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Thursday
October 31 GEORGE
W. BUSH, BOOK CRITIC: The President of the United States apparently has a
bit more time on his hands than many people think. According to author and Marine
Reserve veteran Gabe Hudson, President Bush was anything but pleased to receive
a copy of Hudson's well-reviewed story collection entitled Dear Mr. President,
and sent back a note calling the book "unpatriotic and ridiculous and just
plain bad writing." Hudson further claims that FBI agents have been showing
up at his most recent book signings. The White House isn't commenting. Hartford
Courant 10/30/02 THINKING
BACK: Sure we're always hearing buzz about the latest books coming out. But
it's a publisher's backlist that pays the bills. "Though the definition of
where frontlist ends and backlist starts is tough to pin down, the idea of books
that have stood the test of time inspires rapturous enthusiasm among independent
booksellers, several of whom recently shared their thoughts on this vital category.
Selling older titles is profitable and basic to the entire book enterprise."
Publishers Weekly 10/28/02 THE
WRITER'S VOICE: "When Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Mantell founded
Caedmon Records in 1952, they had little idea their upstart label would develop
a back catalogue that included recordings by Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, Robert
Frost, Carl Sandburg and T.S. Eliot. Fifty years later, original Caedmon LPs have
become fetish items for collectors, as many of the existing LPs have been destroyed
by school children who have played library copies to inaudibility, and club DJs
who use the LPs to pepper their dance tracks with snippets of dialogue."
National Post (Canada) 10/31/02 HAPPY
NaNoWriMo! You mean you haven't started your novel yet? Well, you'd better
get cracking - November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, to the cognoscenti,)
and if you want to participate, you'll have thirty days, starting tomorrow, to
write 50,000 words that no one outside of your household will likely ever read.
Oh, and 6,000 people are said to be participating across the country, so your
work had better stand out from a crowd. What's the point, you say? Oh, c'mon:
wouldn't it feel great to put a check mark next to 'Write a Novel' on your great
cosmic to-do list? Chicago Tribune 10/31/02 Wednesday
October 30 "DIFFICULT"
WIN: France's top literary prize is the Prix Goncourt. It has great prestige
but only token monetary value. This year's winner is Pascal Quignard, who won
for a book that critics have described as a "difficult" read. "It's
a sequence of beginnings of novels, stories, landscapes, autobiographical fragments.
It's not a novel or an essay." BBC 10/29/02 LONGING
TO TELL YOU... What's with all these new extra-long books? The number of 500-page
books is growing. "Economic reasons, naturally, play a part in this trend.
To publish a long book does not cost much more than to publish one of 300 pages
or fewer - perhaps about £5. But the market dictates that you can charge
about £20 for a massive volume - and less than half of that for a smaller
one. For publishers, booksellers and even writers, the margins on short books
look very unappealing." The Telegraph (UK) 10/30/02
Tuesday
October 29 TO
BE CANADIAN (SAY IT PROUD): Canadians seem to be scooping up all the big international
literary prizes these days. Canadians themselves seem a little dazed by all the
attention, but there's no denying that Canadian literature now has cachet. How
did Canada grow its crop of prominent writers? MobyLives
10/29/02 POETS
LAUREATE - PRACTICING WITH AN EXPIRED LICENSE? Current controversies over
American state poets laureate are a bit embarrassing. But hey, poets live messy
lives, and besides, ''it has sparked the kind of controversy that allows people
to have opinions about something they never knew existed in the first place. Maybe
people will even care to have an opinion, and that's a good thing.'' Boston
Globe 10/29/02 RESCUING
WRITERS: The Australia Council has a program for "eminent" writers
to "rescue" them from financial hardship. The program gives $80,000
each to authors who have "published at least four works, regardless of age,
and must 'dazzle' the board with their literary merit, critical recognition and
contribution to Australian literature. Eighty-one writers received grants totalling
$1.94 million, out of a record 543 applicants." Sydney
Morning Herald 10/29/02 A
GOOD MAD-ON: Mad Magazine is 50 and a cultural icon. Okay, so its circulation
peaked in 1974 at 2.8 million and is now averaging about 250,000 each month. But
Mad was father (or at least wierd uncle) to a whole generation of ironic,
sarcastic humor. Funny, its style is so pervasively reflected throughout modern
North American culture it's difficult to remember pre-Mad times. Toronto
Star 10/29/02 Monday
October 28 SUING
THE PATRIOT ACT: A coalition of free-speech groups have sued the US Justice
Department over the Patriot Act. "The Patriot Act, passed in October of 2001,
allows the seizing of records from institutions like libraries and bookstores
even in situations where criminal activity is not suspected. It also imposes a
gag order that prevents those who records have been seized from reporting what
happened. The suit seeks certain pieces of what it describes as generic information,
such as how many times the act has been used and against what kind of establishments.
It does not seek to uncover what was revealed in these seizures." Publishers
Weekly 10/24/02 MARTEL'S
'OVERNIGHT' SUCCESS: Last week Yann Martel won the Booker Prize. Not many
had heard of him before that. He got only a $20,000 for Canadian rights to Life
of Pi, US$75,000 for US rights and was turned down by five UK publishers before
getting $36,000 for the UK rights from a struggling publisher. For four years
those advances were his only income. "I could only do it because I don't
smoke, I don't drink, I don't have a car. I have roommates. I wear second-hand
clothes. I have no TV. I have no stereo. My only expenses are my notebooks and
my computer." National Post (Canada) 10/28/02 Sunday
October 27 THE
MAKING OF A COUP: When the wildly unorthodox process that led to the selection
of Yann Martel's Life of Pi as winner of this year's Booker Prize came
to light last weekend, the spotlight was thrown onto Professor Lisa Jardine, who
may just have transformed the prize forever. "Every coup is part cock-up,
part conspiracy. For the suits of Booker, the biggest cock-up was that, in the
echo chamber of the British Museum, their proprietory rhetoric was inaudible.
