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12/01/04:
Trust the computer! The computer is your friend!
What's
your favourite literary dystopia? (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
The Atrocity Exhibition -- best title ever
Looks like Maud's
finally finished lazing about and returned to posting. She mentions
this book
of quotes from the works of J.G.
Ballard, which I'll add to my Xmas list right away.
 Quotables
crop up on every page, on the arts, media, religion, death, writing
and writers. Sometimes they're wrong ("Politics is over. ... it
doesn't touch the public imagination any longer," stated in 1996),
and sometimes just glib ("Freedom has no barcode"). But often
they compress the modern world with magnificent concision, as
in definitions like "Modernism: The Gothic of the Information
Age," and "Money: The original digital clock."
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Doh!
Where
does William Gibson keep finding this stuff?
"On some great and glorious
day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire
at last, and the White House will be adorned by a moron."
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Canadian icon Pierre Berton dead at 84
Berton, whom many considered a quasi-elemental embodiment of all
that is Canadian, died
of congestive heart failure and complications from diabetes on Tuesday.
He was an icon of the highest magnitude and will be missed by millions.
Expect weeks of encomium.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
The great book heist of '04
I've been wondering about this for quite some time. It's the curse
of my life to always be on the wrong side of something like this.
I go to America with an OAC grant only to have it halved by the
exchange rate. I come home with a fat savings US account only to
have the CDN dollar surge. And to top it all off, publishers are
sucking me dry with their exorbitant Canadian prices. Unfortunately,
this
explanation uses the DaCode as its exemplar. (Fair enough given
that its unlikely anyone in Winnipeg ever bought anything else.
Oh, I kid youse guys. Yer a fine, if cold, bunch.)
The
jacket lists the U.S. price as $35, not bad when you consider
all the pretty images.
The Canadian price is $48.
Not that anybody will pay that much.
Still, wait a minute.
Some elementary math tells
us that the difference between the U.S. and Canadian price is
37.5 per cent, more than double the current difference between
the U.S. and Canadian dollar.
Why the big spread? Are
book-buyers, the most innocent and trusting of souls, being gouged
as the loonie climbs in value against the greenback? And if so,
by whom?
Several people browsing
bookstore shelves in recent months have been heard grumbling over
these questions.
At the risk of oversimplication,
let me answer them:
1) The big spread exists
because of the lag between planning and delivery. The Da Vinci
Code illustrated edition was priced last February, according to
its publisher, Random House. Six to eight months in advance is
average.
2) Yes, we are being gouged
a bit. But as the husband murderer told the judge, "Your
honour, remember how long I lived with him." In 1998-99,
when the loonie was sinking at an equal pace, the time lag worked
to the Canadian bookbuyers' advantage.
3) The publishers, who suggest
the retail price when they print the book jacket, are the ones
to blame, not the booksellers.
That said, the publishers
are also the ones taking the risk, speculating both as to what
will sell and what the currency spread will be. Copyright law
limits them to charging 10 per cent over exchange rate plus 10
per cent of the difference.
(Thanks
to Arts News for posting the
story) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Poet gets out of jail
No, not the one in Halifax who spent a night in the tank, but the
Cuban
political prisoner Raúl Rivero. (What's with these Amnesty
International people? Is nothing good enough for them? You release
one wrongly imprisoned person and they point out the 60 others still
rotting behind bars. How about a little amnesty for Castro, eh?
Freaking ... um ... liberals... Wait a minute...) (discuss)
(posted by George)
What if we throw the money up in the air and shoot at it
with mustard and ketchup bottles? Okay, what about this...
The publishing
world is agog over the gall of little writers overstepping their
bounds. And nary a penny to their names. Such cheek.
Consider
the red faces at Penguin, which paid £600,000 for Revolution
Day, by the BBC Iraq reporter Rageh Omaar. It has sold only 16,000
copies, recouping perhaps 5 per cent of the advance.
Or contemplate the blushes
of HarperCollins, which forked out £600,000 for Jon Snow’s
memoirs and £500,000 for the bitter complaints of the former
BBC director-general, Greg Dyke. Snow’s book has sold about 9,000
and Dyke’s sales lag below 6,000 on the trusty Nielsen BookScan
monitor. "The right man, the wrong book," is the internal
excuse for the poor showing by Snow.
Now witness the grins at
Profile Books, which has seen its turnover leap from £3
million to £5 million on the back of the phenomenal lift-off
of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Profile, which employs just 15 people,
paid not much more than £10,000 for the grammatical primer
by Lynne Truss, a journalist. It became last year’s Christmas
No 1, selling 824,085 copies in Britain.
