The semester started off on an Old Testament note with hail hammering the windows, lightning strikes illuminating the skies above the Berkeley campus, and hordes of wet and shivering students cramming the hallways. I always begin the semester with the usual syllabus hoo hah and a short assignment, and it got me thinking about the inevitable critiques I’m going to have to write on all of my students’ essays in a couple of weeks, and the fact that I will feel like a dick afterward. Look, I love teaching, the classroom part anyway, and I believe it is a vocation and a calling and all that, but I am unconvinced that anyone in their right mind enjoys writing comments on essays. Maybe I’d feel differently if I taught creative writing, but I suspect not. I always feel terrible after I finish a pile of grading.

Which in turn made me think about internet book reviews and blogs. My students occasionally comment that I am a “harsh grader” but after some of the things people have written about my own books, I can only think, wow, in comparison to the pundits of the blogosphere or internetlandia or whatever we’re calling it these days, my comments on essays are like a freaking Hallmark card. But I do have a sense of humor, and so I thought it might be kind of funny to assemble a few of the meanest, weirdest things people have written about my book. Mostly on Goodreads. I kind of hate Goodreads, and I’m beginning to think the democratization of book reviews via the internet is kind of terrible. But let’s do this anonymously! Wouldn’t want to start any trouble or anything…

Those who have been part of the culture will find the book to be like a late night conversation with that one friend who wants to show her indie cred by talking about what everyone else has done and how she knows all those people from her work and that she is one of the first people to have seen Smoosh play, but now their parents are exploiting them and what’s up with Care Bears on Fire?

I hate hipster academics.

The worst music book written in the last ten years.

Kaya Oakes lacks the literary finesse to execute the history behind indie culture in an engaging and entertaining way for the reader… considering I bought Miss Oake’s [sic] book in a super-sized Barnes and Noble…she might think twice about criticizing the corporate book chains and major publishers that are to thank for her book receiving residuals and royalties. (side note? HAHAHAHA royalties? HAHAHAHA)

A wildly inaccurate account of the notable events of “indie” culture in the past 15-20 years.

I don’t know that I’ll finish this book, the weather changed and the covers curled back to expose the cheap and pulpy inner core.

So, to all of my past, current and future students, now you know: you are getting off so, so easy.

After all my gripey griping about crappy blog reviews, two arrived yesterday that are quite the opposite of crappy. I’m really pleased that Slanted and Enchanted is featured over on Popmatters, a website I like a lot. If you scoot over there to read it and like it too, you can Digg or Delicious or Redit or BuzzUp or retweet the piece and maybe we can nudge it onto their most popular articles list  (a defense of the hipster phenomenon is currently #1).

And another website after my own heart, the Feminist Review, has a thoughtful reflection on feminism and indie tucked into a lovely review of S&E.

I’m heading out of and right back into a month of grading and reading my students’ work every weekend, so things may get a bit slow around ye blog. Two upcoming events in the meantime: I’m reading at Litquake on the 17th of this month and running another indie panel at Moe’s on Nov. 4. Actually, I’m looking for a band to play at the Moe’s event, if anyone’s interested, and another panelist, preferably a woman involved in the local indie music community (it’s turning out to be an all female panel, which is excellent).

My next book is going to be about a noncontroversial topic, something everyone agrees is delightful and does not comes with any sort of pre-suppositions, purported authorial biases, or references to hipsters and their pants. It’s a topic we can all agree is an awesome one, and no matter who you are, you will want to read it and buy an extra copy to give away. This book will bring us all together in a kind of unified adoration not seen since the introduction of the peanut butter cup.

That’s right, I’m writing a book about puppies.

Okay, I’m lying. But puppies are pretty great even if I’ll always be a cat person.

Yesterday was kind of insane: on top of teaching two classes, I also got interviewed by a journalism grad student from USC who was kind enough to take an interest in my book and in the magazine I used to edit, then I drove out to Orinda for the dress rehearsal of Cal Shakes’ final show, Midsummer Night’s Dream (my summer job doing pre show talks there ends this week). This may explain why I also had an “asshole day”, which is not to be confused with a “bitch day”. On a bitch day I’m just run of the mill cranky and ill tempered; on an asshole day I tend to be more aggressive than usual. I’m a pretty mellow person and loathe confrontation, so usually when I get a Google alert about a book review and it’s a negative review, I just read it, gripe to my husband and friends, and leave it be.

But because it was asshole day, I decided to start responding to some of those reviews.  I know bad reviews are bound to happen. The first review the book got was in Kirkus, which is notorious for its awful reviews. The second was in Library Journal, and that was awesome, as was the one in Publisher’s Weekly. Generally, all the big newspaper reviews have been positive. But the blog reviews have been all over the place.

