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DYNAMIC
DUO: The lives of two of Britain's most revered writers,
father and son Kingsley and Martin Amis, are due to cross paths
in May with the release of the father's collected letters and
the son's long-awaited autobiography. "To have Kingsley's
chronic hatred of phonies, philistines, tight-fisted drinking
companions, bullying officials, mouthy women, pompous barmen,
and pretentious artists and have all his opinions raw, unconstrained
by any shreds of tact, and his pungent stories about his peers
unmediated by the filter of fiction, is a treat. To have the
inside story on Martin Amis, the writer who has influenced more
prose styles than any other in the last two decades, runs it
a close second." The
Independent 3/31/00
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POTTER
PANIC: The news that Chris Columbus has been chosen to direct
the Harry Potter movies has some fans lamenting. "There's
nothing in [Chris Columbus'] filmography that suggests to me
that he has any understanding of the inner lives and imagination
of children."
Salon 03/30/00
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BOOK
SALES by chain stores were up 11 percent in 1999. Publishers'
Weekly 03/30/00
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REALLY
AT RISK: Conventional wisdom has it that publishers are
the ones most at risk in the e-book revolution. After all, why
does a successful writer need an expensive publisher taking
a cut, when the writer can take it to the net herself? But the
Endangered Species List is longer than you think. Salon
03/29/00
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CULTURAL
COLD WAR: A new book
documents the CIA's "promotion of a non-Communist left"
through lavish post-war funding of American intellectuals and
artists. "The most disturbing revelations of the book are
not so much what the CIA did as whom it persuaded-openly or
under cover-to do the dirty work of propaganda." The roster
includes some decidedly unusual suspects: Stephen Spender, Mark
Rothko, Mary McCarthy, Dizzy Gillespie, Robert Lowell, Peter
Matthiessen, and many others. "Such people were foot soldiers
in a cultural cold war. For two decades they accepted grants,
travel stipends, and commissions from a wide variety of CIA
front organizations designed to win the hearts and minds of
intellectuals tempted by 'neutralism.'"
Chronicle
of Higher Education 3/31/00
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EDITORIAL
SEX APPEAL: Salon and Slate, two of best political and cultural
affairs sites on the Web, have had a healthy, erudite rivalry
going for some time. But arguments turned personal in a recent
volley of remarks between Salon editor, David Talbot, and Slate
editor, Michael Kinsley. Talbot: "'Mike Kinsley, if you've
ever seen him, is not the sexiest guy in the world, and that's
reflected in his product.'" Kinsley (after calling Talbot's
remarks "moronic"): "'How sexually appealing
the editor of Salon finds the editor of Slate is of no practical
interest to the editor of Slate -- or, presumably, to the editor
of Salon. The trouble with `editor's sexiness' as a metric is
that it is hard to quantify objectively.'" The
Chicago Tribune 03/28/00
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PULL
UP A COUCH: Novelist Alain de Botton created a literary
stir in 1997 with the release of his tongue-in-cheek philosophical
musings in "How Proust Can Change Your Life."
Readers praised his invention of "a new genre: part self-help,
part ethics primer, and part confessional." Now de Botton
is back as host of a TV show in which guests are invited to
share their personal problems - from broken hearts to road rage.
Distilling 2,400 years of Western thought into an hour of advice,
de Botton "seeks to show that Epicurus, Montaigne, and
Schopenhauer have many sensible things to say to an anxious
modern audience." Good luck! The
Observer 03/19/00
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E-LIVRE:
The e-book is getting a lot of attention (and praise) at this
week's Salon du livre in Paris. The prestigious exhibition -
the creme de la creme of European publishing events - attracts
over 220,000 visitors and 750 exhibitors. Wired
03/21/00
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WELCOME
BACK, RABBIT!: A decade after his creator proclaimed him
dead, John Updike's beloved character Harry "Rabbit"
Armstrong will return - sort of - in a new work this fall. "Rabbit
Remembered," a novella to be published as part of the upcoming
collection "Licks of Love," begins where "Rabbit
at Rest" left off, exploring the world of friends and lovers
"Rabbit" left behind. "I thought somebody might
be curious what happened to the people who knew him," said
Updike. CNN
3/21/00
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"B"
IS FOR BIO: As in Australia's National Biography Awards.
