For whatever reason, the image is static. The music certainly is not. 

The Harvard Advocate is America’s oldest college literary magazine and, most of the time, its best. (One exception: when I was its managing editor. The editor, a poet, was too lofty to produce an issue and had zero intention of letting me produce one so, with some colleagues, I formally impeached him. “That sort of thing” just “isn’t done” at Harvard; he survived.) But the Winter 2010 issue is a great one; The New Yorker calls it “a beautiful little compendium of writing and artwork on animals and the animalistic.” Among the star contributors: Mark Strand, Jay McInerney, Amy Hempel, Louise Bourgeois. For sheer snob status on your coffee table, it’s worth $12. Order by mail.

The finalists for the National Book Critics Circle awards have been announced, and three books I liked made the cut:

Kate was sister to Anna, mother to Rufus and Martha. She died, age 63, on January 18, 2010. Here she and Anna perform a song Anna wrote, “Heart Like a Wheel.”

I’m trying to remember why I didn’t rush to see "An Education" the day it opened. The reviews were raves, and the idea — an English girl on the verge of applying to Oxford meets an Older Man — was compelling. (Now I remember. We have a daughter. The idea creeped me out.) Well, we finally dragged ourselves to see it, and it’s astonishingly good. The less you know about it, the better. Just go. And bring a hankie, because people — especially the girl, exquisitely played by Carey Mulligan — Go Through Things in this movie. Then, to your surprise, they change. And so will you.

Before many of you were born, Western Massachusetts was dotted with communes founded by city kids who’d decided that back-to-the-land was the best idea going. At that moment, farming seemed like a reasonable use for my English Lit degree, so I grabbed a chilly bedroom overlooking the back 40. Turns out I like central heat and a favorable male/female ratio, so I moved on. Patty Carpenter and her old man — I think that’s what I’m supposed to call my pal Chuck Light — stayed. And she’s spent decades making music about her life. Now, writing with Verandah Porche (no, not a typo), she’s released a 12-song CD that’s wood smoke and open fields, long dinners with friends and cold mornings by mountain streams. Feel free to Come Over — and to be surprised: Patty’s a grown-up pro who just happens to live far from the bright lights.  

For every great video, there is a parody.

Well, surely the happiest — hang in for the entrance of the bride at the 4-minute mark. Now that is joy! (Views on YouTube: 38,600,000.)

Elizabeth Gilbert memoirs begin in crisis. In Eat, Pray, Love, she’s  on her bathroom floor at three in the morning, desperate to end her marriage. In the just-published sequel, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, Felipe — the Brazilian she loves too much to marry — is detained by Homeland Security as he tries to enter the United States and, six hours of interrogation later, is jailed and deported. (In fact, not really “deported”, because he had a valid visa, a business in America and no criminal past; Homeland Security just decided he was coming to America too often.) 

How can Felipe re-enter the United States? Well, if he and Liz were married… Now, if you or I were writing Committed — hell, if almost anyone were writing it — it would be a closely reported narrative exposing the policies of our government in a time when terrorists seem to enter our country freely and grandmothers are strip-searched. It might include a meditation on love separated and love expatriated. And, I suppose, it would explain how two people who were marriage-phobic came to love the knot.

Committed, I am astonished to say, is not that book. Not even close. There are a few memorable vignettes, but it’s mostly a skim-the-surface tour of marriage through the ages. It lacks wisdom. It’s dull. There’s nothing to connect the reader to Gilbert. But Viking is unleashing a Palinesque million-copy first printing, and American women are about to be buried under the hype.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

[For those in the Cult of Liz, who surely believe I’m a jealous hack trying to damage a writer with a golden reputation, you might consider the first review I encountered. It describes Committed as "a strained book that’s part travelogue and part journal entries, but which mainly reads like a Western Civ term paper that was written at the last minute.” And the New York Times review? Dreadful: "She makes writing a book sound like busywork… the strain is as palpable as the voice is cute, and the drama is virtually nonexistent."]

 U2, Fergie — and Mick Jagger. If you watch nothing else, watch the first 30 seconds for Jagger’s entrance. Maximum excitement, maximum presence. And a life lesson: This is how it’s done. 