No one paid any attention. So when Harvey McGrath of the Man Group delivered the
coup de grâce, establishing the Man Group's control of the prize in a few silkily
lethal sentences, Booker's ancien régime was already mortally wounded."
The Observer (UK) 10/27/02 - THE
TRAPPINGS OF FAME: So what will Yann Martel's Booker win do for his career?
Certainly, sales of his prize-winning book will skyrocket, but in the long term,
many serious authors have found fame to be as much a hindrance as a help. Norman
Mailer once claimed that his celebrity "ripped my former identity from me,"
and damaged his ability to work. The Telegraph (UK)
10/26/02
TRIAGE
AMONGST THE STACKS: It's the hardest part of any librarian's job, and there
are many who think it shouldn't be done at all. But with space at a premium in
nearly every library, the process known as 'weeding' has become an essential,
if painful one. Which books to keep, and which to discard? Should lack of recent
readership banish a book from its space, or should decisions be made based on
quality, as determined by 'experts'? The debate goes on. The
New York Times 10/26/02 Friday
October 25 REJECTING
A WINNER: Yann Martel's Life Of Pi won the Booker Prize this week.
But when he was looking for a publisher, five top London firms turned him down.
"It is embarrassing for the editors concerned. I understand how they must
be feeling today. But you know, this sort of thing happens all the time with serious
fiction in particular, where taste and sensibility are what matters. Of course,
it is very gratifying when your own judgment and belief in a book's greatest proves
correct." The Guardian (UK) 10/24/02 Thursday
October 24 ARE
WRITERS THE NEW POP STARS? "Theres a sense among young people and
those who make it that fiction can be central to the culture. There was a conventional
wisdom among the older generations that it was a marginalized endeavor. To see
it be a central cultural product for kids today, thats all to the good.
The only caveat is the problems that being a rock star or any kind of celebrity
sensation presents." New York Observer 10/23/02 HANDICAPPING
THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS: This year's National Book Award fiction list "lacks
not only a clear favorite, but also a controversial anti- favoritethink
In America, by Susan Sontag, in 2000that could provide what contest-watchers
live for: a big fat upset. Publicly, publishers say nothing but nice things about
the nominated titles. Privately, they bicker and bitch about whos been excluded.
And who came blame them?" New York Observer
10/23/02 THANK
GOD FOR THE BOOKER: "With a Canadian author walking away with this year's
prestigious Booker Prize and another two short-listed, the country's hard hit
publishers said on Wednesday they were are only too happy for some deserving international
attention... Canada's publishing industry, which has long been supported by the
government, has had a tough year after suffering a bankruptcy of one of its major
houses, General Publishing Company." Yahoo! News
(Reuters) 10/23/02 - MARTEL
MADNESS: Canadian booksellers are reporting a mad rush on Yann Martel's Life
of Pi, which was announced this week as the winner of the prestigious Booker
Prize. Sales are particularly brisk in Montreal, where several of the city's largest
bookstores have been unable to keep the title in stock. Montreal
Gazette 10/24/02
- PLOT
OF PI: So, now that the Booker has been awarded, and the gushing has
begun anew over the talent of young Yann Martel, what about the book itself? Where
did it come from, and where does it take the reader? According to Martel himself,
the genesis of the idea came from a scene in a Brazilian novel of Jews escaping
Nazi Germany, and fleshed itself out during the author's travels in India into
"a novel which will make you believe in God' -- or ask yourself why you don't."
National Post (Canada) 10/24/02
SEBOLD'S
SUCCESS: The publishing industry, like most entertainment cultures, does not
like surprises. The best-sellers are supposed to be written by brand-name authors
and fluffed up by expensive marketing campaigns. But once every few years, a book
manages to break through the PR wall and sell like gangbusters simply because,
well, it's a great book. Enter Alice Sebold, and her self-made bestseller The
Lovely Bones. Washington Post 10/24/02 Wednesday
October 23 MARTEL
WINS BOOKER - AGAIN: Canadian writer Yann Martel has won this year's Booker
Prize. He quickly denied that the fact that three Canadian writers made the Booker
shortlist consituted a literary movement. "It's happenstance that there's
three Canadian writers." This is actually Martel's second time winning the
booker in the past week. Last week the Booker website briefly declared him the
winner; that announcement was dismissed as an error by Booker judges. BBC
10/23/02 - THINKING
ABOUT CANADIAN WRITING: Martel's book was greeted with good but not great
reviews in Canada, but was an instant hit with British critics. "I hope this
award will encourage us to think of Canadian literature in a different light,
to respond more positively to adventurous, playful, yet intellectually serious
strains of writing." Toronto Star 10/23/02
- O
CANADA: "Canada, a country with no Robert Burns or Robert Louis Stevenson
in its young literary history, may be the very model of how a nation can actively
create and encourage an outstandingly strong book industry, with all the socio-economic
benefits which flow from that, never mind the benefits to the heart, soul and
grateful mind. Canadian investment in literature comes from various sources, national
and provincial." The Scotsman 10/23/02
CALIFORNIA
POET LAUREATE RESIGNS AFTER LIE: Quincy Troupe, California's first poet laureate,
who was appointed last June, has resigned after it was discovered he had lied
on his official resume. "His curriculum vitae says he graduated from college,
but he didn't. Troupe, a professor of creative writing and American and Caribbean
literature at the University of California at San Diego, is author of 13 books,
including six books of poetry. 'He was extremely popular. His work was fantastic.
He was loved among his students. It's a shame'." Yahoo!
