daniel Allen Cox

Why You Didn't Read It: He's Canadian...(Also, not Alice Munro...it would help if he knew Alice Munro. It always help to know Alice Munro.

Why You Need To Read It: "...he can break your heart and tape it back together, he'll even staple it next to your brain--no additional charge!"


A Taste of Cox: ;)

"It's kind of silly. Ever since human learned the art of fire--yes, it's an art, not an obsesion or a crime--we have been trying frantically to put it out. We're confirmed as the fourth triangle of an inseparable pyramid, yet some will spend their last kilojoule denying it, refusing to see that the only way to grow is to lose what's precious. Fire, bless its blue and white heart, does not choose indiscriminately. It wheedles out the elements in societies we build and forces us to do it better the next time. It's intelligent.

Nothing is fireproof. Anything will burn, if the fire is hot enough...."

4. Tell-All by Chuck Palahnuik

Why You Didn't Read It: After Snuff you stopped trusting Palahniuk.

Why You Need To Read It: What Tell-All does well is being what Invisible Monsters (his first novel, which was at first rejected) could not--be a spectacular, star-studded novel full of enough stage directions and campiness to excuse the author of being a self-loathing homophobe (until he found out that that actually helped his sales). And this novel is all about camp. We have explosions on stage, grand musical numbers, projection reel flashbacks, a gay best friend (yes, Miss Kathie is a hag!), and Hollywood. In short, this is Palahniuk's gayest novel.

A Taste of Palahniuk:

"No, none of us seem so very real.

We're only supported charcters in the lives of each other.

Any real truth, any precious fact will always be lost in a mountain of shattered make-believe."

5. Bummer and Other Stories by Janice Shapiro

Why You Didn't Read It: Soft Skull Press is a zombie

Why You Need To Read It: Think Amy Hempel and Deborah Eisenberg (if it were possible) tackling the midlife problems of Antonya Nelson (but of course with skill)

A Taste of Shaprio:

"So maybe the best way to picture this next part of the story is to imagine you're looking into a kaleidoscope and in some of those fractured pieces of colorful glass there's me, right? Alison. Did I tell you my name, yet? Well, it's Alison. So there's good old Alison wandering all over the whole stinking place with that sickening feeling you get when you have no idea where you are and no hope of ever figuring it out. See? There's Alison wandering past aisles and aisles of gaudy slot machines, and there she is in the Gala Buffet Restaurant, and there zigzagging through a maze of lounge chairs in the pool area, all the while looking for Jose or Ramon or whatever his name was, but it being Alison, it would be a pretty safe bet that Alison wouldn't find what Alison was looking for, and the fact is, I didn't."

6. Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor

Why You Didn't Read It: Little indien (indie writer), in the big house with Rupert Murdoch

Why You Need To Read It: "Taylor, at 28, brings a maturity in short story composition--a type Carveresque minimalism--that should be envy of every writer."

A Taste of Taylor:

"'Well, I've got this psychic thing going for me too, now. It's complicated. Look, I didn't ask for any of this.'"

I remember now how young Bruce is, ghost or no, psychic or no. And I'm not calling him goddamn Malachi. 'Nobody asks for anything,' I tell him. 'Everyday of your life is getting something you never asked for.'"

7. Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong

Why You Didn't Read It: Jonathen Franzen...nuff said.

Why You Need To Read It:  "Truong not only deftly portrays her lost and spiteful characters, she paints the south that is part mythology, part history, part personal tale. In this way, Truong not only writes an immigrant's story, she writes the Great American Story about the hidden America that has never had its story told."

A Taste of Truong:

"I was on my knees in front of the television, and not only my hands but my face was also pressed against the screen. I was no longer as interested in seeing the images as becoming one with the images. I wanted to give the six-year-old girl who would grow up to be Ms. Cordell--not her real name also to proect her privacy--a hug and tell her about Mr. Roland and me. I knew that the information of our existence would have comforted the one in Tuscaloosa because it would have comforted the one in Boiling Springs. i would have written to herthat "Tuscaloosa" tasted of candied sweet potatoes, the kind that we southerners servedat Thanksgiving, complete with marshmallows and crushed pineapples. I wuld have asked er for the colors of the letters l, i, n,d, and a. She would have written back, her words dipped in proprietary ink, indelible to her, made visible to me."

