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Thursday February
28
READING
ALONG: American book sales were flat in 2001. "Following
a year that benefited from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,
sales in the children's hardcover segment fell 22.7% in 2001 to
$928.6 million. Paperback sales, however, had a second consecutive
solid year with sales ahead 17.9% to $887.6 million. In addition
to paperback editions of Potter books, segment sales were boosted
by tie-ins to the Lord of the Rings movie."
Publishers Weekly 02/26/02
E-BOOKS - NOT QUITE
AS DEAD AS WE THOUGHT: "The theme at this year's annual
meeting of the Association of American Publishers seems left over
from the dot-com boom: "Protecting Intellectual Property
in the Digital Age." The recent shutdown of electronic imprints
at Random House and AOL Time Warner Inc. makes e-books look like
a dying fashion. The e-market continues to expand, nevertheless.
While annual numbers for individual publishers remain small -
in the tens of thousands of copies sold - Simon & Schuster,
St. Martin's Press, HarperCollins and others report double-digit
growth over the past year." Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel (AP) 02/27/02
WHY
PLAGIARISM MATTERS: Why is so much attention being paid to
the plagiarism by historians Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns
Goodwin? "No one would care about this if Goodwin and Ambrose
were obscure assistant professors laboring in some academic backwater.
Both, however, are best-selling authors and TV pundits, which
is why this literary scandal has generated so many headlines during
the past two months. The controversy has touched off a national
debate about what constitutes ethical behavior among writers and
researchers, especially now that the Internet has made it so easy
to copy passages electronically and insert them into a text."
Forbes.com 02/28/02
- MORE
AMBROSE: Yet more passages from books by historian Stephen
Ambrose are found to have been plagiarized from others. "Several
more passages from the historian's current best seller, The
Wild Blue, have been found to closely resemble the works
of others, among them the autobiography of former Sen. George
McGovern." Washington Post
(AP) 02/28/02
- GOODWIN
OFF NEWSHOUR: Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has acknowledged
using other writers' work "without sufficient attribution."
She's left - or been dropped from - the PBS newshour program.
The University of Delaware has cancelled an invitation to speak
at commencement. Isn't that enough punishment? Maybe not.
Boston Globe 02/28/02
TOUGH
READ: Who knew choosing a book for all New Yorkers to read
at the same time would be so tough? "It was working in Seattle,
Milwaukee, and California. So why couldn't it work in New York?
How anyone could ever have thought it would work in New York seems
a more pertinent question now, as the plan to select a single
novel to embody the spirit of the most spectacularly diverse city
in America degenerates into arguments and recrimination."
The Guardian (UK) 02/27/02
HIGH
COST RETURNS: The Beardstown Ladies investment club claimed
high returns and parlayed the club's wisdom into a publishing
juggernaut, selling millions of books. "But claims of a 23.4
percent return on their investments over the 10-year period between
1984-93 turned out to be false. The club revised that number to
9.1 percent — still well below the 15 percent annual return of
the overall stock market, with dividends reinvested, over the
same period." Now the first reader lawsuits have been settled,
and anyone who can prove they bought the books will get $25 vouchers
from the publishers. Yahoo! (AP) 02/26/02
Tuesday February
26
THE WIFE
OF BATH, ONLINE THIS SUMMER: The 1476 William Caxton edition
of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is being digitized at the
British Library, and will be available on-line late this summer.
It was the first book published in English, and only 12 copies
are known to remain. The library recently digitized the Gutenberg
Bible, which drew a million hits in its first six months; Canterbury
Tales is expected to draw even more. The Guardian (UK) 02/26/02
POETRY
IN THE PASSING LANE: Editorial writers like to claim, without
a lot of evidence, that 'poetry is on the move.' They rejoice
that Beowulf is a best seller at last. Does this mean that poetry
and democracy have come face to face? That poetry is no longer
stuck under the thumb of the learned or even the literate? It
might. With recent developments in technology; with poems traveling
around the world on the Internet without price, tariff, or tax;
with cyberwatchers able to encounter a fresh poem every day of
the year, selected from new books and magazines, at poems.com,
poetry may be gaining lots of customers."
The Atlantic 03/02
I'D
LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING... So what's wrong with the
one city/one book idea where every citizen is encouraged to read
the same book? What's the point of it? The idea seems to promise
so many things, like making the world a better place, like peace
and understanding ... but really - the reality is that the books
that are chosen don't really promote that at all... MobyLives
02/24/02
Monday February 25
GRAND
THEFT HISTORY: Last Friday, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin
admitted that her plagiarism of material was more extensive than
she'd admitted before. Three of her books contain material stolen
from others, and her publisher will destroy remaining copies.
