It’s the fourth of July. It’s time for you to watch this video again, or for the first time if you never saw it:You may have heard that SEMO Press, publisher of my novel Weird Pig, among many other books, is shutting down. It’s a terrible thing, and I’ll never forgive the creeps in charge who destroyed an organization that brought good things into a world that doesn’t have enough of them. But I have good news. Thanks in part to the fanatical machinations of SEMO Press director James Brubaker, Weird Pig has a new home: Black Lawrence Press. This is also thanks, of course, to the hard work of Diane Goettel, BLP’s Executive Editor—for which I am thankful. So now you can go to BLP get the copies of Weird Pig that you are so desperate to have. If you haven’t read it, let me recommend it to you now—almost four years after its release. Even after all this time, a lot of people still don’t know Weird Pig exists. But the people who have read it report laughing during the experience of reading it, and otherwise finding joy in its pages. It would make a great gift for Father’s Day, but then that’s already happened this year. So why not start a tradition of giving gifts on Labor Day? Why don’t you give someone Weird Pig, as a reward for their backbreaking labor?If you have a book club, now would be the perfect time for you to force everyone in it to read Weird Pig. If you don’t have a book club, now would be the perfect time to kidnap a handful of strangers, duct tape their hands together, sit them down in your sunroom, set mimosas before them, with straws for them to drink the mimosas through, since they can’t use their hands, and with God’s light shining on their faces make them talk about Weird Pig as if they read the book, which they have not done at all.Or, get this: you could go to Costco.One thing that upsets me about the publication of Weird Pig is that, even after all this time, no one from SEMO Press, or any other press, has taken me to Costco. I saw this video online last week that had Colm Tóibín in it. I’ve never read anything by Colm Tóibín. I’m sure I will soon, because this is one of those moments where I write a sentence like, “I’ve never read anything by Colm Tóibín,” and realize it’s kind of embarrassing. I should have read some Colm Tóibín by now. I don’t know why.I guess he just published a new book, which is not the one I will read—and why is that, I wonder? How did I decide, without even thinking about it, that his new book will not be the one I read? I imagine it’s the one he would want me to read, since he’s just published it. Sometimes I’m a mystery to myself. Because Colm Tóibín has a new book out, his publisher made this video of him going to a Costco. I don’t know what Costco it was, but I guess he’d never been to one. And that makes me feel better about not having read one of his books. Everyone in the world has at least one thing they’ve never done. I guess they thought it would be adorable and fun, to take this Irish novelist to a place that’s so utterly American. They filmed him walking around and getting free samples of different things, the way people do when they visit a Costco. I’d say he looked like a fish out of water, but he didn’t. Everyone fits right in when they go to Costco. I didn’t watch much of the video, though I would go back and finish it if I knew he had one of those giant slices of Costco pizza. I’d like to see the Irish eat that pizza. It’s so greasy.But the video made me want to publish another book. I was kind of on the fence, before, about whether it would be a good idea to do that again. The last time I published a book, a pandemic happened. Who knows what the next one might bring. I didn’t realize that when you publish a book now you get to go to Costco. I’ll bet Colm Tóibín didn’t even have to drive himself over there. I’ll bet they took him in someone else’s car. The Culture You DeserveThis Friday, I will have an essay on another Substack, The Culture We Deserve. Every Monday, Jessa Crispin publishes an essay over there, and they publish one by a guest writer every Friday. My essay, this Friday, concerns The Way of the Househusband, an anime show and manga series by Kousuke Oono, which is about a dangerous Yakuza gangster who gives up his violent life, gets married, and devotes himself to cooking and cleaning, but persists in being a frightening and intense, if nonviolent, man.You have to be a paid subscriber to The Culture We Deserve to access my essay, but it’s worth it. It doesn’t cost much, and Jessa and her husband Nico Rodriguez do great work over there. They even have a podcast.Church of the LibraryMy brother Jim wrote in his newsletter recently about what it’s like when atheism softens into agnosticism, among other things. And I was interested to read about that, because I think I’ve traveled on a similar trajectory to his. As a teenager, and for ...
