Monday
September 30 OUT
OF TOUCH: Are American writers out of touch with real life? Stanley Crouch
thinks so: "While those who profess to be literary types surely should live
through books on a profound level, they would do well to move beyond the segregated
cocktail parties, English departments and other places where they gather to talk
about books they have read, and what they or anybody else thinks about them. But
since they don't do much of that, it is easy to understand why our writing is
so far behind the best of our television dramas and our films, both of which represent,
at their finest, an America quite different from the one we see over and over
in American fiction: a body of work that almost always submits to a separatist
agenda in which Jews write about Jews, Negroes about Negroes and so on and on.
Ugh. Corny and not true and cowardly. One more time: cowardly." Washington
Post 09/29/02 FRANZEN
STIRS CONTROVERSY AGAIN: Why did the rich Jonathan Franzen get an award of
$20,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts? "Franzen had applied for
the award, supposedly intended to help struggling writers, after signing his milliondollar
contract for the book and movie versions of The Corrections. What's more,
his good friend Rick Moody had been on the judging panel." Trying to defuse
the controversy, Franzen said he used the money to buy art. But the excuse backfired
when it was pointed out his contract on accepting NEA required him to use the
money for his writing. MobyLives 09/27/02 FUN
WITH PUBLISHING: Dave Eggars' new book is self-published. He's limited the
copies to be printed, and he'll distribute only through independent booksellers.
Some complain the move is just a publicity gimmick. But "Eggers is not churlishly
walking away from an industry that helped him achieve fame. He's merely trying
something different. For the hell of it. 'This stuff, publishing books, should
be fun. So I try to make it fun'." Sydney Morning
Herald 09/30/02 ALL
ABOUT THE BACKLIST: The glamor might be in publishing new books, but for many
publishers, the backlist is what keeps them solvent. "A very strong backlist
is more dependable than frontlist fiction, except from repeating genre writers
who turn up dependably year after year. In my view, a healthy backlist provides
up to 50 percent of a publisher's volume and with a lot less work" than new
books. The Star-Tribune (Cox) 09/30/02 POET
STANDOFF: Amiri Baraka became the Poet Laureate of New Jersey last month.
This month, the governor of New Jersey asked him to resign the job because "a
poem he read at a recent poetry festival implies that Israel knew about the Sept.
11 attack in advance. But Mr. Baraka said he would not resign, creating an unusual
political quandary. Aides to the governor said he did not have the power to remove
Mr. Baraka because Mr. McGreevey had not directly selected him. And a member of
the committee of poets and cultural officials who chose Mr. Baraka said that group
had no power to remove him either." The New York
Times 09/28/02 Sunday
September 29 CENSORING
A BOOK ABOUT CENSORSHIP? Richard Meyer's book Outlaw Representation: Censorship
and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art has been getting good
reviews in the US press. But evidently Oxford University Press, the book's publisher,
is squeamish about some of the photographs in the book, asking Meyer to remove
some of them. When he refused, Oxford decided not to publish in the UK (or Canada).
Says Meyer: "I mean, the whole book is about censorship, about images that
are troublesome, about intellectual and artistic freedom. I just didn't think
the book should end up colluding in the very thing it was exploring." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/28/02 THE
STORY'S THE THING: This year's Booker short list is controversial not for
the books that made it, but for the comments of the jury who chose them. "Not
since Andrew Marr, chairman of the Samuel Johnson Prize, decided non-fiction was
the new rock'n'roll has a literary prize judge provoked so much commentary. If
this year's crop defines 'a new era,' as claimed by jury chairwoman Lisa Jardine,
that new era is old values. 'Narrative is back in fashion. The favourite, William
Trevor, actually proclaims it in his title (The Story of Lucy Gault) and at least
three of the other five titles (Life of Pi, Family Matters and Fingersmith) wholeheartedly
embrace strong plotting and believable, sympathetic characterisation." The
Observer (UK) 09/29/02 - WHOSE/WHO'S
BEST? Lisa Jardine's cry to include lighter work points up a tension in choosing
"best" novels. " 'Ideally we would have gone to a bookshop looking
for books we have missed,' because publishers, it seems, cannot be trusted to
submit their best authors. They tended to enter only 'heavyweight' and humourless
books, she complained. 'I think there's lots of popular fiction which could easily
be submitted for the Booker,' opined another judge, David Baddiel, a comedian
and author of popular fiction." The Guardian
(UK) 09/28/02
Friday
September 27 NEW
(SHORTER) OED: "The first new edition in nearly a decade of the short
version of the classic word bible will appear Thursday, with 3,500 new entries,
from 'ass-backwards' to 'warp drive'." Yahoo!