Why are historians stealing one another's work? "The apparent
epidemic of plagiarism is surely attributable in part to the new
style of historical writing - the breezy, informal, anecdote-laden
work that can't bother itself with pesky distractions such as
footnotes and proper sourcing." Chicago
Tribune 02/25/02
TOO
SOPHISTICATED TO READ TOGETHER? As New York struggles to find
a book that the entire city might read, some of the city's intellectuals
have dumped on cities like Chicago that have had success with
the one city/one book idea. New Yorkers, they say, are too independent
to go for gimmicks that might work in less sophisticated cities
(like Chicago). Chicagoans strike back: "They're missing the point.
What we found with our program is that it brought people from
so many different backgrounds together."
Chicago Tribune 02/25/02
THE CURSE
OF THE VANITY PRESS: Universal publishing might seem to be
a good idea, but really... have you seen what people really want
to have published? "All that stands between us and this nightmare
vision of total authorship is the publishing industry itself,
especially the major houses, trading on their power not to publish.
By not publishing a lot of tat each year, these giants keep the
storytelling hordes at bay." The
Observer (UK) 02/24/02
BURIED
IN SLUSH: "Some publishers consider reading slush a waste
of resources and no longer accept it; some bribe their assistants
to read it by throwing slush-and-pizza parties (presumably figuring
that nothing makes cheesy fiction go down easier than a little
cheese and pepperoni). My publisher welcomed all slush and handed
me the reins. Thus for two years, in addition to fulfilling my
normal editorial duties, I hired freelance readers, generated
form rejection slips, evaluated the rare promising submission
and fielded phone calls from every would-be Frank McCourt with
a manuscript in his drawer and an Oprah's Book Club Pick in his
dreams. I wish I could say that serving as a conduit between the
publishing elite and the uncorrupted masses taught me valuable
lessons in compassion and grace. Instead, it convinced me that
the world is full of lunatics." Salon
02/25/02
Sunday February 24
YOU
MEAN THE ENRON SCANDAL ISN'T FICTION? "Whatever happened
to fiction -- any fiction -- in actual newspapers and magazines?
Sure, everyone does some special issue, once a year. But nobody
does what the general-interest American magazines do: Harper's,
The New Yorker, the Atlantic and Esquire all run at least one
short story, usually a piece of serious literary fiction, every
month. No one even attempts it here [in Canada]; even Saturday
Night had not had a regular fiction section for years before its
demise." The Globe & Mail
(Toronto) 02/23/02
HOW
GOOD WAS STEINBECK? The debate has raged for decades, from
the East-centric halls of Academia to the small towns of the plains.
Was John Steinbeck one of the great writers of the last 200 years,
or a good-not-great writer of only regional interest? Whichever
side you come down on, you've probably never considered for a
moment that the opposite opinion might be the case. But there
are compelling arguments for each conclusion. Dallas
Morning News 02/24/02
- BELATED
TRIBUTE: At the time it was written, The Grapes of Wrath
did not do wonders for John Steinbeck's image in his California
hometown, as the book painted locals as foul-mouthed, abusive
extortionists and brutal oppressors of the Okie protagonists.
But time heals many wounds, and this month, the 100th anniversary
of Steinbeck's birth will see him honored in the same town that
once reviled him. The Age (Melbourne)
02/22/02
Friday February 22
THE
SAME READ: Getting everyone in a city to read the same book
is an idea that is catching on big time. Why? "In an age
of multimedia menus, with 24-hour cable TV and movies on demand,
it might seem anachronistic that the low-tech book is occasioning
this sudden civic interest. But some believe the surge of popularity
for communal reading - not just by cities but also by book clubs
and at bookstore events - is a direct response to the essential
loneliness of modern life, an antidote to the 'bowling alone'
syndrome coined by Harvard University's Robert D. Putnam to describe
the recent downturn in civic participation."
Los Angeles Times 02/17/02
Thursday February
21
THE
ELECTRONIC LIBRARY: E-publishing may have slowed with the
dot-com bust, but libraries are starting to get into the electronic
book business. A library system in California is jumping online.
