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99
Nov 99
Oct 99
Sept 99
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- THE
EXAMINED LIFE: The late writer Patrick O'Brian was famously
private about his own life. O'Brian's biographer Dean King, explains
why he was drawn to write about the novelist: "I felt that
by not telling the truth to reporters and to his live audiences
in the United States during visits here, O’Brian forfeited the
right to not have a closer look taken. There’s a right way and
a wrong way to go about these things. My motive was not to bring
down this man, it was simply to set the record straight, to present
an accurate record of a great writer." The
Idler 01/31/00
- TAKING
STOCK: Author Carol Shields puts aside her struggles with
cancer as she publishes a new collection of stories and finishes
her biography of Jane Austen. National
Post 01/31/00
- WORKSHOPITIS:
There are so many writers' workshops these days it's difficult
not to trip over one. So the question is revived again - can good
writing be taught, Hilma Wolitzer wonders? New
York Times 01/31/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
- OUTSIDE
THE NEW YORKER: Seems like everyone and his dog has an I-Remember-The-New-Yorker
book coming out. Now, spoofs from the man who sold MR. SHAWN his
nuts, a woman who once worked for Shawn for an afternoon in the
typing pool, and the legendary editor's favorite night watchman.
And, oh look...isn't that Sparky at the word processor? Slate
01/27/00
- HEANEY
OVER HARRY: Irish poet Seamus Heaney beats out Harry Potter
and wins his second Whitbread for Beowulf translation. London
Telegraph 01/26/00
- BBC
report
01/26/00
- PENT-UP
PIPES: Nobel-winner
Heaney and bagpiper Liam O'Flynn are performing together in
a "unique partnership of bardic voice and eloquent pipe."
Heaney reads his poetry and O'Flynn follows him on the pipes,
exploring turn of line, enjambments, rhymes, and cadences
in a medium of euphonious conversation. "Declaim the
verse, strike up the pipe, and generally vent the pent!"
The
Scotsman 01/25/00
- OPTING
OUT OF INTELLECT: David
Laskin’s new book, "Partisans: Marriage, Politics and Betrayal
Among the New York Intellectuals" is "stiflingly"
long. But then, just what is more fitting? Just what, exactly
have the NYI's given the world, anyway? New
York Press 01/26/00
- HIGH
ANXIETY: Not yet 30, Dave Eggers is already shaping up as
the Andy Kaufman of New York letters. The buzz on his first book,
due out next month, is so frenzied that The New Yorker
has bought an excerpt, editors at Time are clamoring for
him, and his hero, David Foster Wallace, has provided a back-cover
blurb so effusive it's almost embarrassing. It's not all smooth,
though - the book is a memoir spilling family secrets so sad and
self-revelations so awful that he sometimes wishes he had never
written it. New
York Magazine 01/24/00
- BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS nominees
chosen.
New York
Times 01/25/00 (One-time
registration required for access)
- OOPS:
British publisher, expecting spectacular demand for its line of
"Star Wars" books following last summer's "Phantom
Menace," prints 13 million copies. But only 3 million sell
and firm has to eat an even more spectacular £25 million loss
in the last six months of 1999. BBC
01/25/00
- LITERARY
SCORN: No country is more haunted by the spirit of its dead
writers than Russia. Yet the Russian image of the novelist is
no longer that of reverent seer or even heroic dissident. If anyone
embodies the new image of the writer in Russia it is the 38-year-old
Victor Pelevin, a laconic semi-recluse with a shaved head, a fashionable
interest in Zen meditation and an eccentric attachment to dark
glasses. Pelevin has emerged as that unusual thing: a genuinely
popular serious writer.