(Reuters) 09/26/02 NEW
CELEBRITY BOOK MAGAZINES: New magazines devoted to books and authors treats
writers as celebrities. And that has brought some criticism. "The criticism
that most of these publications turn serious writers into celebrities is a strange
one, as if that necessarily subtracted the amount of literature that would be
written and published every year. Unfortunately there are other forces cutting
back on the literary. And we are still a long way from seeing kids trading author
cards." The New York Times 09/26/02 THE
BOOKER OF CLASSIC LITERATURE: The BBC plays a game of what-if, holding pretend
competitions for the Booker Prize in classic years of great literature. "The
programme has chosen four vintage years for consideration: 1847, 1928, 1934 and
1961. The judging is harsh and quite unlike, in my experience, the judging
of the Man Booker Prize, or any other prize, in that books are booted out one
by one. 'Who hates this book, then?' was not a question Ive ever heard in
the course of judging." The Times (UK) 09/27/02 Thursday
September 26 WHY
SO SERIOUS? The jury for this year's Booker Prize declared war on "pompous,
portentous and pretentious fiction," which they said was well-represented
in the books submitted for this year's prize. "There were far too many books
with an obvious gravitas - heavyweight books that are written with the clear agenda
of 'this is going to win a major prize'. It's like a formula. They attempt to
grab big themes, and have a vulgar obvious seriousness, yes, even a kind of pompous
pretentiousness about them." The Guardian (UK)
09/26/02 Wednesday
September 25 THE
CANADIAN BOOKER: "Canadians make up half the list for this year's Booker
Prize. Books by Yann Martel, Carol Shields and Rohinton Mistry were among six
on the short list announced today in London for the literary award worth 50,000
pounds (almost $120,000 Cdn). The three Canadians are joined by William Trevor,
Sarah Waters and Tim Winton." Toronto Star 09/24/02
- CANADA'S
GOLDEN AGE: "Perhaps typically, Canadians have taken the honours heaped
on their writers with a mix of pride and unease. 'Damn, Canadian authors can hold
their own and more with the best of the rest of the world" is often followed
by, 'Gee, are we really that good'?" The Globe
& Mail (Canada) 09/25/02
BANNED
BOOKS WEEK: The American Library Association is holding its annual banned
books week to draw attention to threats to free speech. But there are fewer "banned"
books to report this year. "The number of times a book was removed from school
reading lists or libraries dropped to an estimated 20-25 last year, far below
the estimated 200 or higher of the early 1980s, when the ALA started its program.
The ALA reported 448 challenges in 2001, compared to more than 900 in 1981."
Nando Times (AP) 09/24/02 IN
PRAISE OF TRANSLATORS: A good translator can illuminate a writer's work in
an entirely new way, writes Wendy Lesser. "No translator wants his achievement
stolen or denied; yet just as certainly, no translator wants her voice to overpower
that of her source author. It's a very careful balance: However well the disappearing
act is done, something of the translator's own sensibility invariably enters into
the work we're given in English." Chronicle of
Higher Education 09/22/02 Tuesday
September 24 SLIPPERY
SLOPE OF CENSORSHIP: Should America's small presses be prohibited from publishing
sensitive political material? The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof suggested
as much earlier this week. "Our small presses could end up helping terrorists
much more than Saddam ever has" Kristof wrote. In addition to war, he said,
we should "consider other distasteful steps that could also make us safer."
The idea drew an angry response from the presses. "If we agreed to suspend
the First Amendment and broadly criminalize the dissemination of 'dangerous information'
in books, where would we begin? With information about chemical and biological
agents? Where would we end? With schedules of commercial airline flights?"
Publishers Weekly 09/24/02 Monday
September 23 WHY
SHOULD THE BRITS HAVE ALL THE FUN? "In England, literary criticism is
a blood sport. Critics choose authors' ex-lovers, political opponents or former
friends who are owed money to make snide remarks about their victim's personal
habits, morals, current lovers and latest embarrassments while occasionally mentioning
the book. In one instance, Martin Amis was denounced for his dental work. It's
great entertainment and, in the end, probably not taken very seriously."