Anyway, it was during the conversation with the grad student that I started to get why the blog reviews were irritating me to the point that I had to start commenting on some of them. It’s because blogs are always so freaking short, and there’s no way you can develop a thoughtful, reflective review of anything in less than 500 words. That’s a big reason I don’t do much freelance journalism anymore — it takes me at least a thousand words just to figure out what my point needs to be. The decimation of book sections in newspapers, and of book criticism in magazines, means that the combined anonymity and generally rude culture of the internet leaves room for people to blurt out whatever the hell they want, but unedited, and usually in short bursts. That’s why I was a Twitter holdout and even now kind of don’t get it. And the kind of sustained, intelligent book reviews writers used to get are pretty much a thing of the past. And no, I don’t read The Believer so I have no idea if they pull that off.

It’s frustrating, because the internet does promote a more democratic range of responses, but it also means that people who aren’t writers and don’t know much about writing are writing book reviews. I’m not an elitist (I teach writing and reading skills to at risk students at a public university for a reason), but I do miss the idea of intellectual discourse in reviews instead of BLEAT BLEAT LOOK AT ME I’M SLINGING MUD YAY. And the same goes for film, and music, and television… anybody can take the time to learn enough to write informed reviews. But time is what most of us seem to be missing.

It’s miserably, horribly hot in Oakland, which makes your author puffy, oily and grouchy. Perfect time to update the blog! New reviews and a pretty awesome upcoming event, so this is going to be an updatey kind of post.

# Item the first: I’m heading to LA to do a panel at Skylight Books on Sunday, September 27 at 5pm. Here’s the blurb from their site:

We’re looking forward to this panel discussion on the development of indie culture in America. Kaya Oakes, author of the new book on the topic, Slanted and Enchanted, will be joined by Ben Bush, editor of The Fanzine; Courtney Knopf of Everloving Records; and Daniel House of CZ Records. Justin Gage, founder of the fantastic music blog Aquarium Drunkard, will moderate.

Kaya Oakes is the co-founder of Kitchen Sink magazine, which won the Utne Independent Press Award for Best New Magazine in 2002, and currently is a writing instructor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Based in Los Angeles, Justin Gage is the founder of both the influential music blog Aquarium Drunkard as well as Autumn Tone Records. He also hosts, and is the program director, for the weekly Aquarium Drunkard show on Sirius/XM satellite radio. His first book, Memphis And The Delta Blues Trail, was published in May via Countrymen Press.

Hopefully, this event will turn out to be as great as I anticipate, and if it does, I’m thinking of putting together a similar panel in Oakland/Berkeley/SF for some time this fall. If you’re a Bay Arean and would like to participate, let me know.

# Item the second: two new reviews, in The Fanzine (former Kitchen Sink contributing writer and Skylight panelist Ben Bush is one of The Fanzine’s editors, and I’m working on a review of two poetry books that will appear there soon). Also in Fast Forward Weekly out of Calgary.

That’s about it. Trying to decide if it’s worth going to my non-air-conditioned gym this morning for what would inevitably be a pathetic attempt at working out. Lethargy may triumph.

Damn, I don’t know what I did to deserve all the Canadian and Quebeqios love (like spending every summer there from the ages of one to fourteen, ahem), but I’ll take it! Thanks to Ryan Bigge at the Toronto Star for the thoughtful review of Slanted and Enchanted, and to Ian McGillis at the Montreal Gazette for the equally thoughful essay about my book and graphic novels in popular culture. If this keeps up, I think I might have to see if I can get a Canadian book tour going. If anyone in Montreal or Toronto wants to have me, yes please! I am happy to come visit.

The book will be a month old this week, and now that publicity hoo hah has died down for the time being, I did something I was warned by smart friends not to do: I looked at my Amazon sales ranking. AJ Jacobs has a funny bit about this in The Year of Living Biblically where he vows not to covet but cheats regularly by peeping at his Amazon page. He’s a best selling author so I don’t know what he’s worried about. As a person who’s trying to be more accepting of mystery, I find this exercise facinating. For example, last night the book was ranked at something like 300,000, way below the edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins I was thinking of ordering from one of their independent sellers. This morning, it’s surged to a more respectable 60K something or other. But how does that happen overnight? Is it like yeast bread and it just swells if the temperature’s right? Does that mean two or three people ordered it over the weekend?

And then there’s the issue of Amazon reviews, and right now I have none, though I have the feeling one or two might appear soon. I’m pretty active on Goodreads, mostly because I read a lot of books (my summer count since late May is now up to almost twelve titles, sheesh) and like to catalog them somewhere, and people write pretty snarky things there too, but the cult of Amazon reviewers is so weird. Kevin Killian, a local poet, did an entire book of his own Amazon reviews which are pretty amazing, but generally they tend to be written by people who seem to have a maniacal need to review every book ever written. It’s amazing how many reviews people can write! I find the same phenomenon happening on Yelp, where people seem to get really into reviewing every hot dog, nail shop, Big O Tires and ice cream store they visit. As a person who gets exhausted by minutae, I get tired just scrolling down the page.