"By clicking on links that are integrated into the library's
own catalog, computer users will be able to read the full text
of any book in Ebrary's database, a collection of about 5,000
titles. The system enables people to search electronically through
a book and read its pages on the screen, while ultimately encouraging
them to check out a physical copy when they want to read it in
full. No option is available for downloading the books to portable
devices." The
New York Times 02/21/02
FIXING
TO READ ONE BOOK: Did one of the judges choosing a book for
the One Book, One New York program - in which everyone is encouraged
to read the same book - trade his vote in an Olympic ice dancing-type
scandal? Publishers
Weekly 02/20/02
Tuesday February
19
WORDS
WORDS WORDS: Britain's poet laureate has written words for
a hymn to mark Queen Elizabeth's jubilee this year. Indeed, the
poet laureate writes words for every official occasion. But why?
"The whole concept of the poet laureate is completely ridiculous
and they shouldn't have one. When the idea of it started, poets
had to have aristocratic and royal patrons in order to survive,
but everything is different now. The masses are not interested
in what the queen wants anyway, so it's all a farce. And the forced
subjects are bound to make the poetry worse."
The Guardian
(UK) 02/19/02
COPYING
IS SOMETIMES A VERY GOOD IDEA:
The recent exposures of plagiarism by successful writers have
obscured an important fact of writing: One good way to develop
a style is deliberately to copy someone else's, as painters do
with great works of art. That seems to have been exactly what
was going on with The Bondwoman's Narrative, a nineteenth-century
American manuscript which may have been the work of a runaway
slave.
The New Yorker 02/18/02
THE
EMPEROR'S NEW HORROR STORY:
So Stephen King says he's going to retire. Maybe it's not a bad
idea. "King's retirement may be unlikely, but it's not a
bad idea. In fact, it's a great idea. Truth is, King hasn't reached
the point of recycling; he's been recycling for years. His fans
may not want to admit it, but Stephen King's most recent books
are dull, dreary, repetitive, unoriginal, uninspired hack work.
And the best thing - perhaps the only thing - that King can do
about it is to stop writing."
Salon 02/19/02
Monday February 18
WHAT
PEOPLE READ (HAVE READ): Michael Korda's new book traces the
history of best-selling books over the past century. The lists,
he reports, haven't changed much over the years: "These kinds
of books can be easily categorized: dieting, self-help advice
(financial or personal), celebrity memoirs, popular fiction, scientific
or religious revelations, medical advice (sex, longevity, child-rearing),
folksy wisdom, humor, and the Civil War." But, writes critic
Jerome Weeks, if you check the lists carefully, there's quite
a difference in what sells now from what used to sell. Dallas
Morning News 02/17/02
LESS
THAN THE MERITS: What is it with authors lately? Caught
plagiarizing, they've not exactly acted gracefully. Then there's
historian Caleb Carr, who responded to negative reviews with
some boneheaded self-promotion. Thing is, some of his complaints
may be justified, but the vitriol with which he defended himself
negates any sympathy he might have earned.
MobyLives 02/18/02
Friday February 15
NEXT
HE'LL BE PRAISING MICROSOFT! Critic Johnathan Yardley recently
touched a nerve when, in the course of writing a
column on the state of bookselling, he dared to posit the
heretical notion that the big chain bookstores (Barnes & Noble,
Books-A-Million, etc.) are not only not evil, but actually superior
in many ways to small independents. A firestorm of responsible
opposing viewpoints has descended, and several of them got together
for a little conference-call Yardley-bashing. Holt
Uncensored 02/08/02
VICTOR
HUGO AT 200: The French (and a lot of other people) are celebrating
the 200th birthday of Victor Hugo - not without a bit of ambiguity.
The webpage for the Education Ministry, for example, presents
him as an exemplar of the values on which the Republic is founded.
"This is a risky thing to say about a man who began as a
court poet, became the ringleader of the young Romantics, cosied
up to three monarchies and managed to be a hero to socialists
at the same time." The Economist
02/14/02
GOOD
CITIZENSHIP OR SNEAKY MARKETING? The literary magazine Book
has been making strides in the publishing world recently, and
the glossy, high-impact look it favors has been attracting attention
from some big-money types. But a controversy has arisen over Book's
newest benefactor, and despite protestations of editorial independence
from all sides, some observers are worried that the magazine will
soon become little more than a Barnes & Noble promotional
tool. Philadelphia Inquirer 02/14/02
Thursday February
14
ARE
YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN... When police came into one
of the largest independent bookstores in the country with a search
warrant demanding to know what books a client had bought, the
store said no. "Although many people aren't aware of it,
in the eyes of the law buying a book is different from buying
a bicycle or a pack of cigarettes. Through the years, the protections
accorded materials covered by the First Amendment, such as books
and newspapers, have evolved to protect the institutions that
provide those materials as well. So when law enforcement officials
say they just want information about the books a suspect purchased,
booksellers and civil rights advocates see the demand as something
that could erode book buyers' privacy and First Amendment rights."
