Almost like the changing of the seasons, new books by favorite authors seem to appear with greater frequency after an extended literary dryspell. This year, so far, has been filled with a few books, most of which have either disappointed outright or appeared to be less than stellar efforts, and, yes, I'm talking about you Palahniuk and Chabon. To add to this, Palahniuk seems to be everywhere for coverage of one his more mediocre works and seems on the verge of burning out his schtick just when it is supposedly reaching its peak (Any more mentions of audience members "passing out" during his readings due to their lurid content should be exorcised from the record right now.). So, it's refreshing to see not one but two literary ghosts reappear. Both Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy have been out of the limelight for quite some time; the varying reasons why couldn't be further apart on the scale for these widely divergent authors.

Ellis, who seemed to have drifted off into oblivion after all the hubbub from American Psycho, has resurfaced with a book, Lunar Park whose main protagonist is, I guess appropriately enough for an author who litters his works with incredibly narcissitic characters, Bret Easton Ellis. I have to confess I didn't read the entire novel due to the incredibly bad luck of receiving a copy that only circulates for seven days, which I seem to be a magnet for at the library. Anyway, what I did get to read wasn't bad, and the story seems to be a mishmash of memoir, horror story, and the usual behavior that Ellis thrives on. I have to admit, also, that I figured Ellis was burned out at this point. His books, although never masterpieces, were at least iteresting in a surface way to keep me reading. Strip them down to the bones that fill in the gaps between events, and you're not left with a lot of variation. Ellis and a few others thrived on capturing the mood of the Reagan 80's, but to try to make a long term career out of this repetitious nonsense is a little too much to sustain. I will grant that his writing seems a lot more formal, a little denser, and with a sense of purpose that his previous books lacked. When I get to finish it, I'll have a better sense of how well he accomplished this.

McCarthy, on the other hand, never seemed to be a case for burnout, but rather a master craftsman who took his time writing. Supposedly, he has several novels in various forms of completion ready to be published. No Country for Old Men isn't McCarthy's best, but it's not his worst either. It's a quick read, but you get the sense that it wasn't written quickly. Some authors just traffic in books that are so slap-dash in construction that it's not hard to imagine them cranking them out very rapidly. McCarthy is one of our better writers, and it's easy to see that what he writes serves a purpose. There's no filler, nothing seems to be unnecessary. Blood Meridian might be his best work, and, if you recall, I named it one of my five favorite books of all time. I'm hoping that at least one of those unpublished novels in waiting may have a fraction of the quality Blood Meridian is filled with from beginning to end.

There have been numerous stories over the last year or so regarding the potential negatives with having a blog online. Employees have been fired for revealing company secrets, complaining about the workplace in general, or just posting material online period. Every institution apparently has its own set of guidelines to follow regarding what types of activities are condoned and what is unacceptable. Since blogging is such a new and recent phenomenon, it has probably caught a lot of people off guard, and it makes the task of enforcing some sort of acceptable guidelines that much more difficult. As if the above mentioned instances weren't enough, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education only served to highlight yet another troublesome aspect of blogging, having potential employers read your blog.

In a column entitled "First Person," Ivan Tribble, a pseudonym for a humanities professor at an unnamed college in the Midwest, the title pretty much says it all, "Bloggers Need Not Apply." This is followed by a subtitle/quote, "Job seekers need to eliminate as many negatives as possible, and in most cases a bloc turns out to be a negative." Tribble explains how three potential candidates were undone, not completely mind you, by the content of their blogs. One devoted his to a topic other than the humanities which worried the hiring committee that they would be devoting more time to this other area. Of course, you're not paying someone to be a humanities professor only to have them hang out in a the computer department, but this strikes me as nothing more than a hobbyist's outlet for a subject near and dear to them. Another had a personal blog that "scrupulously avoided comment about the writer's current job, coworkers, or place of employment." This was troublesome only because it had some content that was heartfelt and opinionated. The third apparently divulged how they had misrepresented some aspect of their resume to sound much more involved and important than it really was. Fair enough, but depending on the degree of exaggeration does that really disqualify a candidate? Who doesn't misrepresent themselves to some extent in a job interview?

Granted, some of these candidates actually chose to include the address to their blog with their application materials. Others were found easily by searching their names on the internet. To me, this seems wholly unfair when weighing a candidate's credentials. Sure, if you lie outright, that's a problem, but if you have a blog that isn't something you publicize yourself, then it seems to me like the most glaring form of gossip mongering. Tribble even mentions that it's hard to turn away from a blog filled with such juicy revelations. It seems hypocritical to indulge in such an activity only to then turn around and condemn the writer of the bloc as being not quite the applicant to fill the job. He also mentions that the blog wasn't the only factor in deciding against a candidate, but it's hard to imagine someone who spews such venom against the concept isn't weighing it pretty heavily in the end.