8. Burnings by Ocean Vuong

Why You Didn't Read It: It's his first time!

Why You Need To Read It: "In Ocean Vuong's poetic vision, the world is beautiful with all its tears and fires. Burnings is a major yet compact achievement in this poet's career."

A Taste of Vuong:

     "My grandmother kisses as if history
      never ended, as if somewhere,
       a body is still
falling apart."

Book Review: Quiet As They Come

Quiet As They Come
by Angie Chau
9781935439189

In "Come All Yet Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake" Frank Chin accuses Asian American literature as being racist. As he points out: "they all write to the specifications of the Christian stereotype of Asian being as opposite morally from the West as it is geographically." Furthermore, Chin argues that Asian writers (successful ones such as Amy Tan), do not explore authentic Asian American experiences enough. Instead, he says, they play into racist, Eurocentric stereotypes: in this Asian America, the wives are quiet and meek, the men are misogynistic. "Asian culture," he says, is set up as "anti-invidiualistic, mystic, passive, collective, and morally and ethically opposite to Western culture." It's because they lack knowledge of history is the conclusion, and by denying historical truth, they become popular with the "assumed white audience."

This year has seen some very important literary works in the way of Asian American lit. Among them is Angie Chau's debut Quiet As They Come, a short story collection that follows the interconnected lives of an extended family and their post-Vietnam War lives in America. A story cycle of Vietnamese American refugees, the collection is saturated in historical context that perhaps gives the authenticity that Frank Chin is looking for. Her characters are sensitive yet strong-willed men who regret their own violence, women seeking to fullfill sexual desire that they left behind (or perhaps never experienced), girls dealing with bodies that are both odd and exotic. Perhaps the strongest characteristic of these stories is that Chau unapolegetically explores the personal lives of her characters without Eurocentric romanticism of the Orient.

In "The Pussycats," for example,  Kim Le, a single mother whose husband is a P.O.W. in Vietnam accidently walks her daughter into an X-rated movie. What results is an exploration of sexual desire left behind in a character that is neither weak nor passive. Instead her wants are recognizably human, no matter the race. In "Arcade Games" tomboy Michelle has sex with an older man in a pool hall while her mother is in the next room. "In The Season of Milk Fruit," (one of the strongest story in the collection, though it's hard to pick just one) a character talks to her unborn, out-of-wedlock son. Chau describes Asian American culture in its own terms, and refuses to compromise.

To any Vietnamese American, this book aches with moments of recognition. From mothers that complain about sun-damaged skin to pho for breakfast and cao gio. Obviously this is a book by a Vietnamese American for Vietnamese America. Yet these stories are so much more. For non-Vietnamese readers, these stories ache as well. Chau explores lost love, broken love, heartbreak, disappointment, among other universal themes in stories that show her skills for devastating silences comparable to the likes of Mavis Gallant ("Arcade Games" is reminscent of "Going Ashore") and Raymond Carver.

For example, from "Taps:"

"Kim looked around her bedroom. The objects looked familar--the bookshelf, the framed photos, the hanging ivy, the potted plant, the ticking clock. Everything was the same but nothing was as it was. THe woman who had inhabited this room, it was clear she was gone too."

Such silences, in fact, comes to be a defining motif in the collection: from the title story where a character keeps silent about his past as well as present to the silences between out-of-love couples in "A Map Back Into the World and Into Your Heart." Yet it is through her stories that major silences are broken. These are not story about Vietnamese Americans, but stories of them and from them.