(AP) 10/19/02 - A
LIFE UNRAVELING: The revelation could jeopardize Troupe's post at UCSD, where
he has taught since 1991, because it constitutes a violation of the faculty code
of conduct." San Francisco Chronicle 10/21/02
- THE
PERILS OF POET LAUREATES: As the states of New Jersey and California have
recently found out, hiring a poet is not a benign act. "Some are prone to
confuse the prophetic with extravagant foolishness. Many believe that the ecstatic
and the orgiastic are subjects just as suitable as the edifying. Some are sinister
fools. Many others are in the process of living the same sort of messy, contradictory
lives as everyone else - though usually more poetically." Los
Angeles Times 10/23/02
DISCOVERING
HEMMINGWAY: Last March, in a small house in Cuba, "a delegation of four
Americans found what they described as a jackpot: file cabinets and boxes filled
with thousands of pages of Hemingway's original manuscripts, rough drafts and
outtakes from great works, handwritten letters of love and anger, notes in English
and Spanish, and thousands of photographs." The trove should reveal much
about the last third of the writer's life. San Francisco
Chronicle 10/23/02 LISTENING
TO THE PRINTED WORD: Why do people flock to author readings? They can, after
all, cut out the middleman and simply read the book. The International Festival
of Authors in Toronto is stuffed full of author readings. "You come to hear
the ur-voice. To hear authors talks about the work, where it comes from, how it
was made. That and the chance to actually shake the hand of the person who's work
you've admired. One of the things you can do here that you can't do at a film
or music festival is actually shake the hands of the stars." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/23/02 Tuesday
October 22 A
TRADITIONAL GG: Canada's Governor General Book Award finalists were announced
Monday. There were no first-time authors, no edgy, risky new voices on the fiction
list. The shortlist includes The Case of Lena S. by David Bergen (M &
S), Exile by Ann Ireland (Simon & Pierre), The Navigator of New
York by Giller nominee Wayne Johnston (Knopf), A Song for Nettie Johnson
by Gloria Sawai (Coteau) and Unless by Carol Shields (Random House), who
is also a finalist for the Booker and the Giller. The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/22/02 - SHIELDS'
HAT TRICK: With the Governor General's nomination, "Carol Shields' novel
Unless, about a family's agony when a daughter opts to live on the street
for no apparent reason, is also a finalist for the $25,000 Giller Prize and for
the $120,000 Man Booker prize, to be announced in London tonight." Toronto
Star 10/22/02
- WHAT'S
CANADIAN? Three Canadian books made this year's Booker Prize shortlist. But
is there anything that's distinctly Canadian about them? "Merely posing the
question - Is there such a thing as a Canadian style? - betrays the sort of provincialism
these Canadian authors and books so forcefully reject. There is no writing that
is identifiably Canadian because what is distinct about the literature coming
from there is its diversity." Calgary Herald
10/22/02
AN
EIGHTH HARRY POTTER? JK Rowling has always said that there would be seven
Harry Potter books. But Warner Brothers has copyrighted not only the next three
titles, but a fourth as well. "The new titles are book five (Harry Potter
and the Order of the Phoenix) plus Harry Potter and the Pyramids of Furmat,
Harry Potter and the Chariots of Light and Harry Potter and the Alchemists
Cell." The Scotsman 10/21/02
- NO
EIGHTH HARRY: JK Rowling's agent has denied there are any plans for an eighth
Harry Potter. "There is absolutely no truth in the story that either there
is going to be an eighth book in the series or that these titles are genuine title
for the sixth and seventh books." BBC 10/22/02
SCOTLAND
ABANDONS NATIONAL LIT CENTER IDEA: The Scottish government has ditched a £2
million plan for an expansion of the National Library to turn it into a National
Literary Center. "The aim was to provide a 'national information and literary
centre' by giving the library the space it needs to expand, and at the same time
bringing in other organisations such as the Edinburgh Book Festival to promote
books and internet learning." The Scotsman 10/15/02 Monday
October 21 THE
NYer'S NEW FICTION EDITOR: Deborah Treisman, a "32-year-old prodigy little
known outside the literary world," has been named the new fiction editor
of the The New Yorker magazine, succeeding Bill Buford in one of the most
important fiction editing jobs in the literary world. "I suppose it is not
wrong to say that that I am interested in younger, more experimental, edgier voices."
