Thank You for Welcoming Me Home
For Veterans Day, Christian Bauman proposes a linguistic correction inspired by those who served in Vietnam.
Our Father
Entwined contemplations of author Chris Hedges (War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning) and former ad-man Bruce Bauman, and their respective relationships to this essay’s author (a ne’er-do-well novelist and ex-soldier)...
Christian Bauman on Amazon Rankings
So here's something: of course I look at Amazon. I've been published long enough now to have the Amazon ranking not matter so much to me, but there is something else I find addictive about Amazon: what books are offered at a discount if you buy it with one of mine. There is an algorithm …
The Commute (Hoboken, 1996)
On June 1, Simon & Schuster/Touchstone released Living on the Edge of the World, an anthology of essays from New Jersey writers about their home state. The book includes original selections from Tom Perrotta (Little Children), Joshua Braff (The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green), Jonathan Ames (Wake Up, Sir!), and many more refugee and remaining Jersey scribes. This brief piece from the anthology is adapted from Christian Bauman’s new novel, In Hoboken (Melville House, March 2008).
Jumping for that Elusive Truth
Novelist Christian Bauman ponders the triumphs and tribulations of memoirists James Frey and Anthony Swofford and the lure of the publishing industry’s nonfiction fix
What Bauman’s Reading
Not much; I'm packing to go to Quebec. But in the mean time (the mean time is a mean time and we know it) I've been thinking about novels with a great first page (or two). I had to think about this recently for a workshop I was leading. I made up an absolutely incomplete, …
The Sportswriter
I'm in the middle of R. Ford's "The Sportswriter"; long overdue, but what can you do. Anyway, the back-cover copy says it's the story of a "goodhearted man" yada yada. Granted, I'm not at the end of the book yet, but "goodhearted" is not what I'd call Frank Bascombe. I'm not saying I don't like …
The Road to Yountville; or, Confessions of a Common Eater
I went into a fever of hunger for a week, no satisfying it. I didn’t
sleep, I didn’t eat, I wouldn’t talk. I paced the confines
of our cottage with my red pencil, mumbling about marrow and kidneys.
Not Fade Away
An excerpt from the essay collection Bookmark Now by Christian Bauman
The Soldier, the Squid, and the Dancer
Me and Jimmy Two-Balls and Xerox were still in a line platoon and were deploying in four days -- four days and we'd be back in the desert; a different one, but desert all the same -- which is why I hadn't done such a great job setting up Norm's bachelor party.