Eminem is Becoming a Force in the Literary World

(Source: USA Today)

The Detroit rapper, who has sold more albums than anyone in the past decade, has a vast following of disaffected suburban youth drawn to his rage, sarcasm and bitter humor. His posse of admirers also boasts an unlikely elite circle of heavy hitters from the book world. Seriously.

Among them:

•Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. Famous for retelling that medieval dragon drama Beowulf, the Irish poet, 71, declared in 2003 that Eminem "created a sense of what is possible. He has sent a voltage around a generation. He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy."

•The Last King of Scotland author Giles Foden. In 2001, the British novelist compared the rapper to Robert Browning and wrote, "A brief examination of (2000 single) Stan reveals it to have all the depth and texture of the greatest examples of English verse."

•Queen of the best sellers, Janet Evanovich. She discovered Eminem around 2000 thanks to her daughter Alex, who was a fan. "He's an incredibly talented rapper, and the videos matched the energy of the music perfectly."

Her fave: "I really like the Without Me video. The comic-book format is a hoot, and I love Eminem and Dr. Dre jamming out in the Batmobile."

How does Evanovich evaluate his lyrics? "I don't. I just enjoy."

The literary world has fallen for rockers before. From the start of his career, Bob Dylan had the lit-crit crowd in vapors, and Leonard Cohen, an admired poet and novelist before he warbled his first note, remains an eternal love object. Patti Smith's "Robert Mapplethorpe and me" memoir, Just Kids, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, having already scarfed up the National Book Award for non-fiction.

Eminem hasn't chosen a last name referencing Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, nor is he a senior luminary retiring into semi-respectability. He's a 38-year-old superstar leading this year's Grammy pack with 10 nominations stemming from 2010 album Recovery. And as a white rapper dominating a primarily black genre, he carries racial baggage. As horror-meister Stephen King wrote in his Entertainment Weekly column: "I started off thinking Eminem was a flash in the pan, a kind of hip-hop Hanson brother. How wrong I was. Recovery is sometimes funny, sometimes terrible, always painfully honest. The matching of Eminem and Rihanna on Love the Way You Lie is pure genius."

King's Hanson dig recalls a tendency to attack Em's credibility for conquering a genre born in black culture. Is he the Elvis of rap?

Not so fast, cautions Adam Bradley, associate professor of English at the University of Colorado-Boulder and the author of Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop. "It's unfair to say that Eminem is somehow a colonizer of hip-hop. Race was just one of the factors in rap."

It's also about poverty, something Eminem knows firsthand, says Bradley, a Ralph Ellison scholar who also teaches classes about hip-hop, an emerging academic field.

Eminem's use of multiple personas with different rhyme styles is his greatest contribution to hip-hop, he adds.

As Slim Shady, "there's comic, cartoonish violence, and the voice is savvy, self-destructive," Bradley says. As Eminem, he displays control. Lose Yourself, for example, "stays between 10 and 14 syllables per line ... this is a matter of conscious craft rather than happenstance."

And as Marshall Mathers: "This one is deeply emotional. You hear the love and self-hatred played out in his private and public struggles."

Most of all, Bradley stresses, rap is about verbal creativity, discipline and attention to language. "It's a robust, dense form of music that can result in transcendent poetry."

And scholarly attention. Eminem is analyzed in a new Yale University Press book, The Anthology of Rap, co-edited by Bradley and Andrew DuBois.

Eminem is, above all, a storyteller, says Marjorie Liu, 32, best-selling author of 15 paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels, as well as comic books.

"He is unflinching in the stories he tells and the dark places he goes," says Liu, a fan since 2002's Lose Yourself, "Not everyone has the courage to do that."

Liu often listens to Eminem when she writes, particularly if her characters are facing overwhelming odds. "His music instills a sense of stubbornness and determination."

She shrugs off the accusation that some of Eminem's lyrics are misogynistic. "Sometimes what people feel is ugly. ... Just because I don't want to hear the story he's telling, that doesn't make it any less interesting."

And the man does have lit cred. In 2002, he published Angry Blonde, which combined his lyrics and personal commentary. 2008 autobiography The Way I Am tells his life in words and photos.

It's on one fan's reading list, once she finishes Stephanie Plum mystery Smokin' Seventeen. Says Evanovich, "He fascinates me, and I love a success story."

--

Most of my readers wouldn't suspect this, but I've been an Eminem fan for years. Come to think of it, I got my first tattoo at sixteen years of age; one identical to his, with the exception of mine being on the right wrist instead of the left.

I finally Wrote an "About Me".

I finally got around to making one of those "About Me" pages, so that my readers can have a glimpse at the weirdo behind the computer monitor. Give it a read for me and let me know what you think? Either click here, or click the header on the side blog index.