But in America, it's big news when one writer trashes another in print. Isn't
there maybe a happy medium somewhere in between full contact and hands-off reviewing?
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/22/02 WRITING
ON DEMAND: "Authors write books for almost as many reasons as readers
read them. Historically, writers have written because they have had a compulsion
to do so and, assuming they could afford to continue, money hasnt - on their
side - entered the equation." But as publishing stakes have become higher,
the pressure on publishers to deliver big sales and on authors to produce on demand
grows. Surely this can't be good for quality... The
Scotsman 09/22/02 BUCKING
THE TREND: "You might have to be little crazy or a dreamer to think about
starting a publisher these days. The heads of large American publishers are beset
with stagnant sales, while their mostly foreign owners... are roiling in financial
or management difficulty. Meanwhile, several small local book publishers have
foundered or stalled in recent years." But that hasn't stopped a Boston teacher
from starting Handsel Books, a publisher specializing in those most unprofitable
of all genres - literature and poetry. The teacher insists, "We want to make
books that are as beautiful to hold and read as the big houses... without entering
into the corporate mentality." Boston Globe 09/23/02 DO
TITLES MATTER? "Before a book comes out, everyone (author, agent, publisher)
fusses inordinately over what to call it. Once the deed is done and the book is
published, the title, for better or worse, becomes part of the proposition offered
to the prospective reader and is taken for granted. If people want to read something
badly enough, the packaging is neither here nor there. But is the book's title
just part of the packaging? Many writers would vehemently disagree."
The Observer (UK) 09/22/02 CHILD'S
PLAY: A number of big-name adult fiction writers are about to release books
aimed at children. But the adult market for children's books has expanded too.
"The reasons so many adults are reading books written for children seem pretty
simple. A good book is a good book is a good book. What holds true about movies
made for children is also true of books written for them: There is no truly good
one that adults can't enjoy as well. It may also be that for adult readers, kids
books offer the strong, straightforward storytelling that reminds them of why
they first started to read fiction." Salon 09/21/02 NOT
SUCH A BIG LEAP: When Anna Quindlen went from being a columnist for the New
York Times to writing novels, she found that many of her readers were confused
by the switch, and viewed the two vocations as opposite ends of the literary spectrum.
She disagrees: "The truth is that the best preparation I could have had for
a life as a novelist was life as a reporter. At a time when more impressionistic
renderings of events were beginning to creep into the news pages, I learned to
look always for the telling detail: the Yankees cap, the neon sign in the club
window, the striped towel on the deserted beach. Those things that, taken incrementally,
make a convincing picture of real life, and maybe get you onto Page 1, too."
The New York Times 09/23/02 Sunday
September 22 HAVANA
OPENS A DOOR: "The Cuban government has agreed to allow access to a trove
of Ernest Hemingway's papers that experts say promises to illuminate the period
in which he wrote some of his most significant works... Those who helped persuade
the Cubans to open the collection, ending an impasse that has frustrated American
scholars for 40 years, say they have seen just a small fraction of it, but it
already offers hints of Hemingway's creative process: raw fragments of stories
scribbled on paper and book jackets, galleys and early drafts of major works,
and a poetry anthology in which he circled 'No man is an island.'" The
New York Times 09/21/02 SIZE
MATTERS: Author Dave Eggers, who has shaken up the publishing industry more
than once, is doing so again. The author of the surprise best-selling memoir A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is coming out with his first novel,
and the big players in the industry aren't invited to the party. Eggers is publishing
the novel under his own McSweeney's imprint, and is refusing to allow the mega-chain
booksellers to sell the book. Selected independent booksellers across the U.S.
are offering copies, but if there isn't one near you, you'll have to get the book
on Egger's own web site. The author admits that the strategy is a gamble, but
one he thinks is worth the effort if it makes a badly needed point about the dominance
of corporate booksellers. Toronto
Star 09/22/02 Friday
September 20 VANDAL
NABBED: "For nearly a year, someone lurked in the stacks at San Francisco's
Main Library and the Chinatown branch, vandalizing books. Almost always they were
volumes on gay and lesbian subjects, some of them out of print and hard to replace.