New York Times Magazine 01/23/00 (One-time
registration required for access)
- DREAD
OF CLASSICS: The best novelists have read all the classics,
right? Uh, uh. Here's a survey of some of Britain's top contemporary
writers and their confessions about what parts of the literary
canon they have skipped over. London
Telegraph 01/22/00
- NEOLOGICAL
NOTHINGNESS: When "Seinfeld"
went off the air two
years ago, the media frenzied around the idea that - gasp - all
along it had been a show about nothing, an existential
sitcom. But to philosophers that nothing is quite meaningful. A
Gen X philosophy prof explores relationships between serious philosophical
ideas and the late television program in a new collection
of essays by philosophy professors/hard-core Seinfeld fans. The
fun includes "George's Failed Quest for Happiness: An Aristotelian
Analysis," and "Kramer and Kierkegaard: Stages on Life's
Way." Lingua
Franca 02/00
- THE
THREE...ER..FOUR STOOGES: Novelist Tom Wolfe ups the heat
on his feud with three fellow writers lumping his new adversary,
John Irving, with Mailer and Wolfe, dubbing the literary troika
the "Three Stooges" on a Canadian book show. Salon
01/21/00
- DRUG
OFFICE NEWSPAPER CONNECTION: Last week Salon Magazine reported
that television networks had taken money from the White House
drug office in return for inserting anti-drug messages into their
programming. The Washington Post now reports that "the drug
office says it is spending $11.3 million in the current 12-month
period to advertise in 250 newspapers, and that $893,000 of that
money is being spent on the New York Times, USA Today and The
Washington Post. And White House officials say that in three cases--two
of them involving the Times and The Post--newspapers were granted
$200,000 in financial credits that reduced the amount of public
service advertising they are required to provide under the program."
Washington
Post 01/20/00
- FIRST
CHANCE: Conventional wisdom has had it that consolidation
in the book industry over the past few years would squelch opportunities
for new authors and first books. Not so fast - "a roll call
of the houses this week shows that some publishing schedules for
2000 are bursting with first novels, both literary and commercial."
New
York Times 01/20/00 (one-time
registration required for access)
- UNCOMFORTABLY
CLOSE: A D.H. Lawrence scholar notes an alarming similarity
between Raymond Carver's brilliant 1980 masterpiece "Cathedral,"
and a Lawrence story from 1918, "The Blind Man." What
to do? Salon
01/18/00
- THE
POLITICS OF PLAIN TALK: The ongoing debate over "linguistic
transparency" - the idea that good writers must write clearly
- has pitted George Orwell against Theodor Adorno. The ranks are
now being divided between intellectuals who are intolerant of
deliberately difficult jargon, and those who believe plain talk
can endanger writers' ability depict the complexities of the world
in more radical terms. Lingua
Franca 01/00
- FORGET
TV, WHAT ABOUT BOOKS? Just as TV networks
have come in for criticism for not representing more minorities,
publishing has similar problems. Just why are there so few African-American
book agents? New York
Times 01/13/00 (one-time
registration required for access)
- TOO
HOT TO PUBLISH? The libel suit between
Penguin books and David Irving, the controversial second world
war historian, over his version of the Holocaust, began on Tuesday
in the High Court in London. "The case raises a number of
questions: When are the ideas of historians or academics so appalling
that their work should be forever banned from public consumption?
What limits do you place on free speech? And what makes a good
historian anyway, especially when their subject is that most emotive
one in 20th century history?"
Financial Times 01/12/00
- HE
SAID, SHE SAID: The New Yorker is
75 in February and no fewer than seven books about the legendary
magazine are about to grace the world. Who didn't like someone's
writing, who cut another one's article...these people keep their
grudges. New
York Times 01/12/00 (one-time
registration required for access)
- BOOK
TOUR HELL: Who says authors are good promoters in front of
audiences or behind a radio or TV mic? Sometimes you just talk
your way into a good humiliation. The
Independent 01/11/00
- SUING
GEOGRAPHIC: A group of writers and photographers is suing
National Geographic Magazine for reproducing their work on CD-ROM.
CBC 01/11/00
- STILL
HERE: Huxley, Yeats and Orwell painted bleak visions of the
future into which we've entered. Not so bad though now that we've
got here, is it? A look at what made their versions of our time
so grim. Irish
Times 01/10/00
- BARNES
AND NOBLE AND MICROSOFT in an e-book deal to bring electronic
publishing closer. Wired
01/06/00
- POTTER,
CENTURY AND CHICKEN SOUP: Christmas book sales were terrific,
with the predictable strongest-sellers. Publisher's
Weekly 01/03/00
- THE
BIG STORY IN PUBLISHING IS THE INTERNET: Not so much to sell
books, say publishers, but in the way projects are developed and
distributed. Still, the traditional book process will pay the
bills for the next few years. Publisher's
Weekly 01/03/00
- NEW
THEORY ON NAME for Orwell's "1984." CBC
01/05/00
- TIME,
SOLITUDE, AND... Time to write on somebody else's nickel sounds
great, but as a practical matter.... One writer's travails on
a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony. Salon
01/04/00
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