Literary pundits have been weighing in on the ills of publishing, so I thought I’d take a shot. I’m a little tougher than most — as I write in the first sentence of my screed, “Book publishing has been trying to commit suicide for all the decades I’ve been writing, and now it’s finally getting some traction on that project.” My piece appears in Publisher’s Weekly, but you can read it here. 

Atop a list of 100 books, The Times declares, "It is our book of the decade; but it will outlast that judgment, too. It is a work of force and dark brilliance, a perfect expression of the early 21st-century’s terrors —- and of the hope we must all have that we shall not destroy ourselves, nor yet be destroyed." Yes, it’s this, the book you don’t want to read. 

The New York Times reports that hunger in America is at a 14-year high –and it’s 14 years only because the government didn’t start tracking hunger until 1995. That’s 49 million people who “lack consistent access to adequate food”, up 13 million from a year ago. One figure that leapt out at government officials — and at me — was the number of households in which children faced “very low food security”. It’s 506,000, which is up from 323,000 the previous year. 506,000 is the population of Oklahoma City! That’s just unacceptable to me. (As are the figures in my city: 1.3 million New Yorkers rely on emergency food.) So….in previous years, this site has approached the holidays with the attitude that, along with gifts, it’s good to share with people who could use some help. And I created lists of worthy causes, many suggested by you. I’ll share them again, but this year, I’d like to focus on feeding kids. If you have favorite hunger programs, please let me know. I’ll post my suggestions soon. 

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I agreed to write an essay for The Good Man Project. My piece about my education in manhood — which took place in the beds of some extravagantly kind women — was one of 31 in this book; I thought it would get lost. But the editors are real go-getters, and so, on Tuesday, November 17th, at 7 PM, at The Gay Center, 208 West 13th Street, I’m going to be reading my essay and talking about it. My partner in this evening of reading and discussion is Cary Wong, who writes that his experiences with men have left him feeling better off being alone. I’m beyond ambivalent about exposing this NC-17 side of me, but I wrote this thing, I believe in it, and I might as well face the shocked faces of Butler readers who show up. It’s free. For reservations, click here. 

A friend made a mix for me. “Another Train” by the Poozies is the second song. Watch/listen and you’ll see/hear why I’m having so much trouble getting to the third song. (Thanks, Bill.)  

Our new favorite cookbook is one of eight to advance to the next round in food52’s Tournament of Cookbooks. The authors are trying hard not to brag, but they won Round 1. And for those who care about celebrity endorsements, Gwyneth Paltrow picked “Canal House Cooking" as one of her four "most notable" cookbooks of 2009.

For a lot of New Yorkers, Halloween is "Hulaween", Bette Midler’s costume party/benefit for the New York Restoration Project. Don’t know it? Founded by Midler in 1995, this cause is all about dotting our city with clean parks, tree-lined streets and community gardens. Current goal: plant a million trees in New York by 2017. Progress report: more than 200,000 already planted. Friends invited us this year; we couldn’t say yes fast enough. (For the costume obsessed, my wife was the Ghost of Christmas Past, carrying a copy of Dow 36,000 and shopping bags with designer labels; I was Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, with money — fake — stuffed in every pocket.) What a night! Gobs of stars, freaks galore, Whoopi running her mouth, a delightfully obscene Bette, and a heart-stopping, quasi-acoustic set from Crosby, Stills & Nash, who led a group sing of “Our House”. Our favorite new cause is $1.6 million stronger today, and we’re saving our pennies to plant a tree. 

Unknown gents appeared last year with an entreaty: ‘Please contribute an essay to our book about men.’ Flattered, I read their list of suggested topics. One jabbed at me: how sex and drugs wasted the Boomers’ time and purpose. I thought: No way — it’s just the opposite. And I wrote a piece called ‘Sex and Drugs Made Me a Man.’ To my amazement, they published it in “The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood”, along with 30 other essays by Pulitzer winners, Poet Laureates, ex-cons, Pro Football Hall of Famers and regular guys. Despite my presence, it’s a fine collection. You can buy it from Amazon.com, which even offers a Kindle edition.