Chau is a writer of frightening skill. Her understated stories pulls at the heart, yet remains unsentimental. Chau writes this book as if to say--We are neither good or bad. We're just like you. Frank Chin would be proud, or at least, less angry.

The Indie Lit Awards: The Unofficial Long List

Voting for book bloggers for the Indie Lit Awards has closed! And now the unofficial long list! According to the site, the top 5 in each category will be the long list, from the long list, judges and panelist will pick their top two--the short list. However, what about ties in the nominations? By such technicalities, all books nominated are on the long list. If those are counted in the top 5, the panelists will have some serious reading to do.


Longlist LGBT

1. Scars by Cheryl Rainfield (10 nominations)
2. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by David Levithan and John Green (5 nominations)
3. Krakow Melt by Daniel Allen Cox (3 nominations)

4. If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous (2 nominations)
4. Annabel by Kathleen Winter (2 nominations)

5. Wildthorn by Jane Egland (1 nomination)
5. The Glass Minstrel by Hayden Thorn  (1 nomination)
5. Missed Her by Ivan Coyote (1 nomination)
5. Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin (1 nomination)
5. Handmade Love by Julie R. Enszer. (1 nomination)
5. The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu (1 nomination)
5. Half-Empty by David Rakoff  (1 nomination)
5. The Carousel by Stafani Deoul (1 nomination)
5. London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp (1 nomination)
5. Rhythm And Blues by Jill Murray (1 nomination)


Longlist Literary

1. Room by Emma Donoghue (7 nominations)
2. Safe From the Sea by Peter Geye (4 nominations)
3. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson (3 nominations)

4. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (2 nominations)
4. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom (2 nominations)
4. Great House by Nicole Krauss (2 nominations)
4. C by Tom McCarthy (2 nominations)
4. The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall (2 nominations)
4. So Much For That by Lionel Shriver (2 nominations)

5. Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian (1 nomination)
5. How To Be An American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway (1 nomination)
5. Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong (1 nomination)
5. Saints in Limbo by River Jordan (1 nomination)
5. The Passage by Justin Cronin (1 nomination)
5. Mockingjay by Susanne Collins (1 nomination)
5. How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (1 nomination)
5. Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas (1 nomination)
5. Circus Bulgaria by Deyan Enev (1 nomination)
5. Eddie Signwriter by Adam Schwartzman (1 nomination)
5. Finny by Justin Kramon (1 nomination)
5. Courage in Patience by Fehlbaum (1 nomination)
5. Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (1 nomination)
5. Misadventure by Millard Kaufman (1 nomination)
5. 32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter (1 nomination)
5. Revenge: A Fable by Taslima Nasrin (1 nomination)
5. A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan (1 nomination)
5. Annabel by Kathleen Winter (1 nomination)
5. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (1 nomination)
5. The Irresistible Henry House, by Lisa Grunwald (1 nomination)
5. The Invisible Bridge” by Julie Orringer (1 nomination)
5. Banned For Life by D.R. Haney (1 nomination)
5. The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman (1 nomination)


Longlist Mystery

1. Faithful Place by Tana French (2 nominations)
1. The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley (2 nominations)

2. God of the Hive by Laurie King (1 nomination)
2. Caught by Harlan Coben (1 nomination)
2. Hello Kitty Must Die by Angela S. Choi (1 nomination)
2. Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer (1 nomination)
2. An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd (1 nomination)
2. In the Belly of Jonah by Sandra Brannan (1 nomination)


Longlist Nonfiction
1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (5 nominations)

2. Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell (2 nominations)
2. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2 nominations)