The New York Times 10/21/02 WHOSE
BACKLASH IS IT ANYWAY? Is a backlash forming against today's young trendy
literary writers? The signs are all there. But look a little closer - the "
'backlash' being forecast is against a group of writers who started by exploiting
a 'backlash' of their own devising." MobyLives
10/21/02 Sunday
October 20 DO
LIT PRIZES MATTER? They generate lots of publicity. But do literary prizes
really make a difference to the world of letters? "Yes, say leading literary
professionals, who believe such awards not only carry commercial weight, but also
play an increasingly important role in connecting serious writers with readers
eager for qualitative road signs in a world awash in books." Los
Angeles Times 10/19/02 BAD
WAY TO CHOOSE: Lisa Jardine, the chair of the panel of judges for this year's
Booker Prize says the way novels are chosen for consideration of one of the world's
major literary awards is outdated and she "accused the head of the prize
of having an outdated corporate agenda." She says "that the current
crop of 130 books - two submitted by every publisher - was too large" and
that "the judges were prevented from making the best decision by the sheer
number of books they had to read." The Observer
(UK) 10/20/02 - CHANGING
OF THE GUARD: This year's Booker jury piles into cabs and rides the London
Eye to check a plot point. The ascent of Lisa Jardine as jury chair was, "symbolically,
the moment a stuffy old literary prize was dragged into the twenty-first century,
the moment when old-fashioned literary critical discourse was replaced by publicity-conscious
British empiricism. This, far more than the springtime media flap about the opening
of the prize to American competition, is the real, rather overlooked, story of
the 2002 Booker prize." The Observer (UK) 10/20/02
- ALL
THINGS BOOKER: For some writers, winning the Booker Prize (the winner of which
is to be announced Tuesday) is the difference between being able to earn a living
as a writer or not. This is the Year of the Canadian, with three of the six finalists
coming from the Frozen North. It's difficult to overstate the Booker's effect
on a career. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/19/02
THE
DAVE EGGERS PUZZLE: Dave Eggers' new book is being self-published and he's
giving away the money earned from it. With the success of his last book he could
have done anything he wanted. "He's so averse to promoting himself that it
is the canniest act of self-promotion. He really doesn't care - really. But that's
hard for anyone in the frenzy business to believe." Los
Angeles Times 10/20/02 Friday
October 18 BOOK
GLUT WARNING: Each year publishers release many of the biggest books in time
for the holiday season; it is, after all, the time when most books are sold. But
"this year the stream of titles from the publishing houses has become a flood,
provoking booksellers to warn that some high-quality titles are at risk of being
drowned." The Independent (UK) 10/17/02 Thursday
October 17 NATIONAL
BOOK AWARD FINALISTS ANNOUNCED: Nominees include "You Are Not a Stranger
Here," a debut story collection by Adam Haslett, "Big If," by Mark
Costello; Julia Glass' "Three Junes"; Brad Watson's "The Heaven
of Mercury"; and "Gorgeous Lies," by Martha McPhee, daughter of
the award-winning essayist John McPhee." Nando
Times (AP) 10/16/02 - OOPS
- MARTEL WINS THIS YEAR'S BOOKER - A WEEK EARLY: This year's Booker Prize
winner will be announced next week. But due to a mixup on the Booker website,
a notice announcing that Yann Martel has won was posted. A booker spokesperson
rushes to assure one and all that the winner isn't really known yet. "The
judges haven't met yet. I can guarantee that this isn't the actual result. There
are six draft press releases for each of the shortlisted books and this is one
of them." The Guardian (UK) 10/17/02
REBUILDING
THE GREAT LIBRARY: The Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed 1,500 years
ago. "The original great library's collection of some 700,000 papyrus scrolls,
including works by Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles represented the first time
knowledge was collected and codified by scribes." Now it's been rebuilt The
£130m project was initiated more than a decade ago, amid high hopes that
the Biblioteca Alexandrina would recapture the spirit of the city's ancient seat
of learning." But "the new library is riven with dispute over what its
content should be. Egypt's fondness for censorship has meant that rows have already
erupted over its book collection policy." The
Guardian (UK) 10/16/02 THE
CASE FOR N JERSEY'S POET LAUREATE: New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka is
almost certain to be removed from the job because of a controversial poem he wrote
about 9/11 that is being called anti-Semitic. "The issue is ultimately one
of tolerance of diverse opinion. The left gave us political correctness in the
early 1990s, and now those processes of enforcing orthodoxy have been inherited
by the right and the mainstream. And the heretics only happen to be talking about
the most important international questions of our time." New
York Observer 10/16/02 BOOKS
FOR THE BLIND: A new law in Britain allows copies of books to be made for
the blind without breaching copyright. "Only five per cent of titles published
each year in the UK are currently accessible to Britains visually impaired
people via Braille or large print." The Scotsman
10/17/02 PUBLISH
YOURSELF: Print-on-demand books are becoming popular with authors who can't
find a traditional publisher. "On-demand books are a new wrinkle in the concept
of vanity publishing, in which a vanity press typically prints many copies of
the book at once (and generally the author has to pay for them). Since print-on-demand
publishers only issue books as needed, costs are lower and the author can even
make a little money in royalties." The New York
Times 10/17/02 BUFORD
TO LEAVE NYer EDITOR JOB: Bill Buford, who has been The New Yorker's fiction
editor since 1994, is leaving the job to be the magazine's European correspondent.
"In a way, it's going from the best editing job in town to the best writing
job in town-except it's not in town." New York
Observer 10/16/02 Wednesday
October 16 MR
BOOKS: Martin Goff runs the Man Booker Prize. He's also the printed word's
biggest advocate in the UK. "What distinguishes Goff from the other Hooray
Henries around St James's Square is his quixotic quest to get the philistine British
to buy good novels. Selling double glazing to Afghans is child's play by comparison."
Now "there are rumours that Goff is about to retire from masterminding the
Man Booker prize. It will be a sad day." The
Guardian (UK) 10/16/02 FRANKFURT
REBOUND: "Last year... there was an eerie pall over the Frankfurt Book
Fair in Germany, a gathering of book industry professionals that has been going
on since the mid-15th Century, shortly after Johannes Gutenberg invented movable
type... But this year, in spite of the rumors of war, the collapse of the economy
in important book markets such as Argentina (where 700 bookstores closed in the
last three years), and the lingering effects of Europe's switch to the more expensive
Euro, the Frankfurt Book Fair -- the largest market for international rights in
the world -- was bustling." Chicago Tribune 10/16/02 MORE
AMBROSE DEBATE: Some critics felt that obituaries of the historian Stephen
Ambrose glossed over reports of his plagiarism, but Tim Rutten detected the opposite
bias, singling out the Boston Globe as the most egregious Ambrose-basher,
and pointing out that paraphrase (and footnoted paraphrase, at that) is very different
from plagiarism. "All synoptic, narrative historians, which is what Ambrose
was, paraphrase from other sources. If the standards laid down by his most rabid
critics were applied to the four Evangelists, the three Synoptic Gospels would
have to be denounced as acts of plagiarism--as would a substantial and revered
part of the extant medieval corpus." Los
Angeles Times 10/16/02 Tuesday
October 15 LUV
ME, YA DUMMY: Who like to be insulted? And yet "publishers continue to
appeal to potential book-buyers by labelling them dummies and complete idiots.