Or think Jordan, aka Katie
Price. The pneumatic model was paid in the low five figures for
her memoirs by John Blake, a Fleet Street journalist-turned-publisher.
The book has so far sold 270,000 copies, dwarfing the puny efforts
of the high-brow media men Omaar, Snow and Dyke.
In the more fragile field
of fiction, HarperCollins paid Ann-Marie MacDonald $1 million
(£523,000) for her epic novel The Way the Crow Flies. The
book, published in June, has sold 2,188 copies in hardback and
9,881 in paperback worldwide. MacDonald may be very old indeed
before her publishers recoup the extravagant advance.
This
whole things stinks of an upcoming lockout -- the publishers want
the writers to take an advance roll-back, but the players don't
want it. And it's us hockey fans who get left out. Wait... Sorry,
transference issues... (discuss)
(posted by George)
The year-end book list
This time of year they come out like mice in Washington Square at
night. Book
lists. But what all goes into them? Mostly the shoulder chucks
of friends, it seems. (discuss)
(posted by George)
When art and promotion hook up for a quickie in the bathroom stall
An in depth (if you consider the interviewees) article
on the blurb.*
Readers
must remember, says Almond, that blurbs are "the collision
of promospeak with a writer's advocacy for art. Promotion keeps
moving the product, while what artists say moves people."
(From
GalleyCat) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Nietzsche: Zero to cuckoo in one day flat
I've always loved the story of Nietzsche and the horse. But the
spirochetes taint it for me, somehow -- and in a way the syphilis
didn't. (discuss)
(posted by George)
The CSM blisses on Chabon
Some good
press for an underacknowledged writer. Just what we like to
see.
Creative
inspiration is a myth, he says, and he frets over what might lurk
beneath the lavish reviews and jacket blurbs. "There's always
a voice in my head saying, 'Oh, what do they know? They don't
know the real you, the total reject.' You're alone in your office
with your computer and the praise doesn't help you."
Try
doing it without the lavish reviews and praise, Michael... (discuss)
(posted by George)
Foetry still fighting the good fight
Foetry takes the gloves
off. (From Maud) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Coffee table books for freaks
That
pretty much sums it up... (discuss)
(posted by George)
Richard Wilbur
One of my favs profiled
at Slate.
 There
are two Richard Wilburs. One is the author of a half-dozen of
the most perfectly made poems of the 20th century, poems whose
quiet elegance is unexcelled by even the most illustrious names
American poetry can offer: Stevens, Eliot, Moore. The second Wilbur
is an emblematic figure—a poet whose steadfast embrace of meter
and rhyme has made him seem (depending on who's making the call)
like either a reactionary or revolutionary force. This Wilbur
has been set beside other poets in order to represent one or another
idea about American poetry—usually dull ideas, the kind embraced
by people who enjoy poetry readings but rarely read poems.
Shit,
and I've only got books by one of them! And more
Wilbur from the New Yorker. (Second link from Beatrice)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Is e-publishing the saviour of books that don't sell?
The pros and cons of e-Publishing
examined. The real news here being that there might be "50
Australian-based specialists in German cross-dressing"... (discuss)
(posted by George)
Sad, but true
A new
statistical analysis of Iris Murdoch's last novel reveals she
was in decline long before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
 Reviews
of Jackson's Dilemma suggested that literary editors were ahead
of the medical profession in realising that Dame Iris Murdoch
was in decline, though they "put it rather politely",
said one of the team of neuroscientists who today publishes the
first statistical analysis of her last novel in the journal Brain.
A S Byatt wrote that the
structure was akin to an "Indian rope trick" in which
the characters "have no selves and therefore there is no
story and no novel".
Penelope Fitzgerald said
that "Murdoch had let her fiction wear through", while
another likened the novel to "the work of a 13-year-old schoolgirl
who doesn't get out enough".
The
stats about Alzheimer's frequency are very scary. Esp considering
the boomers now entering that gap. Have you ever hung out with someone
who's suffering? At times, it's like being with a sleepwalker -
helpless and creepy. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Maybe Indigo is on to something...
It appears Amazon is doing better with something
other than books, too. (discuss)
(posted by George)
George Saunders: Real American Hero™
I could kiss this
man. I really could.
I’ve
completed the math.
There are approximately twenty-five million Iraqis in Iraq. There
are approximately three hundred million Americans in America.