Some books had cat eyes cut into the covers or pages. Others were defaced, then
stuffed with Christian religious material. Sometimes, the attacker would insert
the torn-off covers of romance novels." Finally, a librarian staked out the
stacks and caught the culprit, a 48-year-old security guard. San
Francisco Chronicle 09/19/02 KELLY
SCALES BACK AT ATLANTIC: "After three successful and eventful
years at the helm of The Atlantic Monthly, editor Michael Kelly will cede control
of day-to-day operations to Cullen Murphy, the managing editor, to pursue other
projects and obligations, the magazine announced yesterday." In reality,
Murphy has already taken over many of the venerable magazine's daily editor's
duties, and the change is unlikely to be very noticable to readers, since Murphy
and Kelly claim to be on the same page on nearly every editorial issue. The
Atlantic Monthly, one of America's oldest magazines, has flourished under
Kelly, with subscriptions and newsstand sales up considerably. Boston
Globe 09/20/02 WHEN
DOWNTRODDEN TREAD DOWN: Twenty-something former nannies Emma McLaughlin and
Nicola Kraus scored an unexpected best-seller with their novel about nannies coping
with the whims of spoiled rich Upper Eastside Manhattan families. But the success
seems to have gone to the women's heads, and they've dumped agents and tried to
get out of contracts as their book climbed the bestseller lists. "Theres
a reason that they were able to write the book that they did. They are not the
nannies, but the mother in this book." New York
Observer 09/17/02 HARRY'S
READY: JK Rowling has come out of hiding to say that the next installment
of Harry Potter is pretty much done and will go to the printer's soon. "The
novel, entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is already readable
and she is happy with the result. She is now at the tweaking stage. So can her
millions of readers expect a Christmas present? 'Possibly'. There is a deep, throaty
chuckle." The Times (UK) 09/20/02
NOT
JUST THE FUNNY PAGES: Once considered the exclusive realm of juvenile escapism,
the comic book and graphic novel now harbour artists who are upending expectations
with work that is nuanced, literate and decidedly adult." And they're winning
respect (and literary awards). The Times 09/20/02 Thursday
September 19 EGGERS
FIRES BIG PUBLISHING: Dave Eggers has a new book coming out next week. But
he's turned his back on the commercial publishers and book chains that helped
his last book become a bestseller. He's self-published Velocity and "is
making it available only over his own Web site and in a select group of independent
bookstores known as the McSweeney's 100. Eggers says he wants to reward those
who have supported his quirky quarterly literary magazine." His last book
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius made him millions of dollars.
"Despite his extraordinary windfall, the experience apparently soured Eggers,
32, on dealing with large publishing houses or the totems of Big Publishing. He
famously fired his literary agent and regularly dumps his publicists when visiting
cities for a book tour." The Globe & Mail
(Canada) 09/19/02 THE
PARTY'S OVER: Once upon a time, book parties were standard to launch a book.
But the parties have gone away. "At one time book parties created a buzz,
which generated sales. Now, except for the occasional mention in a gossip column
about a celebrity author, they don't. They are, publishers believe, merely writer-ego
builders, and the money spent on them would be better spent on other promotions."
The New York Times 09/19/02 POTTER
PLAGIARISM CASE DISMISSED: A woman who brought suit against JK Rowling claiming
that Rowling had plagiarized from her for the Harry Potter stories has lost her
suit and been fined $50,000. "The court finds, by clear and convincing evidence,
that Stouffer has perpetuated a fraud ... through her submission of fraudulent
documents as well as through her untruthful testimony." Nando
Times (AP) 09/19/02 Wednesday
September 18 AMAZON
CUTS CANADIAN BOOK PRICES: Amazon, which opened its Canadian website last
June, this week announced it is slashing prices on its top 40 bestsellers in Canada
by 40 percent. The move substantially undercuts ChaptersIndigo.ca's prices, which
discounts its own bestsellers by 30 percent. "An Amazon spokesperson sidestepped
questions about whether the aggressive discounting constitutes retaliation against
Indigo Books & Music for stirring up problems for Amazon.ca in Ottawa."