And they've struck paydirt in the process." The
Age (Melbourne) 10/15/02 MAKING
SENSE: Is literary criticism in need of some organizing principles? "It
may be that much literature makes sense in the light of the current warhorses
of critical analysis: Marx, Freud, textualism, postmodernism, 'queer theory,'
and so forth. But it is equally likely that a good deal of literature (just as
life itself) makes more sense in the light of evolution. Accordingly, literary
critics might well profit by adding Darwinian analysis to their armamentarium."
Chronicle of Higher Education 10/14/02 THE
HISTORICAL RECORD: Where is the intellectual rigor in today's historical fiction?
"That some of today's historical novelists are talented is obvious, but equally
obvious is the fact that they don't want to aggressively interrogate the historical
record in any new ways, or challenge their readers' assumptions about how we imagine
the past." MobyLives 10/14/02 THE
HIDDEN AMBROSE: Why did obituaries of author Stephen Ambrose gloss over his
plagiarism? "Ambrose's pilferage was much more than a slip-up in a 'couple
of books.' As the Weekly Standard, Forbes.com, and New York Times proved
in one damning week last January, Ambrose plagiarized all the time." Slate
10/14/02 Monday
October 14 FIGHTING
IN PUBLIC: A public and rancorous debate is being carried out in public among
two of England's better known public intellectuals. "The debate is particularly
English because its protagonists the novelist Martin Amis and the Washington-based
writer Christopher Hitchens are so rooted in late 20th-century London.
Both graduated from Oxford University and have carried out their quarrel in learned
texts freckled with Latin. Both won renown while working at the leftist New Statesman
in the 1970's. Each had no cross word in public at least for the
other. Until last month." The New York Times
10/14/02 THE
POISON REVIEW: You spend years researching and writing a scolarly book and
then a prominent literary review sends it out to a "demon reviewer whose
solitary aim is to make mincemeat of you in public. There is, of course, no row
like an academic row... The Guardian (UK) 10/11/02
- Previously: CROSSFIRE:
There are bad reviews. And then there are bad reviews. Jason Cowley writes
that literary London is wincing at a whomping of "perhaps unprecedented hostility
and malice" in the Times Literary Supplement of noted Russian scholar
Orlando Figes' new book, Natasha's Dance, "a broad, sweeping, multidisciplinary
cultural history of Russia." Moscow-based, British academic Rachel Polonsky's
review "cites among her charges against him factual inaccuracies, misreadings,
cavalier appropriation of sources and overall intellectual irresponsibility. There
are even suggestions, if not of plagiarism, which remains the cardinal crime in
academe, then of careless paraphrase." The Guardian
(UK) 10/03/02
WANTING
WOMEN: "Women's magazines are in a state of flux. Two high profile titles
(Elle and She) closed earlier this year, and most of the others
are in decline. As a result, most of the mass market major titles including Woman's
Day, New Idea, and marie claire have been changing their formula to
save themselves from extinction." The Age (Melbourne)
10/14/02 ARCHER
ESCAPES PUNISHMENT: Writer, former MP (and convicted felon) Jeffrey Archer
has escaped punishment for breaking prison rules and publishing a diary he wrote
while in his cell. "Archer, 62, had his £12-a-day prison earnings stopped
for 14 days and was banned from using the prison canteen for two weeks. The punishment
was suspended for six months" if Archer doesn't break the rules again. The
Times (UK) 10/11/02 - ARCHER'S
BANAL DIARY: What about Archer's "literary" impressions of prison
life? "Completely worthless from the literary point of view, and relentlessly
banal in thought, observation and analysis, they are nonetheless revealing: of
Lord Archer's mind and personality rather than of the prison system. And to be
privy to Archer's mind in full cry is a depressing experience indeed." The
Telegraph (UK) 10/14/02
- Previously: LETTER
FROM PRISON: Jeffrey Archer's diary from prison describing his life there
is being published and serialized in the Daily Mail next week. But prison
authorities say the diary may break prison rules. "He can't make money while
he is a serving prisoner from publications and I have a duty to protect the privacy
of other prisoners and members of staff. He has to respect that." If he has
broken rules, time may be added to his sentence. The
Guardian (UK) 10/05/02
Sunday
October 13 STEPHEN
AMBROSE, 66: Stephen Ambrose, the eminent historian whose colloquial style
made him a bestselling author as well as a respected researcher, has died at the
age of 66 after a long battle with lung cancer. Ambrose had lately been battling
charges of plagiarism in several of his works. The
New York Times (AP) 10/13/02 PRODUCT
PLACEMENT OR HACK-FOR-HIRE? Audiences have long since gotten used to the endless
and gratuitous product placements used in movies and television shows to generate
extra revenue with very little extra effort. But now, an even more insidious form
of message imbedding has come to the world of books: "Two entrepreneurial
exiles from Britain's advertising universe are venturing boldly and unapologetically
into this once-forbidden territory. They propose to write fiction for organizations
and institutions that want their message communicated. Never mind the niceties
of plot, theme and character development; let's just turn literature into another
marketing opportunity, of which the Western world is so clearly bereft."
The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 10/12/02 Friday
October 11 PORTER
COMES FORWARD: Peter Porter has won poetry's biggest award - the £10,000
Forward Poetry prize. "After the acrimony of many recent poetry prizes, last
night's was a unanimous decision by the judges, for Porter's latest collection,
Max is Missing. William Sieghart, the chairman, described him as one of the most
distinguished poets working in Britain - where he has lived since he left Australia
50 years ago." The Guardian (UK) 10/10/02 Thursday
October 10 KERTESZ
WINS NOBEL: A Hungarian novelist whose works draw their dark inspiration from
the author's own days in two Nazi death camps has been awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature. Imre Kertesz was lauded by the Swedish Academy for "exploring
how individuals can survive when subjected to 'barbaric' social forces."