This means that there are approximately twelve Americans for every
Iraqi. This means that, if we all go, each American will be responsible
for one-twelfth of an Iraqi. An Iraqi family of five will thus
be attended by sixty Americans. We will come, this second wave
of three hundred million of us, unarmed. We will bring nothing
but ourselves. We will simply show up, saying, “What would you
like for dinner?”
(discuss)
(posted by George)
On top of the world, ma!
"Blog" is M-W's choice for word
of the year. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Believe it or not, I know this man's pain
I was once brought into my boss's office in NYC and told to tone
the
office newspaper back. I was the main (read: only) writer and
I ran it like The Onion... This in a place where the brass all were
all minor bureaucrats who walked around with the theme song from
Law & Order playing in their tiny, one-track minds. These were
people who held shocked discussions about minutiae at council meetings
and gossiped about school board trustees. I remember sitting looking
at them in meetings, thinking, "This is it for you guys, isn't
it? This is THE SHIT for you. This is really where it all happens.
Right here, the pulse of the city in these numbers right here on
this board table in this bureaucratic equivalent of a sub-basement
electrical duct." I was not a good match for the New York City
government. (discuss)
(posted by George)
12/02/04:
Bad
Dirt
Annie Proulx's Close
Range is in my Top 3 book list, if not No. 1. It's one of
the smartest, most inventive books I've ever read -- definitely
a book for writers. Now she's followed it up with Bad
Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2.
The dilemma: do I rush out and buy it immediately -- an unusual
thing for me to do -- or do I wait to see if Press
Gal reads this entry and puts it under the old Xmas fire hazard
for me? Decisions, decisions....
 Although
none of the stories in Bad
Dirt
achieves the creepy malevolence of "The Mud Below",
or, say, the tender beauty of "Brokeback Mountain" from
Close Range, they come awfully close. Indeed, if that collection
of stories had not preceded this book, Bad Dirt would be
lined up for ecstatic acclaim. Like Flannery O'Connor and William
Faulkner, the two American maestros of the short story she most
resembles, Proulx has found a tone and style of delivery that
allow her to be humorous and existentially black at the same time.
No other writer in America gets away with this combination.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
The invisible genre
The New Statesman argues H.G.
Wells deserves more recognition for his sci-fi work. First time
I've heard Shaw called "vile."
 Between
1895 and 1898, H G Wells wrote four science fiction masterpieces
-- The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, The
Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds. Then, as now,
SF was seen as not quite respectable by literary types. The vile
George Bernard Shaw sneered at Wells, and even his own literary
patron, W E Henley, told him: "You could also do better -- far
better & to begin with, you must begin by taking yourself more
seriously." In our day, Margaret Atwood has turned her nose up
at SF, preferring to call the novels she writes "speculative fiction",
a truly toe-curling piece of petty snobbery.
(From
AL Daily) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Whither copyright?
Reason
magazine looks at Lawrence Lessig's book about copyright, Free
Culture, and wonders if there is an answer to the mess we
find ourselves in thanks to the Internet.
What, if anything, is to be done?
Lessig's position is clear: This "massive expansion" in copyright's
scope needs to be corrected, and corrected soon; copyright needs
to be recalibrated, rebalanced, reined in. In the second half
of the book, he offers some specific proposals for how that rebalancing
might be achieved. Some of his suggestions strike me as well-conceived:
proposals to shorten the term of copyright, to broaden the scope
of permissible "fair use," to reduce the copyright holder's ability
to control the production of "derivative works," and to reintroduce
copyright formalities (so that those who actually want the protection
provided by copyright law have to take affirmative steps to obtain
it).
(From
Arts Journal) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Leaving you to the devices of a madman
Hey kids, I'm headed to NYC for the next four (blissfully childless,
though I'm sure I'll miss him) nights - in part to appear at this
Melville House
sponsored blogging event at the Housing
Works Bookstore, and in part to salvage my flagging book of
poems. Look for me living the bohemian life in the Village. Nudge
me if I don't have my cheeks sucked in far enough. Seriously, if
you're a New York ninja and can make it, the event looks to be grand
(quite a group of personalities from some great sites: Maud
Newton, Bookslut, Moorish
Girl, Beatrice, and Moby
Lives), and I'd love to meet you. 7:00 on Friday at Housing
Works. I'll be the guy with the beard and glasses and accent, eh?
So, until Monday night, I leave you in the iron hands of my partner,
herr Peter Darbyshire
- known to schoolboys everywhere as Commandant McStrappenheiny.