Toronto Star 01/18/02 MYTHOLOGY
OF THE BESTSELLER LISTS: What books sell well in Canada? You certainly can't
tell from the Bestseller lists, which aren't compiled in any kind of scientific
way. "We are in the Dark Ages. Have you noticed how when a movie opens, we
know how many people went the first weekend? What we do in books is to say, 'Let's
hold our finger up in the air and guess how many people bought our books over
the weekend.' That would never, ever happen in a grocery store, in the movies
or in the record industry." The Globe & Mail
(Canada) 09/18/02 WHERE'S
HARRY? The world is waiting for the next Harry Potter installment,
and author JK Rowling is behind on delivering the manuscript. No one's more anxious
about the delay than Bloomsbury, Rowling's publisher. "The Harry Potter phenomenon
was identified as the main factor behind a thumping 120% increase in Bloomsbury's
profits for 2001." BBC 09/17/02 Tuesday
September 17 NOT
JUST ABOUT THE SCHOLARSHIP: University presses are feeling a squeeze as their
budgets get cut. "As budgets tighten, the people making editorial policy
at university presses find themselves playing an unaccustomed and disagreeable
role. They have always been proud of influencing scholarship by helping new ideas
see the light of day. But now they face the challenge of determining which specialties
no longer make the cut." Chronicle of Higher
Education 09/16/02 COSTLY
"INSULT": Prize-winning French novelist Michel Houellebecq goes
on trial Tuesday in Paris on charges of "making a racial insult and inciting
religious hatred. The controversial writer is being sued by four Islamic organisations
in Paris after making 'insulting' remarks about the religion in an interview about
his latest book." BBC 09/16/02 HARRY
WHO? The children's book Tanya Grotter and Her Magical Double Bass
features "a heroine who wears round spectacles, flies a magic musical instrument,
has a mole on her nose and attends the Abracadabra school for young witches."
Sound familiar? But it's not a rip-off of the Harry Potter story, says Tanya's
Russian author. BBC 09/17/02 AUDEN
RETURNS: When he died 30 years ago W.H. Auden was "the model of a modern
poet who had lost his way and got stranded on an island of his own pet phrases.
Yet, at the beginning of the new century, he is an indispensable poet. Even people
who don't read poems often turn to poetry at moments when it matters, and Auden
matters now." The New Yorker 09/16/02 Monday
September 16 READ
THIS. NOW! In the past, authors relied on their publishers' publicity departments
to get attention for their books. But increasingly, publishers are giving the
majority of their authors less and less assistance. When times are tough, publishers
prefer to invest their publicity dollars in books they're fairly sure will sell
- big-name authors, hot topics - rather than in promoting lesser-known or new
authors, especially fiction writers. Not only that, but newspapers and magazines
are trimming back their review coverage. And publishers are releasing more and
more individual titles each year. The result is a lot of desperate authors who
are realizing that getting published isn't the end of a long struggle but the
beginning of an even harder one." Salon 09/16/02 WILL
WRITE FOR ROOM: Last year novelist Fay Weldon, (best known for the book The
Lives And Loves Of A She-Devil), "caused controversy last year when she
signed a deal with jewellers Bulgari to mention them repeatedly in a novel."
This year she's made a deal with the Savoy Hotel in London to live in the hotel
while she writes her new book. "Weldon, 71, will be given a room with a view
over the Thames worth £350 a night from October. The deal also includes
breakfast, although she will be expected to pay for other charges incurred, including
lunches, dinners and the mini-bar." BBC 09/13/02 Sunday
September 15 THE
GOLDEN AGE OF READING? "To everyone who remembers burying an oily adolescent
schnoz in a paperback every Friday night while better-looking classmates were
necking on Lovers Lane, I say: Relax. Your time has come. To that kid who boarded
a school bus each day and ended up in Narnia: Strike up the band. To anyone who
has ever toted a thriller to an Indians game (guilty) or who occasionally finds
the company of books preferable to the company of company, I say: You are not
alone... Some time between sixth grade and today, being a reader became cool."
