MP3 Clip of Vroman's Reading: Farnsworth's Revenge

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This reading is from the third of the Rollo Hemphill misadventures, Farnsworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. In the first two books*, Rollo has masterminded a plot with a life-sized rubber doll made in the image of a famous soap star, Monica LaMonica. Rollo’s former boss, old crusty Hugo Farnsworth, has developed a passionate fascination for the doll. He is currently entertaining “her” as his sole guest aboard his private yacht Shameless Palms, currently anchored at St. Tropez. Meanwhile, Rollo has also fled to France to avoid being arrested for a money-laundering scam he didn’t do. As the book opens, Farnsworth secretly summons Rollo and pleads for his help because the doll has mysteriously disappeared from the boat.

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* Rollo books in softcover:

• BUY Rubber Babes - Amazon Page
• BUY My Inflatable Friend - Amazon Page

eBook formats:

• My Inflatable Friend - EPUB, iPad, and Sony Reader download
• Rubber Babes EPUB, iPad, and Sony ebook versions

Gerald Reads at Vroman's Bookstore on Sunday June 12 at 3pm

Author of the Rollo Hemphill comic misadventure novels Gerald Everett Jones will read from the forthcoming third book in the series Farnsworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. It's the sequel to My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes.

In the first two books, Rollo has masterminded a plot with a life-sized rubber doll made in the image of a famous soap star, Monica LaMonica. Rollo’s former boss, old crusty Hugo Farnsworth, has developed a passionate fascination for the doll. He is currently entertaining “her” as his sole guest aboard his private yacht Shameless Palms, currently anchored at St. Tropez. Meanwhile, Rollo has also fled to France to avoid being arrested for a money-laundering scam he didn’t do. As the book opens, Farnsworth secretly summons Rollo and pleads for his help because the doll has mysteriously disappeared from the boat.

Vroman's Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA

3 - 5pm, Sunday, June 12, 2011

Sponsored by the Independent Writers of Southern California "IWOSC Reads Its Own" series

Wodehouse Is Papa of the Boychik

P. G. Wodehouse, author of the Jeeves and Wooster stories,
and a whole lot more. (Image from The Guardian)

Right Ho, Jeeves should be a mandatory course of remedial study for modern fratirists, as well as would-be authors of boychik lit or any male-centered comic fiction.

I hereby enter the name of P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse into nomination for Papa of boychik lit, the humor genre about young men with more chutzpah than brains. Bertie Wooster, protagonist of the wacky Right Ho, Jeeves and other stories, most certainly fits that bill.

Notice I'm not proposing that Wodehouse is somehow the godfather of fratire. The genre of fraternity satire, as columnist Warren St. John first defined it, centers on college-age bad boys who are preoccupied almost totally with scoring, or sexual conquests numerically touted. Its most notorious practitioner has been Tucker Max. My point, if you can find one in this thoughtful essay, is that Wodehouse has what fratirists lack and what boychik authors should emulate - namely, a hipper sensibility. Class. What Bertie Wooster would call "the real Tabasco."

The "Papa" of twentieth-century literature, of course, was Ernest Hemingway. His biographer Carlos Baker says the nickname had something to do with his wanting to be regarded as an authority. And indeed Papa H was the high priest of clean, modernist writing style, the fabricator of sentences that slip out as effortlessly as a good bowel movement. As I've said in other posts and rants, his was an estimable contribution as to nonfiction, and particularly journalism. But to the extent that he killed style in narrative fiction, the ghosts of Peter Benchley and Heywood Hale Broun are still reviling him at some great Round Table in the etheric realms.

Also at that table, and possibly chairing it, would be Wodehouse, cackling as he explains how prose should come in other flavors besides vanilla. Note to Ben and Jerry: How about "Boychik's Banana"?

My comic novels about boychik Rollo Hemphill have attempted a world view inspired by the Wooster ethos: Avoid responsibility, romantic entanglements, and financial conundrums. Fear marriage and anyone in uniform. Pursue amusement, particularly if a practical joke will end in a "good wheeze." Fraternize with like-minded adult males who, despite their social standing, aspire to remain boys. Encourage food fights, but only with dinner rolls so as not to create a mess for which responsibility would have to be assumed. Coordinate rugby scrums in the clubroom, but only if fragile crockery has first been cleared. Solving real-world problems (such as romantic entanglements) by way of practical jokes and stratagems might not work but it's always worth a try.

Meet Gerald Everett Jones at the Book Fair in LA

Where: Booth #76 Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC) www.iwosc.org

When: Saturday, April 30, 12 - 1pm

Topic: IWOSC membership, the writer's life, my straw hat

When: Later that day, 2 - 3pm

Topic: Book signing, My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes (first two comic novels in the Rollo Hemphill series) - and wide-ranging insightful discussion on "Boychik Lit is Hipper Fratire." 