He'll be watching over the Stalag and knows about the radio in the
teapot. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Pierre Berton, 1920 -2004
More
on the
passing of a Canadian
legend.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Into the jaws of the beast I go
This is just unbelievable. If you read this in a novel you'd say
the writer went too far. Wubblewoo has enabled this
and it will be interesting to watch him ignore it
as best he can. Rise up, people.
An
Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to
ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including
university libraries.
A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen,
R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the
purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote
homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he
filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."
"Our culture, how we
know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said
in a press conference Tuesday.
Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists
and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would
have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.
"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them,"
he said.
I
guess the positive here is that the more empowered these nutbars
become, the more they run the risk of showing their true selves
and ending up like Allan Keyes. (I really want to make a-yhuk noises
about the inbred slackjaws of the south, but Maud
and Michael
Schaub have shamed me into silence.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Publishing's Y2K
In 2007 the publishing world will move
from 10-digit ISBNs to 13-digit ISBNs. This will be part of
a global effort to keep up with the production schedule of Joyce
Carole Oates.
The
new 13-digit ISBN, which has capacity for just under one billion
numbers, will affect all aspects of the publishing supply chain
right through to libraries and high-street book stores and the
International ISBN Agency has warned firms to review all their
IT systems well ahead of the 2007 deadline.
People,
do we really need a billion books? Somebody shoot the guy in charge
of the Star Wars stock writer puppy mill. I heard Richard A. Knaak
is chained to a stake there and mounted daily by both Margaret Weiss
AND Tracy Hickman. (From Moby)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
The last time we invaded they painted the House White when
we left... If you get my drift
Canadian Sarah McNally spreads out in her posh
new digs in downtown Manhattan. She's bringing a piece of the
family book business to the town that publishing forgot. Oh wait,
the opposite of that. I'll check out the store while I'm there and
report back.
On
Monday afternoon, the store was in a state of construction chaos:
a table saw sat on the basement floor, sawdust caked around its
legs, while workmen on scaffolding tried to finalize wiring in
the ceiling and booksellers tucked volumes on shelves shielded
by clear plastic drop sheets. After months of renovations, the
opening looked unlikely, but McNally faced one hard deadline:
a party tomorrow night for hundreds of media and publishing types,
who expect to see a gleaming palace of books.
Assuming
it's open, of course. (Speaking of which, I want to start a series
of bookstore profiles. If you have a favourite independent bookstore
in your town and want to write about it, send me a note here.)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Book about X-Men wins Guardian First Book prize
If only it had pictures. Who says awards juries are all doomed to
idiocy? When you get statements like
this from the judges, I have no doubt the best, easiest read
won.
"Jonathan
Strange and Mr Norrell was undoubtedly the highest profile
book in contention this year, but while everyone was impressed
by the virtuosity of the writing, some complained that the sheer
length made reading it a bit of a slog."
Classy.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Will the internet replace the library?
"No!" says earnest small-town lady.
Then
I thought about the fabled "paperless society" that
was supposed to arrive by courtesy of the home computer and Internet.
It hasn't happened in our home, where multiple copies of the same
documents litter our work space. Yes, we depend on our computer,
but it has certainly not replaced paper. The way we use paper
has changed, but it is still an important part of our lives.
That's
a relief, cause there's this really hot librarian here that makes
me blush when I take out Thomas the Tank Engine books and I seriously
doubt the internet has any hot women on it, much less anything that
would make me blush. What? (discuss)
(posted by George)
Powell's: a modern day poacher?
Powell's stocks new and used books side by side and is a great alternative
to big-box stores like B&N and Borders. That said, there are
some problems. When you buy a used book, the author and the publisher
see none of that money. We all know that. So buy my book new. Ahem.
But what you might not know is that Powell's, with it's giant retail
outlets, goes
trawling in smaller cities, depleting them of their best stock,
and thereby draining the potential sales of local used book shops.
Further, they then turn around in the truck and head back to their
HQ and sell the books in another town. Fair? Would it be if your
store were left with only Dean Koontz novels?
The remaining independent booksellers are as important to Lane
County's culture as Powell's is to Portland's. They can't compete
with the big boxes or the superstores in terms of price. Their
advantage is in knowing their customers, and knowing their community.
They promote local authors, cater to and shape local tastes, respond
to local customers' interests and specialize in local topics.
They can create an atmosphere that could exist only in Lane County,
rather than replicating an experience available at any mall in
the country.
Won't
somebody think of the children? (discuss)
(posted by George)
And in the latest installment of our bookstore blog...
WordsWorth
Books has left the building. Massachusetts liberals weep like
struck children.