3. In the Land of Believers by a Welch (1 nomination)
3. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim (1 nomination)
3. Who Made God? by Prof. Edgar Andrews (1 nomination)
3. Working In the Shadows by Gabriel Thompson  (1 nomination)
3. Mentor: A Memoir by Tom Grimes  (1 nomination)
3. The Grace of Silence by Michele Norris (1 nomination)
3. News to Me by Laurie Hertzel  (1 nomination)
3. Beauty Shop Politics by Tiffany M. Gill  (1 nomination)
3. Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff (1 nomination)
3. Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness by Ariel Gore (1 nomination)
3. Why God Matters by Karina Lumbert Fabian and Deacon Steven Lumbert (1 nomination)
3. Thumbing Through Thoreau y Kenny Luck and illustrated by Jay Luke and Ren Adams (1 nomination)
3. Balthazar Jones And The Tower Of London Zoo (1 nomination)
3. Tattoos on the Heart by Father Gregory Boyle (1 nomination)
3. War by Sebastian Junger (1 nomination)
3. Lit by Mary Karr (1 nomination)
3. At Home by Bill Bryson (1 nomination)
3. Nothing to Envy : Real lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (1 nomination)
3. The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal (1 nomination)
3. The Right to be Out by Stuart Biegel (1 nomination)
3. The Tiger by John Vaillant (1 nomination)

Longlist Speculative

1. Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness (3 nominations)

2.Kraken by China Mieville (2 nominations)

3. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (1 nomination)
3. Corvus by Paul Kearney (1 nomination)
3. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (1 nomination)
3. CassaStar by Alex J. Cavenaugh (1 nomination)
3. The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight by Gina Ochsner (1 nomination)
3. The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (1 nomination)
3. Dante’s Journey by JC Marino (1 nomination)
3. Light of Asteria: Kailmeyra’s Last Hope by Elizabeth Isaacs (1 nomination)
3. Knightley Academy by Violet Haberdasher (1 nomination)
3. The Passage by Justin Cronin (1 nomination)
3. The Book by M. Clifford (1 nomination)
3. Black Out by Connie Willis (1 nomination)
3. Dreadnought by Cherie Priest (1 nomination)

What will the results be? Especially with so many books? Yet, one can never have too many books.

Amos Lassen Responds

(from the comments page of the last post; I'm posting it here because I think it's important to hear Amos Lassen's response)

by Amos Lassen

Thank you so much for your support but your facts are not totally correct. The people involved in this also have tried to unseat Harriet Klausner and another top ten reviewer. They consider themselves to be “policeman of the net." Whatever their reason for their actions may be, it appears that destroying another person makes them look good in some way. The strange thing is that several of them are not even ready to disclose their true identities and hide behind fake names and profiles. This action was begun by another reviewer, E. Jacobs (whose real name is Erin Elway) and she enlisted a group of “Amazonians” to help her reach gold. She enlisted a Jason Kirkfield, a very bitter and outspoken children’s book reviewer with a poisoned tongue, a Barbara Barclay who revealed herself when she and Elway wrote disgusting self-righteous letters to Lambda Literary about me, two characters under the names of Muzzlehatch and Truthseeker, an African American, John Green, who was enlisted to accuse me of racial slurs (I used the words ape and gorilla in a review and was accused of racism), venomous Timothy Riley, another top ten reviewer, then there are Theo and Terry, the acid tongued “avoraciousreader”, Gary Peterson, Lynn E. Lisa Mims, the recently added two days ago, Ann-Kat, J. Faulk, L. Power, tweekster and several others. You cannot imagine the way they speak. They claim that I have made death threats against them, they are planning to issue restraining orders against me, they have written to authors and publishing houses and have contacted work places claiming to be representatives of Amazon.com and released information that they had to right to know on the internet. Jason Kirkfield sees himself as a Christ figure and he is evil in speech and in deed but he has a great supporting cast.

While my profile page was posted several years ago, they chose to contact my former employers. What is so interesting is that this seems to be a 24 hour job for them. Kirkfield, for example, posted news of this blog at 1:47 AM and the author put it on the net at just 12:22 AM. They scour the net, etc. looking for news of me. I cannot imagine what a lonely life that must be.

Huh?: Or Amos Lassen vs. Amazon Reviewers vs. The World

A month or so ago (or maybe it was just a few weeks), I was invited to join the Facebook group "We proudly support Amos Lassen."