Blogs I'm Liking Lately (pt. 3)

Jenni Merritt: A well rounded blogger frequently posting useful information. She's also one of those crazy writers that use a billion index cards and sticks them to her wall in order to quickly survey her story arcs. Jenni merits a good read. (I apologize for my unfunny wordplay).

The Writer's Den: The posts are less frequent here, but I really enjoy it every time David shares something. For starters, check out his recent post compiling a large sample of quotes by Stephen King. Neat-o!

Word-Whores: Apart from having one of the best blog names in existence, this seven women super-team also writes a consistent, informative and titilating blog, with an easy-on-the-eyes layout. They may be new to blogging but they're already excelling.

Paperback Dolls: I'm admittedly envious and driven by their success--and while they certainly don't need any more followers I'd be doing a disservice to my readers if I didn't share this gem. This is a straight-up blogging powerhouse made up of six women who always have something going on: contests, reviews, industry news--you name it.

Once Upon a Chapter: Lisa & Stephanie provide a rapidly expanding selection of short to mid-length reviews, primarily focussed on books with a romantic or sultry nature. You'll want to check them out if you're in the mood for a new paranormal-romance or historical-romance.

Previous Blogs I'm Liking Lately:

Pt. 1

Pt. 2

Alert the World!

there are only two days left in the contest and i need all of the help i can possibly get. if you haven't voted for my shirt, please do! or if you have, but didn't click the very important "i would buy it" button-- please do that, it may actually be more important than voting in the long run.


the contest ends friday night, and sometime shortly afterward i should know whether or not threadless will be printing my super-powered magical adventure shirt.

so sometime around then i'm either going to be in a really good mood or a pretty bad one.

but either way, i would love to see how much damage we can do in the process!

tell all your friends, acquaintances, business partners, and frenemies that i'm giving out free drawings of bagels to anyone who votes!

or if you are a teacher, offer extra credit to the students who will vote for my t-shirt design.

Dear Bus-Riders

actually, the stock tunnel is to the left, not behind the reader-- but a helpful note either way.

though it looks like the man below may have missed his bus.

Bikes of San Francisco

i thought i'd take a short break from my self-promoted art, and share a print from torweeks instead.

i've always thought there were two very different san franciscos: the local version and the tourist version. it's easiest to see when you watch movies that take place in the city. the heartbreak kid is a horrible movie, but a good example of a tourist's san francisco-- they're easy to pinpoint because the golden gate bridge finds reasons to show up in b-roll despite whether or not the characters are anywhere near it. and they ride cable cars everywhere at all times. older movies like dirty harry are much better at portraying the city. in fact, mr. eastwood drives down vermont st. in one chase-- and that's the actual crookedest street in the world (not lombard).

anyway, this bicycle print labels the neighborhoods well. and, again, you can see the difference between the tourists' san francisco and ours: it's a matter of fixies versus pedicabs. though i've never ridden either.

click the image to see the rest of the bikes.

the mostly stolen bike of the tenderloin is great. once, i read a story from someone reviewing their experiences in the TL and their only real complaint was that crackheads had learned how to make pipes out of her vespa's spark-plugs and kept stealing them to smoke their rocks. apparently it's pretty easy to do if you have access to google.

oddly enough, though, the only time i ever saw a unicycle was in the tenderloin-- and not in the haight. and i know the cyclist. if you met her, you'd never guess she lives in the loin or rides a unicycle. not to say that those sorts of facts should be very obvious.

oh, and i do i love the that the marina is represented by a tandem bike. whoever invented those should be tied to a rock and left in the desert. and when i say "those" i mean both the tandem and the marina.

in related news, please check out liz hickok's city of san francisco... made of jello.

This is About Porn

i feel like lying and telling you all i was reading the new york times when i came across the following article, but i was really just mindlessly skimming one of those diarrhea-style websites that pump out celebrity gossip, the 10 worst tit-tattoos, and other such nonsense. either way, the story was compelling.

what got me initially was that it seemed they were doing a study on how the internet is affecting teenage relationships and love-lives-- which is something i've talked about a lot. i mean, i learned how to type 77wpm because of aol's chatrooms and a handy-dandy acronym known as "asl" that lead into some very quick typing.

but the new york times didn't have anything new to offer. they said the average american discovers online porn at age 11-- which is when i saw my first non-digital playboy. so, no change there. they didn't discuss how much easier it's gotten to convince your girlfriend to send you naked photos now that everyone's phone has a camera and there won't be any need for awkward, "can i borrow your camera, dad?" conversations. or sexting.

they also talked about how the internet is helping the porn industry boom. omg, rly?

here's what interested me, though:

...I read about a University of Kansas study that found that 25 percent of college-age men said they’d faked orgasms, which, I’ll admit, was oddly comforting to hear. But it wasn’t until I interviewed dozens of men with varying porn-watching habits (and a few very open-minded women) that some unexpected themes began to emerge. Porn is not only shaping men’s physical and emotional interest in sex on a very fundamental neurological level, but it’s also having a series of unexpected ripple effects—namely on women.