Salon 02/13/02
IN
PRAISE OF SMALL PRESSES: "Everyone knows book publishing
is an easy thing to do, just as everyone knows he can run a baseball
team or put out a newspaper. The business model for these small
houses permits them to produce print runs of 3,000 or 4,000 or
5,000 copies and still have a chance for profit. Larger houses
need minimums of 12,000 or 15,000 copies, virtually eliminating
the likelihood that they will take a chance on the experimental.
Would one of today's conglomerate publishing houses be the first
to publish Joyce's Ulysses? Not likely." The
New York Times 02/14/02
THE
GO-TO GUY OF PLAGIARISM: Thomas Mallon is a distinguished
writer in his own right, but people most want to talk to him about
plagiarism. That's because he wrote the book: "We can't make
up our minds just how serious a lapse plagiarism really is. The
confusion comes from an aura of naughtiness, a haze that shakes
like a giggle: people think of plagiarism as a youthful scrape,
something they got caught doing at school. We often, and mistakenly,
see plagiarism as a crime of degree, an excess of something legitimate,
`imitation' or `research' that got out of hand." Chicago
Tribune 02/14/02
STICKY
SITUATION: For months someone has been pouring syrup in the
book return boxes of Tacoma, Washington-area libraries. The goop
has ruined about $10,000 worth of books, videos. Now a 56-year-old
man has been arrested. He has a previous record of damaging library
books. Yahoo!
(AP) 02/13/02
Wednesday February
13
CRITICAL
DISCONNECT: Last week author Caleb Carr sent an "enraged"
letter to Salon.com complaining about reviews of his book. He
"bitterly attacked reviewer Laura Miller and New York Times
critic Michiko Kakutani, implying that they should stick to writing
about 'bad women's fiction'." Not surprisingly, the comments didn't
go well with readers, and now Carr has apologised. "Meanwhile,
Amazon.com has pulled Carr's self-review of Lessons of Terror.
The author had given himself the highest rating, five stars, and
stated, 'Several reviews have made claims concerning my credibility
that are, quite simply, libelous, and will be dealt with soon'."
Baltimore Sun (AP) 02/13/02
ANOTHER
HISTORIAN INVESTIGATED: Emory University is investigating
the work of its award-winning historian Michael Bellesiles. Bellesiles
"won last year's prestigious Bancroft Prize, the most coveted
award in the field of American history, for his book The Arming
of America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. But the
book drew intense criticism from researchers who said they could
not find the data upon which he said he based his thesis."
Chicago Tribune 02/13/02
Tuesday February
12
THE
DISAPPEARING AUSTRALIAN: Only two of Australia's Top 10 best-selling
books last year were Australian. "Interest in Australian
writers, it seems, is waning fast, leaving our culture in danger
of either being swamped by globally marketed mega-sellers, or
disappearing up its own, scarcely regarded, fundament. The figures
don't lie, but perhaps the root of the problem rests not in a
lack of interest, nor in disregard for our own history by publishing
houses. Perhaps it lies in the practical application of those
two awful words: 'Australian' and 'literature'."
The Age (UK) 02/12/02
CLUBBING:
It's a common perception in the book industry that book clubs
divert retail sales rather than add new readers. But a new industry
study concludes that "the clubs serve as powerful promotional
vehicles that stimulate sales through a wide variety of channels."
Publishers Weekly 02/11/02
Monday February 11
NEXT
GENERATION LIBRARY: A new Irish library is pulling in the
crowds. It was built right next to a busy shopping center, its
librarian hands out carnations, and it projects a different tone
than traditional temples of books. "Here are the people who
have nowhere else to go, people who would go demented sitting
at home, people who have a thirst for knowledge and a dearth of
funds to satisfy it, people with an inquiry no bookshop could
deal with and people relieved, finally, to find a space where
they are no longer refugees but library users." Irish
Times 02/07/02
COMMISSION
INCREASE: "The largest literary agencies, William Morris
and International Creative Management, have both quietly raised
the commissions they charge authors to 15 percent of their advance
and royalties from 10 percent." The
New York Times 02/10/02
WRITING
WITHOUT A NET: There has been a recent rash of publishing
"restored" versions of "classic" novels — "novels put back
together the way the writer originally had them before some demented
editor got his or her filthy hands on them and ruined them."
