Jamie’s Friday Evening Book Reviews is the 1,000th post at AuthorScoop.

I’d like to thank her and Rob for their hard work in bringing our readers a wide variety of literary news and content, and also express my gratitude to our faithful readers.

Here’s to the next thousand.

-William

I just finished the documentary series, BORN INTO THIS, the biography of poet and novelist, Charles Bukowski, that was featured most recently as our Afternoon Viewing selection for the past two weeks.  Life being what it is, it took me far longer to finish it than I would have liked.  It seems lately that the things I want to do are finding themselves further and further back in the queue of what I aim to get done on any given day.  I should probably do something about that, but realizing it is progress at least.

I’m surprised I started the film at all.  I had long ago written off Bukowski as vulgar, obnoxious, and one of the reasons I had decided that poetry wasn’t for me.  Worse than all of it, I had concluded that he was a bare-assed Emperor, making fun of everyone who pretended to be something other than chronically discontent.  But things have changed in my leaping tendencies.  I’m older and more careful of my bones, and am blessedly less spry to conclusions than I used to be; more flexible to reexamine the bricks in my foundation.  I’m so very pleased that I did in this case.

What I learned was: a) that I hadn’t read enough Bukowski to have bolted such a rigid opinion in place and b) that it was a bit arrogant to imagine that everyone affected by his work, and his acquaintance, was delusional.  Learning of his life and times, the work makes sense and I heard more than a few lines that were very beautiful and very real.

I guess the weightiest lesson I gained was that reality, captured in plain words, is valuable.  It doesn’t mean to be (or need to be) the last word or the bottom line, only one way to slow life down and let you keep it a bit longer.  I think that’s what the arts do – stretch and inflate and warp our small experience of something infinite, as a gift to us.  Bird’s eye, mouse’s eye, God’s eye views are all valuable, but so is the bleary, angry, desperate eye of a person who is paying attention.

I still think Bukowski was often vulgar and obnoxious, but am content to know that I am not less because his work doesn’t always speak to me personally.  I’m only less if I cannot imagine that it would ring clear to someone else.

Thank you, William, for finding and posting that.

Sex is funny. It just is. Procreating is even funnier and best yet, sci-fi’s jousting with contraception, as Lauren Davis of i09.com points out.

In a universe stocked with sentient robots and faster than light travel, you’d hope that science would have mastered something as mundane as the human reproductive system, yet the fictive cosmos are littered with unplanned pregnancies, bastard children, and all manner of unpleasant critters bursting from one’s internal organs. Is any form of contraception safe in world of science fiction?

Check out the whole piece for a laugh. Then go think up something that will work. It’s money in the bank.

Just a note as a mea culpa.  In my overzealous blazing of spam comments, I accidentally deleted some legitimate commentary.  I’m very sorry and have bitten all of the offending typing fingers to bleeding.  It looks like the shower scene from ‘Psycho’ in here.

I’ll be more careful in the future.

After a short (long) haitus, Author Scoop is back—now in blog form!

Many thanks to Kirk Brown for getting it all set up and for hosting us and for all his support and encouragement during the transition.

Now, on to the news.