At
6 o'clock on Saturday, Oct. 30, after the last customer had bid
goodbye and the melancholy staff had departed for the farewell
party at Charlie's Kitchen, at long last, after 28 years, it was
time for Hillel Stavis and his wife, Donna Friedman, to lock the
doors of their bookstore for the final time.
Hell,
working at Coles as a teenager, I DREAMED of that day. I had plans
to walk out with half the inventory. (discuss)
(posted by George)
"I love a martini -- but two at the most. Three I'm
under the table; Four, I'm under the host."
This disposably rich ought to
check this out. I like the sound of that... "The disposable
rich." Coming soon to a poem near you. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Weekend
Edition:
Breaking
up is hard to do
Ryan
Bigge ends his love affair with Douglas Coupland.
 But
don't blame yourself, however, Doug. It's not you, it's me. I'm
the one who's changed. I've had a chance to experiment with Nick
Hornby and George Saunders and Michael Turner. Don't be shocked,
Doug. I realize how unfair my promiscuity might sound, but these
other literary relationships have made me realize that maybe we're
no longer compatible.
Please, try not to take this too
hard. I can only imagine how you feel right now. I realize you're
upset. But I still want us to be friends, Doug, if that's possible.
You were once the voice of a generation -- back when irony and
Kurt Cobain were still alive -- but your throat is sounding a
bit hoarse.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Moot, the world's toughest language game
I saw this game recently
at my local game
store and I was thinking about buying it. After trying the sample
questions, though, I'm not so sure. I generally don't need help
to feel stupid.
It denotes a pedantic, exhaustive,
point-by-point refutation of someone's political position and
it was named for a British news-correspondent who employs it;
what one-syllable neologistic eponym is it?
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Sure, every writer has horror stories about the publishing biz
But
how many have to pay back their advance?
I explained to my editor what
I wanted to write in advance -- a novel about a personal chef
for a weirdo super celebrity, in lieu of the novel I'd proposed
long ago in a single paragraph. She agreed. I wrote that book.
But when I sent the manuscript, Serving Monster, to my
editor, she informed me that, unbeknownst to me, I had violated
my contract -- that it was late and it wasn't the book they'd
wanted anyway. I knew then that I was going to get gotted. That
this big-ass publishing house was going to come down on me.
Sure enough, Atria, subsidiary
of that monster conglomerate Viacom, asked me to pay back the
$41,000 they advanced me.
(From
Sarah) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
The Internet Review of Science Fiction
Annie over at Maud
points us to this site, which
has been around for a year and looks full of sci-fi goodness, including
a piece about Mars
sci-fi, a look at black
sci-fi and an interview
with Clive Barker, who has three houses to store his book!.
And you have to love a website that lists its copy editors on the
masthead. (Log in using shuriken@bookninja.com and waaaaa as the
password.) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Copyright and the public domain
Some archivists in the States want to get old, rotting books
read again, but
the court has ruled against them.
District Judge Maxine Chesney
dismissed the case filed by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet
Archive, and Rick Prelinger, founder of the Prelinger Archives,
in late November. The archivists allege that the government's
sweeping changes in copyright laws are unconstitutional because
they lock up creative works that should be returned to the public
domain. The government filed a motion to dismiss, and the motion
was granted Nov. 19.
(From
Arts Journal) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Attn poets:
The
real money is in soccer chants.
Mr. Hurst is the nation's first
chant laureate, charged, he said, with "chronicling developments
in the football season." (That's soccer, to Americans.) He makes
twice as much money as the poet laureate, £10,000 ($19,200) for
a year's work, but their responsibilities are vaguely similar.
Interviewed while on the job the other day at a soccer match between
Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa, Mr. Hurst said the poet laureate
reacted to national events, and "I respond to footballing events."
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
What do you do with your book jackets?
Display them
or toss them? The day I finally have an office bigger than a
closet, I plan to frame my faves and hang them up as art. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Collecting Outram
I think George neglected to mention his Maisonneuve
piece on Richard Outram, so here
it is.
 I've
found several of Richard's works hard to come by. It may be my
own poor scanning of the raggedy shelves of used bookstores, but
more likely it's a matter of when I jumped on the bandwagon. Richard
Outram is one of Canada's only poets (along with A. F. Moritz,
Eric Ormsby and a few others) whose work is viable on a global
scale. He is comparable more to the likes of Richard Wilbur or
Geoffrey Hill than to most poets writing in Canada, yet he seems
to have made a sport of avoiding fame. He publishes almost exclusively
with small literary presses and self-publishes his Gauntlet Press
chapbooks and broadsheets in tiny runs of sixty to eighty. This
has led to a dearth of his titles in both the big-box chains and
used bookstores. People who buy or receive his work tend to be
fans and will hang on to whatever titles they have.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Oh, I think he knows the frequency
Harper's posts its essay
on the beating of Dan Rather by a couple of men asking, "Kenneth,
what's the frequency?" (The event later inspired a
song by REM.) Turns out it was Donald Barthelme's henchmen.