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 09/15/02 Friday
September 13 NEW
PUSH FOR PUSHKIN: "For Westerners Pushkin has always been more historical
celebrity than poet. (Astonishingly, the first full translation of his works has
only recently appeared.) If the life has overshadowed the work to such an extent,
it is partly because the old truism about how much is lost in translation is even
truer of Russian verse, and truest of all in the supremely musical Pushkin. But
it is also because Pushkin's was an almost absurdly romantic life." A new
biography is published. The Telegraph (UK) 09/13/02 SHE
REALLY REALLY LIKED IT: Need another example of the rot infecting some literary
criticism? Alex Good says Salon's new list of books to read for the fall is exhibit
A. He's got special scorn for the list's editor Laura Miller, who writes in over-the-top
fashion about Zadie Smith: "A new novel from her feels like an occasion to
open up another chamber in your heart and another lobe in your brain to take it
all in; some books are expansive, hers are expanding, but never in a dreary, good-for-you
way." Good Reports 09/12/02 Thursday
September 12 THE
ACCIDENTAL READER: Here's an idea to recycle those books you've read and no
longer need. Leave them for others. BookCrossing.com is an online book club that
"combines karma and kismet and encourages people to leave their books at
coffee shops, parks, airports or anyplace else. Books are registered online, which
allows members to follow where the books travel and who reads them. As word spreads,
membership has surged, turning the world into a sort of virtual library - with
no late fees." Nando Times (AP) 09/11/02 Tuesday
September 10 WHERE
THE AUDIENCE IS: "There are 35 million Latinos in the US, and "their
purchasing power is more than half a trillion dollars and rising at more than
double the rate of the rest of the United States." So some of the book world's
best-known publishers are beginning to pay attention. Harper Collins and St. Martin's
Press have begun imprints hoping to appeal to the growing audience. The
New York Times 09/10/02 Monday
September 9 ALL
ABOUT THE BRAND NAME: Great painters of the Renaissance put their names on
work created by members of their studios. So why can't writers so the same? Two
new books carry best-selling author Tom Clancy's name, but they weren't written
by him. "The name Tom Clancy generally takes up from one-third to half of
the cover. But in very small letters at the bottom it says: 'Created by Tom Clancy
and Steve Pieczenik, written by Jeff Rovin'." The
Age (Melbourne) 09/09/02 POETIC
LICENSE: Some have been surprised that poetry has become so popular after
September 11. Not former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky: "We have a significant
thirst for individual scale. Great poems and mediocre ones, by the singular nature
of the art, share that quality of personal scale with teddy bears and photographs
pinned to the chain-link fence surrounding a disaster site. Great poems and mediocre
ones have been invoked, aptly and inaptly, in response to this particular calamity."
Slate 09/06/02 Sunday
September 8 YOU
MEAN HE HASN'T BEEN KICKED OUT YET? "Lord Archer, the novelist, jailed
for perjury in July 2000, faces expulsion from the House of Lords under proposals
for reform of the second chamber to be presented to Parliament next month. Senior
members of the cross-party group on Lords reform intend to ensure that Lord Archer
is caught retrospectively by a planned bar on peers convicted of a serious criminal
offence." The Telegraph (UK) 09/08/02 Friday
September 6 WHERE'S
HARRY? The fifth installment of the Harry Potter stories was due out by now.
But there's no sign of it, and book-sellers, in need of a bestseller pick-me-up
are wondering where it is. "At first we were told she [author J.K. Rowling]
hadn't turned the manuscript in yet. Then they kind of dropped that story. Now
they just give you more delays. The fans are anxious for it, I can tell you that.
And it's funny, it's the parents who are asking more than the kids."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution 09/05/02 Thursday
September 5 DARING
TO DIS MAYA: Wanda Coleman's scathing review of Maya Angelou's recent book
is notable for the controversy it has stirred up. "The book has gotten some
other poor reviews, but it seems that Coleman caused trouble by accusing Angelou
of hustling the public, selling a skimpy book in large type and large hype at
a high price, containing rehashed material and what may be exaggerated claims
for a high-minded, race-conscious past. A book review that wouldn't begin to damage
the reputation, book sales, or livelihood of the country's most popular and successful
living poet became a subject of controversy as much for its rarity as for its
rudeness." Village Voice 09/04/02 Wednesday
September 4 AFRICA'S
LOST LIBRARIES: "There generally tends to be the view that Africa is
a continent of oral tradition or the continent of song and dance - that this isn't
a continent that has an intellectual tradition of its own." But there are
hundreds of thousands of 600-year-old manuscripts in troves around the African
city of Timbuktu that prove a rich and long intellectual literate tradition. "When
much of Europe was in its Dark Ages, Africa was recording its literate history."