E-Book Blowout Madness One Week Only!

Do you think Darwin was more of a Kindle or an iPad kinda guy?

Read an E-Book Week on Smashwords.com

It's that time again - basketball playoffs, baseball spring training, LA book fair anticipation, and best of all, the greatest annual electronic clearance sale while digital supplies last - Read an E-Book Week on Smashwords.com.

Just follow these links and enter coupon code RE100 to get free (while they last and our accountants don't find out) e-books in your choice of format, including HTML, LRF, EPUB, and others:

My Inflatable Friend: The Confessions of Rollo Hemphill

Rubber Babes: Further Misadventures of Rollo Hemphill

This streaming, screaming extravaganza runs one week only - from March 6 to 12 (or until the last electron is out the door!).

Opera Review: The Turk in Italy at LA Opera

Okay, boychiks. What would you do if you were married to her? And imagine that you're overweight and almost twice her age.


Your name is Don Geronio, and you are coping with the challenges of your May-September marriage when a dark male stranger floats into town on a flying carpet...more

Photo by Robert Millard courtesy LA Opera

Book Review: Cleopatra

The subject of my boychiklit.com blog is the unfortunate life choices made by young men who have more chutzpah than brains. Tyros, if you will. But it seems to me legitimate, if not downright inclusive, to also muse about young women who likewise show brashness, lack of respect for authority, and the propensity to occasionally throw up on their own shoes (c.f., Tucker Max et al).

I was drawn to Stacy Schiff's new biography of Cleopatra not only because I saw her (the author, that is) on Jon Stewart's show, but also because I've devoted considerable study to another Greek-speaking ancient Egyptian babe, Hypatia of Alexandria. (As with most women, ancient here is a highly relative term, unless you're blood relative and you know for sure. Hypatia was almost 500 years younger than Cleo - being a young adult in 415 A.D. versus 45 B.C. - but I calculate about 1,363 years older than me, and I leave it to the brighter boychiks to do that math.)

About the book I would say it's an engaging account and a worthy contribution to the topic. Schiff admitted (on camera to Jon, as I can attest) that not much is known about this last of the pharaohs. As a result, this book is mostly conjecture - scholarly and informed conjecture - but speculation nonetheless. Imagine you are reading a rather well-written history text, clicking along about tenth-grade reading level, and every sentence begins (or could begin) with "She would have..." or "It is likely that..." That is, Schiff argues mostly from circumstantial evidence and logic.

Her opinions are therefore not necesarily more factual than anyone else's, except when a bona fide scholar expresses an opinion, we tend to give it more weight than amateur conjectures like mine. Especially when a lot of people these days who are struggling to read at tenth grade level could not identify Cleopatra's role in history unless they recall seeing the oft-derided Fox epic on Turner. Schiff points out that we don't even know what Cleo looked like, except for some profiles on ancient coins. The author astutely points out that those likenesses would have been subject to royal approval, and therefore are probably pretty good. Unfortunately for the sake of Cleo's reputation, they are not all that pretty.

To paraphrase Schiff's conclusion, "She would have had a helluva mind." Plus, of course, political power, the world's largest personal fortune (far surpassing anything in Rome), and -- let's take a wild guess -- a helluva body and some hard-earned skills.

Schiff's arguments point out the varying political biases of historians such as Herodotus, Dio, and Josephus. After all, that's most of the written evidence we have. From a scholarly standpoint, hers is a significant contribution simply because of that dose of objectivity.

But life is not all that logical at times, and although Schiff takes emotions and even passions into account, arguing what Hitchcock called the "plausibles" could easily get things wrong. Life doesn't always make perfect sense. Read our recent history, about which we have more information than anyone could digest, and then ask yourself how you'd explain its seeming lack of logical progression to some (hopefully benign) intelligent space alien.

With all its focus on the pharaoh, this book called Cleopatra is mostly about Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, and Schiff seems genuinely in awe of both. Perhaps rightly so, but you wonder which of the three she'd rather have dinner with.

My favorite parts of Cleopatra are Schiff's descriptions of the royal barges (imagine something almost the size of a Royal Caribbean being paddled around by a thousand slaves, enclosing a theater, a gym, a banquet hall, plus the royal suite and staff quarters). Then there are the luxurious decorations and feast days in the city of Alexandria. Romans - yes, the Romans - thought the Alexandrians celebrated to excess!

And my favorite of her many observations: Since Cleopatra was descended from Macedonian Greeks (generals in Alexander the Great's army), she was "about as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor."

This was the first book I read on Kindle. Get two Kindles. One for yourself and one for your wife or girlfriend. Because if you don't she will borrow it and you will never see it again! If you live under the same roof, maybe only one needs to have 3G. Make it yours!