Anyone in the queer literary scene will know Amos, or know of him. He reviews books on Amazon. He's just not any reviewer, according to Lambda Literary:

"[H]e is one of the most influential Amazon reviewers in the nation — especially when it comes to the categories for gay romance, gay fiction, gay and lesbian erotica, DVD, and documentary. An Amazon Top 50 Reviewer and a member of the Amazon Vine Program—a highly-coveted, invitation only badge—he has reviewed 3,683 products to date and receives hundreds of review submissions a month. He was kind enough to share a summary of his favorite titles for 2010. From indie publishers to top houses, from romance to poetry to literary fiction, Lassen’s carefully curated list is as diverse as his evolving tastes."

I joined the group because I thought it was just a fan group for Amos. I didn't know he was "under attack." The charge was plagiarism, and Lassen has recently removed all his reviews from Amazon. He's has started a blog where he now reviews books.

If this shows something (anything at all), it shows that the world of Amazon reviewing is cutthroat. This ain't the New York Times. Fuck Michiko Kakutani. Amazon Customer Reviews has Harriet Klausner.

How Harriet Klausner is the shit:
1) Harriet Klausner is the #1 reviewer on Amazon.
2) Harriet Klausner has over 23,000 reviews.
3) Harriet Klausner has 88,978 helpful votes.
4) Harriet Klausner has a Wikipedia page.
5) Harriet Klausner has an Appreciation Society blog
6) Before writing each review, Harriet Klausner eats a bucket of nails and washes it down with Bleach.*
7) Harriet Klausner used to fuck Hemingway without lube. Afterwards, Hemingway cried and then shot himself in the face.*

(* not verifiable facts, but assumed to be true)

And perhaps the most important thing you need to know about Harriet Klausner is that she hates competition. Or at least her fans do. From the Appreciation blog:

Harriet has a competitor? Amazon Top 50 reviewer Amos Lassen

Not that this represents any material threat to our dear Harriet, but the phenomenon is curious in its own right. Apparently plagiarism is rampant on the sacred pages of Amazon. Our correspondent alerts us about another Amazon top reviewer, someone named Amos Lassen. I haven't looked into it in much detail, but upon a cursory perusement it seems interesting. Here's Amos Lassen's reviews page with comments. Many familiar names amongst the critical commenters! Check it out. Oh yeah, there's more: our correspondent points to this Amazon discussion thread for more talk about reviews plagiarism in general and this reviewer in particular (I haven't checked it out, so see for yourselves). 

Well, once more: no one beats Harriet at the sheer absurdity of her good works, but hey... there's enough room for everyone under this sun! Check it out and share your thoughts.

Our thanks to our correspondent for pointing us to this new (or not so new, actually -- but certainly new for us) event.

Lassen has been a threat for Klausner spot. It was a time to end it. Enter the attacks. They started as late as October; as reviewer "Jason Kirkfield" writes on the Amazon message board:

The description is obviously of Lassen, who teaches writing at the University of Central Arkansas. The attacks continued (and continues at this writing), with "evidence" of Lassen's crimes (since the reviews have been deleted, there is no more evidence, everything is hearsay), spying on Lassen's Facebook group, etc.

Authors have chimed in to show their support, including DAC (Daniel Allen Cox), Bryan Borland, and Edmund White. Meanwhile, Lassen leaves Amazon, Harriet Klausner is still number one, Jason Kirkfield can continue writing reviews for baby books:

Don't judge his taste. In the world of Amazon reviews, it's not the words that matter (despite what the message board might hint at). It's about who can put out the most reviews, no matter how vague. As book reviewers at The Onion recently learned:

1. Praise Generically and Effusively.

2. Pad with Easily Discoverable Background.

3. Positive Reviews Are Much Less Likely to Be Challenged by Their Subjects.

This is how Klausner has gotten to top. This is how she stays at the top.

