This novel really holds up well. I first read it when I was around 20 and didn’t know anything, and it’s amazing just how vivid all these characters still are. If you haven’t read it yet, the plot loosely revolves around this family: 75-year-old Enid and her husband Alfred, who is slowly succumbing to dementia, and their three children (Chip, a cultural theory professor fired for stalking a student; Gary, a depressed financier living a solidly upper middle class existence; and Denise, a sexually confused rock-star chef). Franzen tackles the economy – the markets rising and falling, money, investments, international politics – in a way so prescient that I think this book more than any other defines the turn of the 21st century. (Maybe it’s because I read it at a seminal time in my writing life, but it’s also the kind of book I would like to write one day.) Look for his new one, his first novel since The Corrections, out in September.

This movie made me wonder if the Coen brothers had lost their minds. Just to warn you, SPOILERS: Set in the generic Midwest in 1967, the movie is about a Jewish physics professor who loosely resembles Job (from the Bible), in that everything falls apart on him. His wife has taken up with his colleague, his son is stoned all the time, and his daughter wants a nose job. He may or may not get tenure, because he has a disgruntled Korean student trying to bribe him for a passing grade, and someone keeps writing letters to the tenure committee saying our hero is a some kind of sexual deviant. Larry accepts it all with a meekness that makes you want to strangle him. At the end of the movie, everything seems to resolve, until he gets a phone call with about some mixed X-ray results. The End. Oh, and the movie opens with a 10-minute short set in in Eastern Europe, about a mysterious (maybe) dead man visiting a couple for soup. (In the bonus features, the Coens explained that they wanted to open with a Yiddish parable; they didn’t know an appropriate one, so they made it up, which I thought was great.) The movie had its moments – it’s the Coens, and I’ll take them even when they miss – but I probably wouldn’t put this one at the top of your queue.

I finished in 55 minutes, 34 seconds.

New book reviewed at the NY Times:

Jason Turbow and Michael Duca, obvious baseball obsessives from the San Francisco Bay Area, have collected dozens of stories from baseball history about situations that are not governed by the rule book but that pertain to the fuzzy notions of rightness and respect and that describe the contours of the so-called baseball codes. When is it legitimate for a pitcher to knock down a hitter? When is it unsportsmanlike for a base runner to steal a base? Spitballs may not be legal, but are they ethical? Why might a player lie to his manager? Is it ever O.K. not to join your teammates when a brawl starts on the field? And how about stealing your opponent’s signs? Is it proper? Always? Are some methods of thievery more tolerable than others?

Maud Newton has an interesting post about a writer’s cyber-self after he dies:

If you’re a writer, and you don’t have a will, you really should make one. And if you’re not sure how, Neil Gaiman’s tutorial is a good place to start.

What he reads every day, over at The Atlantic. I’m glad to see he still reads print (a lot of it). This sentence made me feel underread:

If I don’t have a social event, and am reading non-fiction, it is likely I will read a few books in an evening. I can’t read fiction nearly as fast.

I’m off to read a book.

For my job, I’ve been reading up on advertising copy, and below are three popular books for copywriters. One through-line is that advertising copy that sells is rather formulaic, and that ad copy is too often clever or otherwise ineffective. I’m not sure how agency copywriters would view these ideas – these books tend to stifle creativity, preferring instead basic headlines such as “7 reasons you need this product this spring” or “Shoe Sale – 50% off.” Still, I found each of these useful.

Ogilvy on Advertising is the most dated. It focuses mainly on ad from the ’60s and ’70s, but Ogilvy’s approach is fairly straightforward: Neither he nor the reader has enough time, so here’s the way it is. Don’t use reverse type, use big headlines, and when you start your business keep in mind that the government is going to take most of your profits. Come to think of it, Ogilvy’s voice reminds me a bit of Norman Mailer. You literature folks might be interested to know that Ogilvy and Mather is the ad agency where DeLillo worked before he was a novelist.

Bly’s The Copywriter’s Handbook is probably the most useful of these books because he offers advice for the absolute beginner (what is a brochure?) as well as tips for already working writers. What Stephen King’s book On Writing is for a novelist, Bly’s book is for a copywriter. He culls a lot of his advice from John Caples (see below), but he presents it for someone who may be doing Web copy. Like Ogilvy, Bly is interested in sales – how many of the ad’s viewers are called to action by the copy? Again, the copy tends to be dull, but, according to Bly, creativity might win awards but it doesn’t sell.

John Caples might be the most famous advertising copywriter ever, and this is his classic text. Again, he’s interested in what sells rather than what is award-winning, and I’m not sure how contemporary advertisers view his methods, but this book is all about testing an ad for efficacy, whether by coupons or whatever. A tested ad has accountability. Since he was a copywriter, copy is king here, but the bulk of the book emphasizes that all parts of the ad are just a means to the sale. My only qualm with this book is that I read the 5th edition, which was rewritten by someone else who at one point refers to Caples in the third person. I couldn’t tell whether the “I” that appeared in other sections belonged to Caples or the rewriter, and I guess it doesn’t matter, as this isn’t literature, but it bothered me nonetheless.