This year's short list suggests that contemporary biographers
have thrown out the old rulebooks on writing someone's life.
Sydney
Morning Herald 03/22/00
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NOT
JUST FOR LIT. MAJORS: Just when it seems modern literary
standards are being dictated by Oprah, a thousand-year-old epic
poem finds a surprising show of support. Seamus Heaney's Whitbread
Prize-winning translation of "Beowulf" is climbing its way to
the top of bestseller lists. "It's oddly fitting that "Beowulf"
should go platinum. The poem describes a society utterly consumed
with the idea of fame."
Feed 0 3/20/00
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IN
"E" VITABLE: E-books are here to stay, no matter how much
romantic gush you hear from the lovers of dead trees. Last week's
Stephen King success was only the first salvo of the mass-market
revolution.
MSNBC (Washington Post) 03/21/00
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IN
CASE YOU WERE WONDERING ABOUT THE FUTURE: "The print
and hardcover market is drying up," says an e-book publisher.
"The cost of production is out of sight; the big companies
are circling the wagons. If your name isn't Stephen King, you
don't get considered for print. With e-books, we still have
to pay editors and artists, but we don't have to pay those print
production costs." Hartford
Courant 03/20/00
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PEN/FAULKNER
BOOK PRIZE NOMINEES: This year's five candidates are: Frederick
Busch's "The Night Inspector," Ha Jin's "Waiting,"
Ken Kalfus' "PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies,"
Elizabeth Strout's "Amy and Isabelle," and Lily Tuck's
"SIAM Or The Woman Who Shot A Man."
Chicago Tribune (Reuters) 03/20/00
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I
REGRET TO INFORM YOU...
I'm sorry, but your recent rejections of my work have not
been up to our standards. "We will not consider previously
sent rejections. We want fresh, original work. Be creative.
Have fun. Multiple rejections make us mad. Very mad." We
are writers, after all. Salon
03/17/00
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LITERARY
E-VASION: "Authors and readers in censored countries
are discovering ways around the Internet filters installed by
their governments. They now can obtain information on topics
that would never be available in their local bookstores, including
religion, government and sexual topics considered taboo. And
they can distribute their information to the masses through
electronic publishing." Intellectual
Capital 03/17/00
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PITTER
POTTER: American writer sues JK Rowling
saying that Rowling stole ideas for "Harry Potter"
from her 1984 book. BBC
03/17/00
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DOWNLOAD
HORROR: Stephen King's latest book was published on the
web yesterday, but who could get it? The publisher's website
was churning at 100 percent capacity all day, while all over
America, many who tried to download the horror tome found their
computers crashing. Boston
Globe 03/15/00
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NATIONAL
BOOK CRITICS AWARD WINNERS are announced. The 650-member
organization honors "works that are more scholarly, literary
and often just more maverick than those recognized by the mainstream
Pulitzer Prizes." Dallas
Morning News 03/14/00
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ALL
CACHET/NO CASH: "It's not about us as book critics.
We want to deliver the books that are best to our audience
and that's what we did." The winners: "Jonathan
Lethem for "Motherless Brooklyn," Henry Wiencek
for "The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and
White," Jonathan Weiner for "Time, Love, Memory:
A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior,"
Jorge Luis Borges for "Selected Non-Fictions,"
and Ruth Stone for "Ordinary Words." Washington
Post 03/14/00
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Awards
like a North Beach coffee house, circa 1962.