BBC 10/10/02 GHOSTWRITTEN
NOBEL? One of Spain's most distinguished writers - Nobel winner Camilo Jose
Cela - has been accused of "regularly using ghostwriters for most of his
career. The allegations... include not just the recent works of Cela, who died
in January at 85 and won his Nobel in 1989, but stretch back to his early classics."
The Guardian 10/09/02 ATWOOD
SUES GLOBE: The Toronto Globe & Mail is being sued for libel by famed
Canadian author Margaret Atwood, after the newspaper supposedly singled out Atwood
as one of the more prominent signers of a strongly worded petition opposing American
President George W. Bush's plans to invade Iraq. Atwood did sign the petition,
along with about 130 other Canadian artists, authors, and celebrities, but she
claims that the Globe associated her with comments made at the press conference
announcing the petition (notably one referring to the American administration
as a group of thugs,) a press conference she did not attend. National
Post (Canada) 10/10/02 Wednesday
October 9 OUSTING
THE POET: The New Jersey State Legislature has been working on a resolution
to oust state poet laureate Amiri Baraka after Baraka read a poem suggesting that
Israelis might have had something to do with the attack on the World Trade Center.
Though he can't fire Baraka, NJ Gov. James E. McGreevey "stopped payment
on the $10,000 state grant Baraka was to have received as the state's honorary
poet laureate." Newark Star-Ledger 10/08/02 SECOND
CHANCES: Today's publishing climate exerts huge pressure on writers to hit
big out of the gate. And even greater pressure to follow up with another success.
There's little patience for stumbles. But "Second-Novel Syndrome has long
been an occupational hazard in the world of letters, as authors struggle with
writer's block, intense scrutiny, and the self-consciousness induced by sudden
celebrity." Village Voice Literary Supplement
10/08/02 BOOKS
ON WHEELS: The Internet Bookmobile is making its way across America "stopping
at schools, museums and libraries, making books for kids and spreading the word
about the digital library that is the Net." It's a "1992 Ford Aerostar
equipped with mobile satellite dish, duplexing color printer, desktop binding
machine and paper cutter. A sign on the outside says, "1,000,000 books inside
(soon)." The van will end its cross-country trek today, parking outside the
US Supreme Court, while the future of copyright law is argued inside.
Salon 10/09/02 RISK-FREE:
Have poets stopped experimenting with language? "Every age has its risks,
innovators, uncontainable oddballs, but the 20th is the century in which experiment
became the central fetish of artistic production. It may be that the recent spate
of proclamations that modernism's not dead yet, please, isn't simply a holding
action by the Citizens for Endowed Chairs for Modernists, but a recognition that
we haven't managed to come up with a criterion beyond experimentation (though
raw marketability seems to have done well in the fine arts)." Village
Voice Literary Supplement 10/08/02 BACK
TO TELL ABOUT IT: "Gabriel García Márquez, the 1982 Nobel
laureate from Colombia and the foremost author in Latin America, learned in 1999
that he had lymphatic cancer. He promptly cloistered himself with a single-minded
pursuit not seen perhaps since he wrote the 1967 masterpiece, One Hundred Years
of Solitude, in a little more than a year, his only vice a steady supply of
cigarettes provided by his wife, Mercedes." Now he's about to release "what
may be his most-awaited book, Vivir Para Contarla, or To Live to Tell
It." The New York Times 10/09/02 CROSSFIRE:
There are bad reviews. And then there are bad reviews. Jason Cowley writes
that literary London is wincing at a whomping of "perhaps unprecedented hostility
and malice" in the Times Literary Supplement of noted Russian scholar
Orlando Figes' new book, Natasha's Dance, "a broad, sweeping, multidisciplinary
cultural history of Russia." Moscow-based, British academic Rachel Polonsky's
review "cites among her charges against him factual inaccuracies, misreadings,
cavalier appropriation of sources and overall intellectual irresponsibility. There
are even suggestions, if not of plagiarism, which remains the cardinal crime in
academe, then of careless paraphrase." The Guardian
(UK) 10/03/02 - TAKING
FIGES APART: Read Polonsky's dissection of Figes' book. Times
Literary Supplement 10/04/02
Tuesday
October 8 ALD
- R.I.P: The popular website Arts & Letters Daily has shut down.
Editor Denis Dutton has updated the site for the past year after parent company
Lingua Franca went out of business. ALD and the rest of Lingua Franca's
assets will be auctioned off in bankruptcy, but loyal ALD readers aren't out of
luck. Dutton has moved on to Philosophy
& Literature, where's he's recreated the ALD idea. National
Post 10/08/02 PAYBACK:
Dave Eggers could have chosen any big publisher to produce his latest book. But
he's self publishing and distributing it through independent bookstores. For Eggers
and his magazine McSweeney's, it's a way of rewarding those who have helped them.
"Almost all small publishers depend on the support of independent bookstores.
McSweeney's books have always been sold primarily in independent bookstores, and
not by choice. Typically, the chains do not order many copies of our books, leaving
most of the sales to the independent stores. Therefore, we always give independent
stores first dibs on our books." Chicago Tribune
10/08/02 SERIOUS
READING: Many American magazines have been struggling as the economy has worsened.
But more serious magazines have seen their circulations increase significantly.
Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic are newly
thriving. "When everyone is feeling that the only important thing in life
is the next Lexus and worship CEOs as demigods, there is little appetite for ideas
or good writing, which is what our magazines are about. But the fact remains that
you can get more out of good writing than you can from a 500-channel television
universe that inevitably dissolves into incoherence. Writing involves thought
and creates coherence, which is an appealing commodity in this atmosphere of concern."