Wait - it isn't a bad thing - about that 1200-page dream sequence
that was cut... MobyLives 02/11/02
Sunday February 10
THE
LIBRARY PROBLEM: Libraries are having difficulty getting people
through their doors, as more and more research is done online.
"Ironically, although library visits nationwide are on the
decline, library resources are being used now more than ever,
librarians and students say. The new digital library gives students
and faculty 24-hour access to databases and catalogs from nearly
anywhere in the world. Users, who can search through years of
materials with the click of a mouse, are swamping librarians with
e-mailed reference questions." San
Francisco Chronicle 02/10/02
Friday February 8
OF
COPYRIGHTS, HOBBITS, AND PARODY: How far do copyrights extend,
anyway? Does an author own not only the sequence of words in his/her
work, but the characters and events as well? Almost a year after
the controversy over a parody sequel to Gone With the Wind,
another legal storm is brewing over a companion book to J.R.R.
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Coincidentally, Houghton
Mifflin, the publisher which defended the Wind parody,
is the group suing the author of The Lord of the Rings Diary.
Boston Globe 02/07/02
A
POEM AS LOVELY AS A... "The Academy of American Poets
yesterday named Tree Swenson its executive director, succeeding
William Wadsworth, whose departure after a dispute with the organization's
board last fall provoked angry protests from some prominent poets.
Ms. Swenson, 50, is the director of programs for the Massachusetts
Cultural Council. From 1972 to 1992, she was co-founder, executive
director and publisher of Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend,
Wash., which became an important nonprofit poetry publisher."
The New York Times 02/08/02
GRASS
WON'T KEEP OFF THE TABOOS: "German novelist Guenter Grass
has broken two national taboos this week, calling for the publication
of Hitler's Mein Kampf, and raising the delicate subject
of German wartime refugees fleeing from the Red Army. He called
for basic information on National Socialism to be made available,
and for public discussion of the phenomenon. He said that would
help young people who may be fascinated with Nazism, but do not
understand the reality behind it." BBC
02/08/02
Thursday February
7
WON'T
YOU BE MY POET... "California's newly established poet
laureate program has run into a problem. Not enough poets - just
seven - have thrown their hats into the ring as nominees for the
two-year office that was established last year to promote poetry
in the state. 'I wouldn't say we're in a panic,' said Adam Gottlieb,
spokesman for the California Arts Council, 'but we're close'."
Sacramento Bee 02/06/02
A MATTER
OF LANGUAGE: Maxine Kumin could easily rest on her laurels
as a Great Writer. But she's still writing poetry, and still worrying
about the new generation of writers. "The thing that's depressing
is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they
don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not
know how to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference
between lie and lay, let alone its and it's. And they're in graduate
school!" The
Atlantic Monthly 02/06/02
DULL
OR NOT, THE ESTATE IS WORRIED: "A one-man publishing
house has been ordered not to publish – at least for now – his
The Lord of the Rings Diary, which puts J.R.R. Tolkien's
trilogy in chronological order." In his defense, the author
of the book says, "To be honest, Diary makes for dull
reading. It isn't exciting and it isn't literary and it wasn't
intended to be. It's like a dictionary, it packages facts about
Rings in the most useful possible format."
Washington Post 02/07/02
Wednesday February
6
WANNA
READ A GOOD FIGHT? When it comes to slinging words and hurling
phrases, lightning adjectival jabs and roundhouse predicates,
a roomful (or a pageful) of cantankerous poets is where you'll
find world-class vituperation. Look at what broke out after one
poet won the Eliot Prize, and another complained about it.
The Guardian (UK) 02/02/02
- Previously:
THE
DIFFICULT POET: Poet Anne Carson has won most of the major
prizes. Yet she has a host of detractors. "Some are afraid
of her poetry, condemning it in the most vitriolic terms. Some
are afraid of her reputation and will only voice their doubts
about her poetry under the mask of anonymity." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/02/02
A
NEW E-PUBLISHING PLAN: A company called Chapter-A-Day is trying
to hook readers on buying its books by e-mailing them the first
parts of a book over several days. For free. But if you get hooked,
you've got to buy the rest of the book. Some 90,000 people have
signed up for the daily installments. And sales are good. Wired
02/05/02
FRANZEN
IN 4,934 PAGES: A booklover takes Jonathan Franzen's The
Corrections with him to Europe as an e-book. Prepared to be
skeptical of reading on a little screen (The Corrections measures
out in 4,934 pages in e-form) he finds all sorts of advantages
to e-reading. Publishers
Weekly 01/31/02
SPIKE-BOZZLE?