Imagine my shock at finding, quite
out of the blue, the words "Kenneth" and "What
is the frequency?" combined within the same text, by a writer
from Houston, Dan Rather's hometown.
It was an odd coincidence. What are the chances of finding "Kenneth"
and "What is the frequency?" in any way connected to
each other, outside of the mouths of Mr. Rather's attackers? And
yet here they were, inside Donald Barthelme's book.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
That is pretty weird
Sci-fi writer China
Mieville sums up his life in a
few short, sweet anecdotes.
The weirdest thing I ever saw
was in Hyde Park. There was a crowd, I joined them, and for the
next 10 minutes we stood aghast and fascinated watching a pelican
eating a pigeon.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
"You need pscyhos like us"
The New York Review of Books takes a look at two books
-- Generation
Kill and
The Fall of Baghdad -- about Operation What Plan B? over
in Iraq.
 Those
who carry out this killing will pay a terrible price. As the unit
approaches Baghdad they become weary with the indiscriminate shooting
of unarmed Iraqis, including families that drive too close to
roadblocks. Wright notes that "...the enlisted Marines, tired
of shooting unarmed civilians, fought to be allowed to use smoke
grenades." Many of these young men will never sleep well for the
rest of their lives. Most will harbor within themselves corrosive
feelings of self-loathing and regret. They will struggle with
an unbridgeable alienation when they return home, something Evans
sees glimpses of in the final pages of the book.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Weekend
Edition:
Breaking
up is hard to do
Ryan
Bigge ends his love affair with Douglas Coupland.
But
don't blame yourself, however, Doug. It's not you, it's me. I'm
the one who's changed. I've had a chance to experiment with Nick
Hornby and George Saunders and Michael Turner. Don't be shocked,
Doug. I realize how unfair my promiscuity might sound, but these
other literary relationships have made me realize that maybe we're
no longer compatible.
Please, try not to take this too
hard. I can only imagine how you feel right now. I realize you're
upset. But I still want us to be friends, Doug, if that's possible.
You were once the voice of a generation -- back when irony and
Kurt Cobain were still alive -- but your throat is sounding a
bit hoarse.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Moot, the world's toughest language game
I saw this game recently
at my local game
store and I was thinking about buying it. After trying the sample
questions, though, I'm not so sure. I generally don't need help
to feel stupid.
It denotes a pedantic, exhaustive,
point-by-point refutation of someone's political position and
it was named for a British news-correspondent who employs it;
what one-syllable neologistic eponym is it?
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Sure, every writer has horror stories about the publishing biz
But
how many have to pay back their advance?
I explained to my editor what
I wanted to write in advance -- a novel about a personal chef
for a weirdo super celebrity, in lieu of the novel I'd proposed
long ago in a single paragraph. She agreed. I wrote that book.
But when I sent the manuscript, Serving Monster, to my
editor, she informed me that, unbeknownst to me, I had violated
my contract -- that it was late and it wasn't the book they'd
wanted anyway. I knew then that I was going to get gotted. That
this big-ass publishing house was going to come down on me.
Sure enough, Atria, subsidiary
of that monster conglomerate Viacom, asked me to pay back the
$41,000 they advanced me.
(From
Sarah) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
The Internet Review of Science Fiction
Annie over at Maud
points us to this site, which
has been around for a year and looks full of sci-fi goodness, including
a piece about Mars
sci-fi, a look at black
sci-fi and an interview
with Clive Barker, who has three houses to store his book!.
And you have to love a website that lists its copy editors on the
masthead. (Log in using shuriken@bookninja.com and waaaaa as the
password.) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Copyright and the public domain
Some archivists in the States want to get old, rotting books
read again, but
the court has ruled against them.
District Judge Maxine Chesney
dismissed the case filed by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet
Archive, and Rick Prelinger, founder of the Prelinger Archives,
in late November. The archivists allege that the government's
sweeping changes in copyright laws are unconstitutional because
they lock up creative works that should be returned to the public
domain. The government filed a motion to dismiss, and the motion
was granted Nov. 19.
(From
Arts Journal) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Attn poets:
The
real money is in soccer chants.