Los Angeles Times 10/04/02 SEARCHING
FOR SUBSTANCE: Writer Jonathan Franzen is back with a new book - a collection
of essays that seems to be winning back some of the fans he lost last year in
L'affaire Oprah. This is a serious series of writing, in which Franzen "fears
that if there ever was an average American reader there no longer is, and, what
is worse, that the ranks of serious readers are growing ever thinner." Chicago
Sun-Times 10/06/02 - BACK
ON FRANZEN'S SIDE: "To read How to Be Alone is to see how the
awkward parting of Franzen and [Oprah] Winfrey dramatized the lopsided war between
the idea-mongering minority and the image-peddling majority in American culture.
It is also to wish that intelligence were more fashionable." The
Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/07/02
Monday
October 7 BOOK
WORLD CONVENES IN FRANKFURT: The annual Frankfurt Book Fair begins this week
"with more than 6,000 exhibitors representing 110 countries, hosting more
than 2,600 events and 800 readings and interviews with authors. Although the number
of countries and publishers is 5 percent lower this year than last year, the Frankfurt
Book Fair remains the largest fair of its kind in the world. The most notable
absentees are from the host country itself, with almost 15 percent fewer German
publishers reserving space this year." Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 10/04/02 PUBLISHING'S
GOLDEN AGE: Down with the pessimists, writes Toby Mundy. "With its over-educated,
overworked, underpaid legions, publishing is an industry bedevilled by pessimism.
This pessimism blinds people to the fact that we are living in a golden age of
book publishing in which quantity and quality rival anything in the past, in which
books have never been so well published and in which they occupy a more boisterously
visible place in the general culture than ever before." Prospect
10/02 - IN
PRAISE OF PAPER: Will electronic publishing kill books? "The first steps
of electronic publishing have been faltering. The e-book has not - yet - been
a bestseller, or even a viable commercial proposition. One day, however, such
ventures will succeed and when electronic publishing becomes the norm, the more
desirable (and expensive) the traditional book will correspondingly become."
The Observer (UK) 10/06/02
WRITING
ABOUT A LAND OF VIOLENCE: Since the 1980s, thousands of Zimbabwe's writerrs
journalists and artists who have criticized Robert Mugabe's government have been
"harassed, arrested and jailed." And yet, some of the country's most
prominent writers tell the story of Zimbabwe's political violence. "I wanted
to say, This is how it was. Just that. These destructive people were created,
and they roamed the land. I cannot pretend to have been unaware of the relevance
now. We weren't past this violence; we have remained in that." The
New York Times 10/07/02 Sunday
October 6 IT
WAS A DARK! AND STORMY! NIGHT! A Canadian publisher specializes in the early
literary efforts of star writers - books they wrote when they 17 or 18. What's
the point? Some of the writing is enough to make you wince. But "look, there
are things like bad spelling and lousy punctuation. Those things make you wince.
But these books teach us about a writer's recurring themes, their evolving techniques
and skills. They teach us more about the evolution of these great talents."
The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/05/02 WHY
DO WE NEED A RHYMER-IN-CHIEF? Forty US states have poets laureate. Most (none?)
have been controvesial in the way that New Jersey's Amiri Baraka has. The controversy
over New Jersey's poel laureate leads one critic to wonder - why should there
even be poets laureate? Philadelphia Inquirer 10/05/02
LETTER
FROM PRISON: Jeffrey Archer's diary from prison describing his life there
is being published and serialized in the Daily Mail next week. But prison
authorities say the diary may break prison rules. "He can't make money while
he is a serving prisoner from publications and I have a duty to protect the privacy
of other prisoners and members of staff. He has to respect that." If he has
broken rules, time may be added to his sentence. The
Guardian (UK) 10/05/02 Friday
October 4 SURPRISING
SHORTLIST: "The shortlist of a major prize is notable as much for what
is not on it as for what is. So it is this year for the ninth annual Giller Prize
for fiction, whose nominees were announced yesterday at a news conference in Toronto.
On the 2002 shortlist are authors Carol Shields (Unless), Austin Clarke
(The Polished Hoe), Wayne Johnston (The Navigator of New York),
Bill Gaston (Mount Appetite) and Lisa Moore (Open). "Surprising"
and "controversial" were just some of the adjectives circulating among the crowd
at the posh downtown Toronto hotel ballroom after this year's panel of judges...
presented a shortlist of five for the $25,000 prize. The winner of what has been
described as both the most prestigious honour and best marketing/promotion tool
in English-Canadian literature is to be named at a gala banquet Nov. 5."
The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 10/04/02
- GILLER
IN PERSPECTIVE: "We in the book chat business must face it. The announcement
of the short list for the Giller Prize, and the arguments over which novels should
be on that list, are small potatoes compared to the blazing controversy over the
proper salary for [Hockey Night in Canada presenter] Ron MacLean." But like
any other contest with national implications, the Giller is a fascinating glimpse
into the world of writers and publishers, and the politics of the thing alone
are enough to fascinate any observer. Toronto Star
10/04/02
RADICAL
CRITIQUE: BR Myers is back with an expanded complaint about the quality of
contemporary fiction. He "argues that the typical 'literary masterpiece'
of today is usually in fact a mediocre work dolled up with trendy writerly gimmicks
designed to lend an impression of artsy profundity and to obscure the author's
lack of talent. Myers's goal, he explains, is to convey to fellow readers that
they shouldn't feel cowed into reading (and pretending to be engaged by) the latest
dull and pretentious book just because the literary establishment has pronounced
it 'evocative' and 'compelling.'Rather, Myers emphasizes, readers should trust
their own instincts, and decide for themselves what books speak to them in meaningful
ways." The Atlantic 10/02 WHERE
THE SNOBBERY IS: Maurice Sendak's illustrations are unmistakable, and his
drawings for such children's classics as Where the Wild Things Are made
him a legend to generations of young readers. But like so many popular artists
before and after him, Sendak has some trouble being taken as a serious artist.