When you’re born and raised in the East Bay, you don’t call San Francisco “San Francisco”, you call it “The City”. And you definitely don’t call it by any cutesy nicknames (though I admit I always liked Baghdad by the Bay until the first Gulf War ruined that one). So I have to thank The City’s big paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, for running an excellent review of Slanted and Enchanted by Eryn Loeb. This is the first long review of the book to address it and its subject manner in a thoughtful, meaningful way*. I’d toss some quotes in here, but Loeb’s writing is excellent, so I encourage you to take a look of your own. The Chronicle, like a lot of major newspapers, has recently gone through several rounds of downsizing, so I applaud their effort to keep book reviews a priority. This has not been the case with so many other newspapers, and it’s sad for readers who are losing the multiple perspectives afforded by having different critical voices chime in. Anyway, read it — I enjoyed it, and not just because it’s about my book, honestly!

*I’ve been debating whether or not I should say something (beyond gripes to friends) about the rather nasty and mean spirited review of the book that appeared in one of our local free weeklies (which is owned by a horrible, corrupt corporation *AHEM*), but I think I’ll just leave well enough alone. As my friend reminded me today, this is polarizing subject matter, and people are always going to pitch a fit when they don’t like how you talk about something that matters to them. And that can lead to intelligent, engaged debate. It can also lead to people saying some really dumb shit.

Image via failblog.org, naturally.

Still caught in the end-of-semester vortex, and heading into my third straight weekend of essay grading (those who imagine academics live a leisurely life have never taught basic writing courses), but I wanted to drop a few updates while I have a minute of early morning time:

• Today is Buy Indie Day. If you’re lucky enough to live near an independent bookstore, record store, a farmer’s market, or anyplace else that’s not a chain, today’s the day to put your money where your mouth is and support them. If you don’t, there are plenty of online places where you can still support independent artists and media.
• I’ve already posted these on the home page here at Oakestown and on Facebook, but early reviews of Slanted and Enchanted are arriving, and they’re pretty awesome. Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “lively and highly literate” (knew that grad degree was good for something), and says that “as an explanation and excavation of the already fading recent past, it is essential reading.” Library Journal picked the book for a featured review on its website and said it “uses the concept of a creative community as a mediating theme to illustrate how indie culture has oscillated between the music and literary scene throughout the last few decades.” It adds that S&E “will particularly appeal to artists, musicians, writers, and kids with thick-rimmed glasses”, which makes me extra glad I went for the Rachel Maddow frames at the optometrist this year. I’m still getting used to people writing anything about my writing after, ahem, twenty-something years of writing for indie magazines, zines, lit journals and small press pubs that very few folks actually read, but I do appreciate the kind words.
• S&E is also doing pretty well over at Goodreads, where lots of folks are marking it as a “to read”. I’d like to make a deal with those people. If you actually read it when it comes out, let me know and I’ll happily provide you with free issues of Kitchen Sink magazine, shipping included. Although it’s no longer being published, KS won the Utne Independent Press Award and multiple Best Magazine awards from our local free weeklies. I write a bit about it in the book, and still think it was a great experience to write for it and edit it. Also I have approximately 5 million issues collecting dust in my house and they’re a fire hazard.
• Yesterday was National New Majority Facuty Day. Lately I’ve had a lot of discussions with colleagues about the increasing presence of lecturers (I’m one of them) in higher education. Something like 70% of undergraduate courses at Cal are taught by non-tenured faculty and graduate students, and this has steadily become the case at many other schools. Unfortunately, it creates  a two-tiered class system for faculty: those with tenure receive research grants, sabbaticals, regular pay raises on a higher salary scale, marital hiring preferences (eg if you get tenure, your spouse/partner is pretty much guaranteed a job) and nice offices. Those without get bupkes (well, at Cal we do get benefits, and that’s nothing to sneeze at in this economy). Since it’s May Day and I’m a member of the union, I just wanted to mention that one can start to feel quite taken for granted at one’s job when one is not tenured. For example, if one publishes a book or two, one might not even get any acknwoledgement for that from anyone beyond one’s immediate coworkers and students. Ahem. I’m not sure if I agree with the idea that the elimination of tenure is the solution, but something must, must, must be done to increase parity between faculty. It’s an insult that equally qualified, equally trained, equally well published folks are not considered worthy of much beyond one year contracts, if that. End rant! Happy May Day! Go buy stuff from independent artists!

Yes, I’ve been remiss about updating this new blog. Born and promptly abandoned! But let me see you try to update frequently when you are:

a) teaching two sections of a six unit writing course (that’s 9-12 and 3-6 PM, twice a week)

b) on a hiring committee that meets weekly, now in the stage where we’re actually interviewing folks and thus meeting twice a week for 6 hours at a shot

c) suffering through a freak bay area heat wave with temperatures in the nineties

d) sulky about a shitty early review of the book. I’d say more about that, but I’m cranky and apt to get in trouble if I do. Suffice to say that Library Journal is awesome, and K____s can suck my d__k. Ooops!

Fear not, Viagra-spammers: I’ll be done teaching in two and a half weeks a free, free, free all summer to update this thing and catch you all up on things bookish and indiesh and whatnot. In the meantime, I’m on a classical music jag after too many months of guitars and highly recommend Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, which you can hear briefly over the end credits of Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal, a movie I caught the other night about fifteen years after I originally saw it. If you haven’t seen any of Arcand’s films (particularly The Barbarian Invasions), don’t waste time here…