Mr. Hurst is the nation's first
chant laureate, charged, he said, with "chronicling developments
in the football season." (That's soccer, to Americans.) He makes
twice as much money as the poet laureate, £10,000 ($19,200) for
a year's work, but their responsibilities are vaguely similar.
Interviewed while on the job the other day at a soccer match between
Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa, Mr. Hurst said the poet laureate
reacted to national events, and "I respond to footballing events."
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
What do you do with your book jackets?
Display them
or toss them? The day I finally have an office bigger than a
closet, I plan to frame my faves and hang them up as art. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Collecting Outram
I think George neglected to mention his Maisonneuve
piece on Richard Outram, so here
it is.
I've
found several of Richard's works hard to come by. It may be my
own poor scanning of the raggedy shelves of used bookstores, but
more likely it's a matter of when I jumped on the bandwagon. Richard
Outram is one of Canada's only poets (along with A. F. Moritz,
Eric Ormsby and a few others) whose work is viable on a global
scale. He is comparable more to the likes of Richard Wilbur or
Geoffrey Hill than to most poets writing in Canada, yet he seems
to have made a sport of avoiding fame. He publishes almost exclusively
with small literary presses and self-publishes his Gauntlet Press
chapbooks and broadsheets in tiny runs of sixty to eighty. This
has led to a dearth of his titles in both the big-box chains and
used bookstores. People who buy or receive his work tend to be
fans and will hang on to whatever titles they have.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Oh, I think he knows the frequency
Harper's posts its essay
on the beating of Dan Rather by a couple of men asking, "Kenneth,
what's the frequency?" (The event later inspired a
song by REM.) Turns out it was Donald Barthelme's henchmen.
Imagine my shock at finding, quite
out of the blue, the words "Kenneth" and "What
is the frequency?" combined within the same text, by a writer
from Houston, Dan Rather's hometown.
It was an odd coincidence. What are the chances of finding "Kenneth"
and "What is the frequency?" in any way connected to
each other, outside of the mouths of Mr. Rather's attackers? And
yet here they were, inside Donald Barthelme's book.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
That is pretty weird
Sci-fi writer China
Mieville sums up his life in a
few short, sweet anecdotes.
The weirdest thing I ever saw
was in Hyde Park. There was a crowd, I joined them, and for the
next 10 minutes we stood aghast and fascinated watching a pelican
eating a pigeon.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
"You need pscyhos like us"
The New York Review of Books takes a look at two books
-- Generation
Kill and
The Fall of Baghdad -- about Operation What Plan B? over
in Iraq.
Those
who carry out this killing will pay a terrible price. As the unit
approaches Baghdad they become weary with the indiscriminate shooting
of unarmed Iraqis, including families that drive too close to
roadblocks. Wright notes that "...the enlisted Marines, tired
of shooting unarmed civilians, fought to be allowed to use smoke
grenades." Many of these young men will never sleep well for the
rest of their lives. Most will harbor within themselves corrosive
feelings of self-loathing and regret. They will struggle with
an unbridgeable alienation when they return home, something Evans
sees glimpses of in the final pages of the book.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
12/06/04:
What
the Blog pics
Brooklyn Vegan was kind enough to post some
photos of What the Blog, the panel of book bloggers George attended
in NYC Friday. He seems to have fallen asleep at one point. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
L =A=N=G=U=A=G=E online
 The
good nerds at Metafilter
point out that Princeton has put its archive
of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine online. They also bring our
attention to a fairly detailed essay
by Marjorie Perloff on Steve McCaffery's work.
One of my favourite poetry
readings ever was when McCaffery read at a bar in Toronto and an
audience member's dog went insane and started barking at the speakers.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
In Canada, we feel bad about fighting back when people rob us
Poet Ryan Knighton was mugged by a crackhead in Vancouver and
seems to feel the
B.C. government is at least partially responsible, especially
when it comes to its Safe Streets legislation.
I can live with the outcome. I
mean, sure she probably needed the food more than I did and all
that, and it's true, more than any other motive, I'd simply been
lazy about sharing. I can't begrudge her the Fig Newtons. Really.
Besides, stealing a blind man's
cookies is about as reliable a report on how successfully municipal
and provincial action plans are working on poverty and addiction
in my neighbourhood as anyone could deliver.
I
don't know... I can't help but think if you steal Fig Newtons from
a nearly blind poet, some of your problems may in fact originate
with you. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
It's just beautifully written
Susan Glickman points us to the new
Posy Simmonds cartoon. I can already see this one on publishers'
doors everywhere. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
12/07/04:
Coming soon to a red state near you!