I'm not saying Amazon reviewers have no influence on book sales. Yet their Amazon reviewers. These are the same people who go into a brick-and-mortar bookstore and say "How much is this book? List price? I'm not paying that. [Husband's name] did you know this is like a bookstore? They're selling books at full price." (This was based on a conversation I had with a customer when I worked in a bookstore, no lie).

These are also the customers who write this.

This entire scenario reminds me of those days when I was a little kid and I would spend hours playing Neopets, fighting with people about neopoints and fake food and fake houses. To Jason Kirkfield and others: isn't it time to grow up? You know, spend less time arguing over Amazon reviews (alas, have we replace our own reality so soon)? When was the last time you actually sat down and savored a book? Get giddy at the way the words dance across the page? Smile and cry at instances of recognition? Ponder over ideas traditionally laid out as fact?

In other words...LEAVE AMOS LASSEN ALONE!

Book Review: Burnings

Burnings
by Ocean Vuong
9780578070599


It's no secret I stalk Ocean Vuong. It's because I envy him: demographically, he's like me: he's my age (born in 1988), he's Vietnamese, he's queer, yet he's so talented the words "mind orgasm" is the first thought I have after reading his stuff. When you read my stuff...well you can't read my stuff because I'm not good enough to get published...yet.

I don't write poetry anymore (editors told me to quit it), but I wrote one for/about him:

"To A Beautiful Poet"

You are the poet

that takes my spots

in literary magazines

and I want to kill you

and your beautiful language

because I chose the wrong major 

and never learned how to

write, or else how to read Whitman,

who I read only once

because I felt sorry for the guy,

you know, for being dead, but

then I figured I would've wanted him gone

anyway. So now there's the problem of you.

Now compare this anyone of the poems collected in Vuong's debut chapbook, Burnings and you would be jealous too. Collected here are 25 of Vuong's poems, some of which have already been published in literary journals such as Cha, PANK, and Ganymeade. Yet to assume this is just collected poetry is wrong. What Vuong has put together is a chapbook with coherent themes and imagery which, when read together, works to inform one another, adding up to a greater whole.

In part, Vuong's collection is about the convergence of different spheres and the conflict and excitement that results in such clashes of country, memory, history, and bodies. The first poem, "Ars Poetica," a preface to the book, hints to this convergence:

"When two ships emerge

from a wall of fog,

the sails lit with sheets of fire,

there will be a traveler on each deck

with the same face,

watching flames reflect

in the other's eyes"

As the book continues, the image of flames and burning is further explored as a metaphor for both pain and pleasure. In Vuong's poetry, the flames of memory are painful ("Let us burn quietly into the lives/we never were") and inextinguishable ("My grandmother kisses as if history never ended, as if somewhere/a body is still/falling apart."). Vuong (and his narrators) is at once a subject of history as well as a witness to it. He not only feels the burnings, he sees it (as in "Kissing in Vietnamese," "My Mother Remembers Her Mother," and "The Photo").

But to say that all burnings are bad is not Vuong's point. There's pleasure too. Mostly these deal with the pleasures of human heat (in "More Than Sex") or imprints of it (in "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome"). Yet unlike those of pain, experiences of pleasure are fleeting or used as moments rather than historic situations: "Even now, as the body trembles/from pleasure of its making/somewhere, a plane is pregnant with death."

Vuong's poetic world is a world of pain: the pain of lives interrupted (in "Burnings"), the pain of never being able to come back ("Returning to the City of My Birth"), the pain of pleasure that cannot possibly last. But reading these poems--these wise, sometimes sad, sometimes sensual poems--one can see that pain can perhaps be the most beautiful thing of the human experience: not in a masochistic way, but because it's universal, something that one must acquire to be recognizably human: there simply is no other option. This is perhaps best articulated in the last poem "Seeing It As It Is," a bittersweet moment where a blind girl gains her eyesight and sees a burning building: "Mommy," she says, "you were right. This world/is beautiful."

In Ocean Vuong's poetic vision, the world is beautiful with all its tears and fires. Burnings is a major yet compact achievement in this poet's career.

