Bloggasm

Bud Parr has been a blogger since 2003. Since then he has started Chekhov’s Mistress, a literary blog, 400 Windmills a blog devoted to a reading of Don Quixote and MetaxuCafe, a network of literary blogs with about 350 member sites. He is a Web developer by trade, a writer by temperament (so he thinks) and father and husband by heart. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, he now lives - via Virginia, Nevada and California - in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Lynn and his son Auden.

Simon Owens: What are some of the hardships of running a network like Metaxucafe? How does one become a member?

Bud Parr: I don’t think of it as a hardship. It’s difficult to find the time for it, but I don’t mind the work involved. I wish I could get everyone in the world to have a well-working, valid RSS feed (more difficult than you might think until you start dealing with them in the hundreds). I also don’t like the occasions that I have to turn down a site for membership, although really anyone with a blog who writes about books, or writes original fiction or poetry can join. All they have to do is fill out a brief form on the site and that’s it.

What I do enjoy about it is seeing all the great writing and lively conversations going on in the litblogosphere that MetaxuCafe, at least in part, facilitates.

Simon Owens: Do you think that networks like that become less needed as rss feeds become more popular?

Bud Parr: I don’t think so, because there are so many sites - we have nearly 350 blogs in MetaxuCafe and from what I can tell have only a cross-section of what’s out there - that many book lovers will want to be able to go to a central location, find what interests them and capture and perhaps even participate in the exchanges that are happening every day. I have long thought that with the growing number of blogs, people will look to group together so as not be muffled by the crowd and my aim with MetaxuCafe is to create a place to start that sort of thing.

Simon Owens: You describe yourself as a “pretentious snob.” What genres and types of books does your pretentiousness keep you from reading?

Bud Parr: Actually I said people “think” I’m a pretentious snob when they see the piles of books lying about my house, but I don’t really think I am.

I’m a compulsive reader and will peruse the fine print of a cereal box if that’s what’s around. Still, life is short and I expect a lot from the books I read and I have no interest in mass market stuff; I put a book down as soon as I see any sort of bad writing or failure in the writer’s logic. Aside from that there are no particular genres I avoid on any sort of snobbish basis; we all have our interests and I doubt mine would extend to romance or westerns, but I don’t think that can be called pretentious.

Simon Owens: What made you leave the Lit blog co-op? Do you think they were successful in their goals?

Bud Parr: I left for no other reason than the reading requirement of 20 books per year (five books per quarter) was too much for me because that’s about half of what I read in any given year and I didn’t want that much of my reading (which tends to be very random) dictated by others.

Their success is not just past tense, they are generating interest in good books and are demonstrating through their avid commentary that contemporary fiction is alive and well!

Simon Owens: What upcoming book publications are you looking forward to the most?

Bud Parr: Because my reading is not concentrated on new books, I don’t follow that sort of thing too closely, although I am excited about Zbignew Herbert’s “The Collected Poems: 1956-1998″ coming out this fall. I’m also looking forward to Mark Strand’s next book because my brother-in-law commissioned some of the poems.

A new initiate in the Pynchon world, I’m also looking forward to his next book, Against the Day. Dalkey Archive has some interesting titles, including Vain Art of the Fugue by Dumitru Tsepeneag, which sounds something like Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style. Not sure what else, off the top of my head.

This may not count because I’ve already read it, but Laird Hunt’s The Exquisite is coming out in September and I hope it does well because it’s a great book.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs you’d recommend to supplement the reading of your own?

Bud Parr: That’s a tough question because I’m really attached to so many blogs, but I can give you five (six) sites that I think are exemplary: Ed Champion (Return of the Reluctant, Bat Segundo) never ceases to amaze me; it’s clear that Jenny Davidson (Light Reading) is truly a great lover of books; Ella’s Box of Books represents in many ways exactly what a litblog should be; Michelle Lin’s site New York Brain Terrain is intelligent and vibrant; and finally (not really finally), Waggish and MadInkBeard are the two sites that I want to be when I grow up and have read every book known to man and can talk about them with uncommon intelligence.