"Snobbery is the biggest obstacle to him being recognized as a fine artist,"
says Nichols Clark, director of the new Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.
"And it's not just Sendak. There are many illustrators who are far better artists
than those who consider themselves fine artists." The
Christian Science Monitor 10/04/02 Thursday
October 3 A
NOT-TOO-POETIC DUST-UP: A firestorm has erupted in New Jersey over a poem
written by the state's poet laureate shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Governor
Jim McGreevey has called for the resignation of Imamu Amiri Baraka from the laureate
post after hearing the poem, which includes the line "Who told 4,000 Israeli
workers at the twin towers / To stay at home that day / Why did Sharon stay away?"
(For the record, there weren't 4,000 Israelis employed at the World Trade
Centers.) The 67-year-old Baraka, who was inducted last year into the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, calls his critics "right-wing zealots,"
but has yet to directly answer the charges of anti-Semitism stemming from the
poem. Washington Post 10/03/02 TEXAS
VS. HISTORY: The Texas Board of Education is choosing new textbooks, and various
groups are lobbying to modify what's included in the history books. A group called
the Texas Public Policy Foundation "wants texts modified to tell how African
chieftains, not Europeans, captured slaves for sale in America. It wants to emphasize
the role of white Europeans in ending slavery. It objects to portrayals of President
John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy as civil rights supporters,
noting that the brothers refused to support the movement at crucial times. The
group also wants texts to say that the Constitution protects an individual's right
to own guns and that the wealthy pay a disproportionate share of income taxes."
The New York Times 10/02/02 - Previously:
CLEANING
UP DODGE: A Republican party "Leadership Council" in Texas is on
a cultural crusade. So far it has succeeded in getting a plaster fig leaf added
to a replica of a statue of David, remove some art from an Italian restaurant,
"persuaded commissioners to use an Internet filter to screen computers at
the library for pornography and to put plaques reading 'In God We Trust' in county
libraries." Houston Chronicle 09/24/02
WAITING
FOR GILLER: This morning, the shortlist for the Giller Prize, Canada's answer
to the Booker, will be announced at a Toronto hotel. (The shortlist had not been
released as of ArtsJournal's morning deadline.) "Often thought of
as a lifetime achievement award, it does not go to a writer who has published
some clever first novel with a small literary press in Saskatchewan, or some avant-garde
novelist who is being enthusiastically championed by a professor of literature
at Dalhousie... The winning novel is always a more-or-less conventional narrative,
suitable for book clubs, and frequently a historical novel." Toronto
Star 10/03/02 GETTING
ON THE GRID: The Library of Congress, the world's largest library, is considering
a new way to store its digital collection, which currently contains 7.5 million
records. "When you're (preserving) millions of digital entities you have
to use automated processing." Instead of keeping the data all in one computer
system, the library may try grid storage. "All the digital data do not need
to reside in the same physical location to be accessible and manageable by an
institution charged with the mission of preserving and managing access to that
digital data." Wired 10/02/02 BARENBOIM
THE PEACEMAKER: Israeli conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim, who has made waves
in the Middle East twice in recent months, has co-authored a new book with Palestinian
intellectual Edward Said calling for peace in the region. "The book, titled
Parallels and Paradoxes, grew out of conversations between the two friends,
both prominent cultural figures who first met a decade ago by chance at a London
hotel... Last month, [Barenboim] and Said were named the winners of Spain's Prince
of Asturias Concord Prize for their efforts toward bringing peace to the Middle
East." Andante (AP) 10/03/02 Wednesday
October 2 POETIC
STANDOFF: The governor of New Jersey and the state's poet laureate are at
an impasse. The governor is angry about a poem that poet laureate Amiri Baraka
wrote and read that wonders about an assertion that Jews were told in advance
about the attack of the World Trade Center. The governor wants to remove Baraka
because of the poem, but the poet says he's entitled to write whatever he wants.
"Under the legal technicalities of the appointment, neither [governor] McGreevey
nor the five-member committee of poets who appointed him to the two-year post
can remove Baraka." Philadelphia Inquirer 10/02/02 REDISCOVERING
BUDDHISM: Researchers are studying what may turn out to be some of the most
important Buddhist documents ever found. "The manuscripts dated from the
first century AD, and that made them the oldest known Buddhist manuscripts anywhere,
and the oldest Indic manuscripts known to have survived." The new discoveries
reveal "a missing link between the birth of Buddhism in India and its later
forms in China and elsewhere in Asia. Oral transmission had been the preferred
or normal way - memorization, recitation, and so forth. What we're now finding
out is that, in the first and second century AD, the notion of writing things
down took off in a big way." Chronicle of Higher
Education 10/04/02 MEDICAL
WRITES: New York's Bellevue Hospital publishes a literary journal and holds
writing classes. "Publication of The Bellevue Review is part of a national
trend in medical education for schools to use literature to teach doctors how
to write better and clearer case histories and to empathize more with patients.
Reading and writing literature helps doctors think more subtly, pay attention
to the finer details, read between the lines, look for deeper meaning." The
New York Times 10/02/02 Tuesday
October 1 WHEN
A PUBLISHER FAILS: Sarah Dearing's new book was published to glowing reviews
in April. Unfortunately, it's been almost impossible to get ahold of copies after
her publisher Stoddart Publishing declared bankruptcy. So in the week that she
just won the Toronto Book Award, she traveled to the Stoddart warehouse to buy
some copies of her book that were being liquidated. The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/01/02 LACK
OF IMPORTANCE: Does the Booker choose only "safe" books? Writer
Will Self says "there were very few Booker winners from the last 25 years
that have 'in any way rocked society'. Authors like Martin Amis and JG Ballard
had only been nominated once while winners were not chosen if they were challenging."
BBC 10/01/02
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