Book Review: Servant of the Underworld

Servant of the Underworld
by Aliette De Bodard
9780857660312

There were many reasons I wanted to read this book. For one, the author is half-Vietnamese and I'm increasingly interested in Asian authors working in the arts. Second, the publisher, Angry Robot, has a way with marketing. From the UK, 2010 marks their "invasion" (their word) of the US market. As they say in the back of the book "Prepare to welcome your new Robot overlords." It's always nice to have new publishers in Sci-Fi/Fantasy, seeing that the market is seemingly dominated by DAW and Baen. Angry Robot looks like a new voice. The way they make their mass markets are interesting too. This book says it should be filed under "Aztec Mysery, Locked Room, Human Sacrifices, The Dead Walk!" They even go as far as suggesting other books you might enjoy if you enjoyed this one--not just from their own line, but from other publishers as well. Additionally, their cover copy/synopsis is short and sweet. For this particular book, four sentences are supposed to tell you all.

In this case, Aliette de Bodard's debut novel, Servant of the Underworld, takes place in an alternate Aztec empire. Reminscent of Greek mythology, de Bodard's Tecnochtitlan is a world where mortals mingle with gods. The main character, Acatl, in fact, is a priest who deals with such gods and quickly becomes a detective. What happens is a locked room mystery: a priestess is attacked and kidnapped in an empty room. Blood is splashed all over the walls, the place reeks of magic, the main suspect is Acatl's brother. To add to this, of course, is a sibling rivalry between the two, and Acatl's decision to help his brother because of familial ties. What follows is not purely alternate historical fantasy, but more like a mystery novel.

De Bodard has already has a long list of accolades. She's won the Writers of the Future Contest and was featured in The Year's Best Science Fiction for a short story from which this novel was inspired. Obviously, she has a gift for shorter form. But as this novel proves, maybe the long form is simply not for her.

The first way De Bodard missteps in her novel is prose that inelegant and overall bland. She falls into cliches such as "my chest tighten," to describe characters' reactions. There are rarely any insight into what makes the characters unique and worthwhile. This includes the main character and narrator Acatl. Despite an interesting occupation (a priest of the dead), Acatl is an overall unlikeable character who continously bemoans his family history of disappointments and failures. Neither is he sympathetic. It is even harder to read the story from his point of view.

It is indeed strange to have a fantasy novel written in first person point of view, which tends to be very introverted, which is also the case for this novel. While experimentation can be good, in a fantasy one must be an effective world-builder. By using the first person De Bodard limits the audience's view to that which is filtered through her highly unlikeable narrator. The magical workings and the world in which he lives is never fully realized, despite the obvious amount of research the author did (a la the Gears, she also included a bibliography)

De Bodard lacks skills in prose styling, which in turn effects the story itself. To her credit, she does have excellent moments of humanity--the rivalry between the brothers, the dynamic relationships between the siblings, the emotions felt by the characters at desiring things which they can't have--these are the key moments of this story that is less about murder and magic, than about the fragile illusions we make and how they can easily become broken. Yet these parts are too few and far in-between to make De Bodard's debut enjoyable or readable. One can only hope that De Bodard's next novel in this trilogy is worthwhile or that her short stories deserves as much credit as is given to them. Or that Angry Robot other titles are better (I want to read this, this, and this).

Despite this, it seems De Bodard can still make a good bowl of pho.

Updates From The Better Book Project

My Better Book Project is still on, and I am still accepting submissions! In fact, I've extended the deadline to February 1, 2011, so you'll have time to tweak the last line of that poem, or find a better way to describe that character. Or, you can dig into your closet and find something previously published--I'm now accepting those too! Send in your work! But remember: I am starting the reading process and responses will be made on a rolling basis. If the anthology is filled before then, I will close the deadline early.

www.betterbookproject.blogspot.com

So You Wanna Write A Novel...

(via Ryan Field)