Few documents have been translated into Western languages. And many of the crumbling
manuscripts are being lost to the desert. Chronicle
of Higher Education 09/02/02 BERTELSMANN
BAILS ON ONLINE BOOKS: The giant European conglomerate Bertelsmann is getting
rid of its internet business - Bol.com. The site is expected to lose $40 million
this year. "Bol.com simply got in the game too late to compete with Amazon.com's
European operation, and it was never able to compete with Amazon's cost-savings
sales pitch. Bertelsmann stopped putting money into Bol.com about a year ago.
At that point there was an appreciation that they were never going to beat Amazon
in the business." Forbes.com 09/03/02 Tuesday
September 3 ARE
SOME SUBJECTS TABOO? France's literary world is in turmoil over the publishing
of two books whose "heroes are an obsessive paedophile and a perverted serial
killer with a preference for very young girls, including his two-year-old daughter.
Publishers and a number of authors are defending the works on the grounds that
violence, whether sexual or not, is an intrinsic part of contemporary society
and writers are only doing their job by addressing the subject." The
Observer (UK) 09/01/02 TRUTH
IN FICTION: After ten books about the music business, critic Norman Lebrecht
was looking for fresh game - so he crossed over to fiction and finds, on the eve
of the publication of his first novel, a whole new world he'd never dreamed about.
"I thank my lucky stars that I have switched from digging facts to telling
tales. The creative rewards are richer and the fictions I invent can, I think,
reveal deeper human truths." London Evening Standard
09/02/02 ALL
ABOUT THE BRAND: The Tate Museum isn't just a museum, it's a brand. One that
caters to 6 million visitors a year. So why shouldn't those visitors be a natural
market for Tate, the Magazine? "It's an art institution on steroids, a mega
brand, and it covets more. It's determined to raise its profile further, to up
the brand by another notch. It hopes to reach right into our homes with the relaunch
of its eponymous magazine, which it wants us to rush to the newsstand to buy."
The Guardian (UK) 09/02/02 THE
STORY OF... The world will always need a good story. Fiction plays with reality
and time to help us learn about ourselves. "Rumours that fiction is dead
have been around for so long now that we have good reason to be sceptical of their
accuracy. The latest to spread them are the critical theorists, but their arguments
are based on ways of reading so much less responsive and psychologically complex
than those of the ordinary reader (they have no capacity for the sort of naivete
that fiction demands) as to need no answering." The
Age (Melbourne) 08/31/02 Sunday
September 1 PUBLISHING
HOUSE OF CARDS: All Jack Stoddart wanted to do was create a publishing empire
with a distinctly Canadian identity. All he wound up with was a businessman's
nightmare, complete with lawsuits, furious politicians, and the shambles of a
dream. "The fall of the house of Stoddart is more than the end of a company
that could count David Suzuki, M.T. Kelly, the late Carole Corbeil and Senator
Keith Davey among its stable of authors. It is the public humiliation of a man
who is a member of the Order of Canada, a three-term president of the Association
of Canadian Publishers (ACP), and the head of a company that was voted publisher
of the year in 1994 and 1996 and distributor of the year in 1998 by Canadian booksellers."
The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 08/31/02 THEY'LL
NEVER RUN OUT OF SUBJECTS: "It is a sort of writers' colony for the mind."
The Lucy Daniels Foundation is running a study of the effect of psychotherapy
on the creative mind, and has enlisted the help of eight writers, described as
"successful but neurotic," as test subjects. The program pays the bulk
of the cost of their therapy, and the foundation, which is named for a successful
novelist who was forced to undergo electroshock and other torturous methods of
'therapy' in her youth, uses the information it gathers as fodder for its main
mission: to reestablish psychotherapy as a respected branch of the analytical
sciences. The New York Times 08/31/02 GLIMPSES
OF THE POET'S WORLD: A collection of letters, photographs and poems belonging
to the American poet Carl Sandburg sold at auction this week for better than $80,000.
The contents of the collection, which was owned by one of the poet's closest friends,
are fascinating scholars, who say some of the pieces provide further insight into
Sandburg's dalliances with espionage, his connection (however slight) to Soviet
communists, and his decision to support FDR after considering a presidential run
of his own in 1940. Chicago Tribune 08/31/02
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