TOO BAD WE LOST THAT ONE: You don't know what Eurocreep is?
How about bed-blocking, or MVVD? Don't feel bad. They're brand
new words this year; dictionary editors are still trying to figure
them out. For comparison, consider words that were new a century
ago. Several from the 1902 list are still in use - cryogenic,
suitcase, floosie. And several are not, such as spike-bozzle and
maffick. The
Guardian (UK) 02/04/02
NORMAN
MAILER'S LITERARY HEIR: No such animal. "You get very
selfish about writing as you get older," he says. "You've
got only so much energy and you want to save it for your own work.
I'm much more interested in being able to do my own work than
bringing a wonderful new writer into existence. Because my feeling
is that if he or she is truly a wonderful new writer, they're
going to come into existence on their own." The Guardian (UK) 02/05/02
Monday February 4
MORE
PLAGIARISM: Waht is it with historians. Yet another has been
caught up in charges of extensive plagiarizing. Historian Robert
M. Bryce has accused the 91-year-old eminent historian Bradford
Washburn, the director emeritus of the Boston Science Museum of
"lifting vast chunks of text, facts, syntax and even errors
from Bryce's 1997 biography of polar explorers Robert Peary and
Frederick Cook" for a book called The Dishonorable Dr.
Cook. Washington Post 02/04/02
Sunday February 3
TO
THE AUTHOR WHO STICKS WITH IT: There aren't many places to
publish fiction anymore. That hasn't stopped people from writing
it though - The Atlantic gets about 250 short stories a week submitted
by hopeful authors. That works out to one story published for
every 1000 sent in. Even if you get rejected though - keep trying.
The Atlantic has rejected writers for years before finally publishing
them. Those "who just keep writing sooner or later find a
workable voice and form, in ways that are unconscious."
Hartford Courant 01/31/02
TOLKIEN
RULES CANADIAN PUBLISHING: What was the biggest selling book
in Canada last year? Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings series
and its prequel, The Hobbit, which sold 1.5 million copies.
"That's more than the combined number of books Canada's medium-sized
publishers sell in a year. A bestselling book in Canada usually
accounts for 70,000 copies (a John Grisham or Danielle Steel,
for example)." So much for the Canadian book business. Toronto
Star 02/02/02
THE
DIFFICULT POET: Poet Anne Carson has won most of the major
prizes. Yet she has a host of dtractors. "Some are afraid
of her poetry, condemning it in the most vitriolic terms. Some
are afraid of her reputation and will only voice their doubts
about her poetry under the mask of anonymity." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/02/02
Friday February 1
THEY BUY
POTTER, BUT THEY BORROW POOH: When Britons go to the library,
they go for AA Milne. The author of Winnie the Pooh is the most-borrowed
British author, well ahead of JRR Tolkien in second place. Beatrix
Potter is in third place, Jane Austen fourth, and Shakespeare
fifth. JK Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter series, is in 57th
place. The Guardian (UK) 02/01/02
STEPHEN
AMBROSE COMES CLEAN. SORT OF: "There are something like
six or seven sentences in three or four of my books that are the
sentences of other writers. I know they are, and now reporters
know they are, and now the whole world knows they are because
I put footnotes behind those sentences and cited where I got this
from. What I had failed to do – and this was my fault, my mistake
– was to put quotation marks around those six or seven sentences."
Washington Post 02/01/02
- THE COMPUTER MADE ME
DO IT: You might think electronic data banks and sophisticated
word processing programs and instant Internet access would simplify
research, making it ever easier to keep track of who wrote what.
But no. Computers apparently complicate the matter of attribution.
Then there are the demands of publishers and, oh, lots of things.
What's a poor writer to do? One answer: "When in doubt,
throw a couple of quotes around it. Slap on a footnote."
Christian Science Monitor 01/31/02
POUNDING OUT
A DAILY 5000 WORDS: Sinclair Lewis was the first American
to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and his reputation has
gone steadily downhill since. A new biography may partially rehabilitate
him: "Lewis's foremost virtue comes across as his brute industry:
he was heroically able to rise, in whatever unhomey shelter his
wanderlust had brought him to, through whatever grisly thickness
of hangover, and go to his typewriter and pound out his daily
five thousand words." The
New Yorker 02/04/02
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