San Francisco Chronicle 03/14/00
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CHILD'S
PLAY: With children's books dominating
a recent British poll of most-loved literature, one critic wonders
if this means we're in a Golden Age for young fiction. London
Telegraph 03/14/00
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THOROUGHLY
THOREAU: In
the years following the publication of his proto-ecological
gospel "Walden," Henry David Thoreau began a series
of essays that looked much more like a biologist's field notebooks
- filled with taxonomical lists and seasonal charts on
flowerings and seed dispersal - than a philosophical treatise. New
scholarship shows Thoreau's genius is ever-present in the notebooks,
which reflect the "great American prose stylist's tart
wit, flinty clarity, and aphoristic bite." The
Atlantic 03/00
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OUT
OF PRINT? The venerable Canadian literary magazine "Books
in Canada" is in precarious condition. Writers and editors
haven't been paid, and top staff left. The publication's "slow
burn raises intriguing questions about the value of literary
institutions in the Internet era. For some, the 28-year-old
magazine - a fixture of Canadian letters and sponsor of a once
prestigious first novel award - seems to be worth more dead
than alive. Toronto
Globe and Mail 03/14/00
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RIDDLES
AND ANSWERS: When Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire"
was published in 1962, reviewers wrote that it could be enjoyed
at face value, but that it obviously hid many levels of complexity.
Nabokov thought "the unravelling of a riddle is the purest
and most basic act of the human mind." He probably would
have enjoyed one of the most remarkable academic books of this
season, Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery
(Princeton) by Brian Boyd, an attempt to unravel the riddles
Nabokov embedded in "Pale Fire." National
Post (Canada) 03/14/00
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FIRST
E-BOOK CLUB for electronic books gets underway. Wired
03/14/00
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OXFORD
ENGLISH DICTIONARY goes online. CBC
03/14/00
-
SO
WHO NEEDS A PUBLISHER? Authors have been publishing their
books on the internet for some time. But when Stephen King hits
the web with his latest, bypassing the traditional book process,
the publishing industry gets nervous. Washington
Post 03/13/00
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BRITAIN'S
FAVORITE AUTHOR: Beating out JK Rowling, it's Roald Dahl,
he of Charlie's Chocolate Factory and the Giant Peach, in a
poll for World Book Day.
BBC 03/12/00.
-
C'MON,
ADMIT IT: Think you're well read? At a certain point, don't
you despair of the sheer volume of everything out there that's
worth reading? "Let's not pretend: when did you last read
a book by any of the younger Russian novelists? You've read
Victor Pelevin? Really? 'Chapaev i pustota,' or the translation,
'The Clay Machine-Gun'? Did you finish it? Did you understand
it?" Really? The
Guardian 03/10/00
-
JANE
EYRE VERSION 6.0: Why do we feel the need to remake certain
stories over and over? Is it because there are things in literature
that are too troubling to be left alone? On the other hand,
"converting books into movies always seemed silly to me,
I think. I never understood what they were for other than to
rid people of the pleasure or necessity of reading. I think,
though, that the point is not to see a plot enacted or certain
characters embodied by actors, but to explore the question of
how something will play." New
York Press 03/08/00
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KING
OF THE NET: Stephen King publishes his latest book exclusively
on the internet.
CBC 03/09/00
-
PAST
LIVES: The best writing in Australia these days isn't coming
from the country's novelists. "History, and Australian
history especially, is being written in a new way by a new breed
of historian, who not only tells us of the events, but who explores
the events in terms of their moral qualities." Sydney
Morning Herald 03/08/00
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BOOKS
ONLINE: Random House has put up its first complete book
online. "Most publishers have realized they need to either
post more content from the book or include extra content not
in the book," said Greg Durham, director of online publishing
initiatives for Random House. "The ante has been upped."
Wired
03/08/00
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BUDDY
OR BULLY? Independent bookstore owners in Canada say superstore
giant Chapters pushes them around ("we are absolutely unable
to compete with a monolith"). Because Chapters controls
distribution, the book you buy for $9.95 in the US costs you
$16 in Canada. But Chapters says it is good for the Canadian
book business: "We believe we will bring efficiencies to
the book industry that will actually make publishers more profitable,
rather than less profitable." CBC
03/08/00
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LORD
OF THE RIP-OFF: "Somehow in the post-World War era
of popular literature, Generic Fantasy became the be-all and
end-all escape device. It was so easy to write. No bothering
with grounding your book in reality, with all its annoying demands.