[read more]

i recommend reading the author's somewhat autobiographical full-length story. it explains the possibility of excess porn causing men to grow less interested in their girlfriends. my favorite part of the article is when he says, "over-masturbating" as if there is a limit to that sort of thing. we all know the number of times a person can successfully masturbate in one day is a contest-- that's why men are so jealous of woman's ability to have multiple orgasms.

but there are better lines like,

For a lot of guys, switching gears from porn’s fireworks and whiz-bangs to the comparatively mundane calm of ordinary sex is like leaving halfway through an Imax 3-D movie to check out a flipbook.

it's funny because i hate imax 3-d movies. and everybody knows flipbooks are more charming.

before i forget, have you read about the guy who is allergic to ejaculating? he probably gets so much done with his day.

look, i'm going to be deathly honest here-- which means if you are a family member my younger sister, you may want to stop reading this one.

this article confuses me. i don't like porn. i liked porn. i mean, i really liked porn. but that was before a lot of things. when you're a pre-teen, porn is literally the closest thing you have to sex. and during those times i can completely understand why you might get down with it.

i used to have to log onto my family computer with a 28.8k modem in the middle of the night so i could download porn without taking up our single phone line or getting caught. and if you remember how loud modems [and epson printers] used to be, i can almost promise my family knew what i was doing despite my treating the event like an x-rated mission impossible.

but that was before anyone but my doctor had touched my lower wishnack.

i know there are some people who would rather watch sports than play them and i know there are some people who don't like sports at all. but please don't tell me i'm crazy in assuming the dynamics of sports fans versus sports players are a lot different than anything involving a penis, vagina, mouth, or other such holes and hands.

the minute my sex-life began, my porn-life ended. and any ex-girlfriend of mine can vouch for me on that.

there was one girl who thought she'd found porn on my computer-- but it turned out to be a font package with a weird name.

to answer "how do you masturbate then?" there have been times when whoever i'm dating is far away and my body is going insane. and even then, i can't watch porn. that's usually when i will [almost too persistently] suggest they send me naked pictures of themselves. and, on the surface, i recognize what it must sound like to them. there's always this question of trust and whether or not they should expect their topless-self to show up on my blog.

but i have a few things going for me:

1. they know i'm too selfish to share.
2. they know i need the pictures because porn doesn't work for me.

honestly, i'm not exactly sure what it is. i just don't find nameless naked girls attractive. and i especially don't find them attractive when the pictures look posed and i know i had nothing to do with the reason they're naked. in fact, i could probably argue that i'm more aroused by the act of de-clothing someone i like rather than just magically seeing someone i don't know naked for no reason other than wanting an orgasm. i've had several girlfriends realize that: if things aren't working the way they should be, the best thing to do is put their clothes on and act like they're not interested because i will not be able to handle the temptation of stripping them right back down and making them interested.

porn can't give you any of that. i recognize i'm a little alone on this and plenty people will fight to the death for the love of porn. but i can't help it-- everyone's got their thang.

once, out of sheer boredom and lack of proper tools, i found myself editing porn into a music video for a band called cars can be blue. they have this song called "the dirty song" which seemed like a great shot at comedy if synced with the right porn.

it worked out alright, but youtube banned it pretty quickly. cars can be blue actually wrote me a thank you letter though.

anyway, during the two days it took me to edit everything together-- staring at it all, second by second-- my sex-drive dropped enough that my girlfriend at the time asked about it. but it wasn't the way the above article describes it. it wasn't that i became so addicted to porn that i'd rather it over the real deal. it was actually the opposite. watching hours of meaningless sex with meaningless people made me so disgusted with the act that i couldn't find it in me to do the same dance with the girl i loved.

i know that may sound odd-- it felt odd. but every time we were set toward business, i couldn't make it work. i just kept thinking about the over-paid video-sluts and the guys spraying jizz on unsuspecting eyeballs. and it would continuously ruin the mood.

so to read the article about how a good number of 30 year-olds are losing their libido on account of exhausting porn rather than sex itself just blows my mind. does that mean the average person has sex only to see a naked body and explode everywhere?

i would love if someone could fill me in here. feel free to comment anonymously if that makes you feel more comfortable-- i just need this explained to me. i can understand that i may be considered weird for saying i don't enjoy porn. but telling me a human can actually watch so much porn that they enjoy it more than sex with their significant other means i'm either crazier than i thought, or people need to work on their relationships differently.

but i would love to hear outside opinions.

and i would love for all of you to vote for my threadless design. i know, that wasn't a smooth segue. but seriously, there are only three days left: help me out.