Just assume that everything in your book takes place in a "Secondary
World", and you can write anything you want. *spark-online
03/00
-
DUBLIN
PRIZE FINALISTS: Dublin Literary Award is the richest prize
for literature in the world. This year's finalists: Dubliner
Colum McCann, London's Nicola Barker, Jackie Kay, a Scottish
writer, and Americans Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Michael Cunningham
and Alice McDermott. Prize this year is £80,000 for a work of
fiction. The
Independent 03/08/00
-
WRITERS
WITHOUT BORDERS: Prominent writers from around the world
to gather in Korea for conference on world literature. "Writers
can no longer hide behind language, culture and national borders
in a world that is increasingly interdependent, pluralistic
and diversified." Korea
Herald 03/06/00
-
CAN
YOU BE SPECIFIC? Canadian inquiry into mega-store bookseller
practices hears plenty of complaints from publishers but few
specifics. CBC
03/05/00
-
IGNORED?
Why do authors on book tours skip going to Philadelphia? Philadelphia
Inquirer 03/05/00
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"MEMOIRS
OF A GEISHA" has sold 4 million copies and been translated
into 32 languages. Steven Spielberg is set to direct the movie
version of the book. But Mineko Iwasaki, the source for much
of the material in the books is unhappy. "Basically, what
is written in Arthur Golden's book is false," says the
retired geisha, in her first interview since the book was published
in Japanese in November and she was able to read it. "He
got it wrong." Washington
Post 03/03/00
-
CANADIAN
INQUIRY into the business practices of giant bookseller
Chapters hears charges of "bullying tactics" used
against independent booksellers. CBC
03/02/00
-
THE
MARCO POLO OF BOOKS: In a pickup truck or car she
wanders southern Africa, the lands south of the Zambezi River
- Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Angola, Lesotho, Swaziland
and, of course, South Africa. She buys books at each stop with
cash or through barter, books that are indigenous to the land
she's in, and then sells them to customers throughout the world.
Her clientele includes collectors and governments and universities.
"I have standing orders from a number of American universities,"
she said. "Yale says it will buy everything it can get
that is published in Mozambique and Namibia." New
York Times 03/02/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
-
MEETING
OF MINDS:
David Talbot's Salon Magazine gave a first-class coming-out
party last week to celebrate their arrival in the capital. The
dynamic: out-of-towner meets the locals and each sizes up the
other.
"It was, as the organizers had intended, as if an issue
of Salon had jumped off the web and the bylines had leapt to
life. More heat than light, but provoking an intensity of concentration
among the audience unusual in a capital more accustomed to droning
speakers and one-sided think-tank snooze-fests familiar to the
C-Span viewing public." The
Idler 03/02/00
-
"David
Talbot loves to tout Salon as cutting-edge, risk-taking,
and irreverent," writes Baltimore's City Paper, "but
the panel discussion he hosted that evening was nothing
more than four self-promoting pundits (Arianna Huffington,
David Horowitz, Joe Conason, and Stanley Crouch) trotting
out what sounded like outtakes from Crossfire."
Baltimore
City Paper 03/02/00
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TURKISH
BAN: The Turkish government confiscated
all available copies of Jonathan Ames’ novel The Extra Man
last week, and will try both his translator, Fatih Ozguven,
and his publisher in Istanbul, Iletisim, on charges that the
book is "corrupt and harmful to the morality of Turkish
readers," according to a fax Ames’ international rights
agent Rosalie Siegel received from Istanbul. The book had been
out a few months, and had been submitted to government censors
for approval before publishing, as is required in Turkey. New
York Press 03/02/00
-
DRIBS
AND DRABS: E-authors find that doling out their work a chapter
or so at a time hooks readers. And publishers are beginning
to make it lucrative for these new stars. Wired
02/29/00
-
BAD
DHARMA: critics have accused Indian writers who write
in English of peppering their works with Sanskrit to "exoticize
the Indian landscape to signal their Indianness to the West."
But does inclusion of these exoticizing elements disqualify
their Indian authenticness? "Believe in your mashooq
and you will be Indian, a good artist or an adequate one,
local and global, soft as a rose petal, and as hard as thunder,
not this, not that, and everything you need to be. You will
be free." Boston Review 03/00