A lot of women in the UK find
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale "life-changing."
The Handmaid's Tale, a
1986 satire by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood, is one of
the top 10 novels that transformed women's lives according to
a poll by Woman's Hour listeners on Radio 4.
(From
Maud) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Revised Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I kind of liked the last Charlie Kaufman film, Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind, but I thought the ending was weak and
rather romantic comedyish. Not surprisingly, the ending in the original
script is far more disturbing -- and poignant.
 She
shakes her head. He punches a couple of buttons on his computer
console. A tape recorder starts up and his computer screen lights
up so only he can see it. On it we see a whole file on Clementine
Kruczynski: a list of fifteen dates of previous erasures stretching
back fifty years, all of them involving Joel Barish.
(From
Moorish Girl) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
He's baaaaaAAck! Our man in New York returns from represent'n
Well, I had a great time. New York slowly devoured my soul, much
like the Almighty Saarlak, but it was good to see my old pals again.
Some highlights:
- hanging
out with Jarret
McNeil, my blogger at Maisy, and being accosted by his drunken
love for one Jonathan
Carroll (OMIGOD, YOU HAVE TO READ THIS GUY!!);
- stopping
in to my old job to see some chums realize they should have quit
by now;
- the
blogging panel (more on this below) which turned six
ordinary humans
into one
unified voice of ... something;
- drinking
with bloggers, which can go on and on and on (and is very good
for your flagging immune system, esp when you feel it necessary
to not do up your coat because pshah, you call this cold, you
wimpy Americans?);
- attending my first "karaoke
+ poetry = fun" reading, which is a lot less horrid than
it sounds (I'm arranging an international tour for them - watch
for Toronto and Montreal KPF appearance, and brush up on your
Belinda Carlisle);
- standing
in the Bowery Poetry Club
watching a book launch with my pants around my ankles (hey, there
were at least four other poets with pants around their ankles
too, so before you judge, let he who is not without pants cast
the first...stone);
- Being chagrinned to realize I
too was supposed to run from the cab when poet Michael
Schiavo (I'm proud to say he and I were the last ones standing)
did because we were dead drunk and didn't have enough money to
pay (next time I'll take the comically obvious hint of a quick,
evil tiptoe down the sidewalk as a request to follow rather than
to stand and yell in slurred drunkese, "Hey, Michael, where
uuu gooing? We have to pay this guy!")
The
blogging panel was interesting. It was great to meet the others,
all of whom I read regularly. Maud and Laila and I had dinner ahead
of the panel and chatted about life and the demands of the "trade".
Very nice people. At the venue I met Ron from Beatrice and Michael
from the Lit Saloon. Dennis of Moby was there too, leading the discussion.
Jessa Crispin of Bookslut
had been laid low with a toothache and had to cancel. It's cause
she's so sweet, see.
Anyway, what surprised me the most was the number of people in attendance.
It was quite a crowd. Very enthusiastic and sympathetic to what
we're doing. People had note pads out. What the fuck would anyone
want to quote me for? There was a question and answer period afterward
that was also quite enthusiastic. So I guess people are reading.
Were I to have a second crack at it, I'd try to tone back my comments
on the mainstream media (I mentioned my "fondness" for
seeing stories appear on Bookninja one day and in the paper the
next with nary a source cited). I guess papers can't really link
out the way we can, and I felt our comments around the whole ms
journalists vs. bloggers thing sounded a little paranoid after a
bit. That said, I do think blogging is, or has the potential to
be, a new kind of journalism. Maybe not a better kind, but a powerful
alternative to corporate journalism. I consider my blog reading
to be a form of primary research. An accessible way of getting immediate
information. I consider the NYT and Globe to be places I go for
an authoritative look at prevailing opinion. Blogs and papers each
have their advantages and shouldn't war with one another because
they don't really compete. Good readers will use both. However,
given that anything printed on the internet seems to be immediately
stamped with a big red "ILLEGITIMATE", it couldn't hurt
for ms journalists to let the reading public know where they're
getting their story ideas. We needn't be fighting an uphill battle
for respect when those with respect are secretly using us.
And
one more thing. I think I'd like to redefine what it is we do here.
We're not really a blog. Like Michael at the Saloon, which is part
of the Complete
Review, we like to think of ourselves a web magazine that contains
a popular newslog/blog. Not to back away from the term, but I realized
that by the end of the programme, I hadn't really let the audience
know there was more to us than comments on news stories.
Speaking of which: short posts tonight and back on schedule tomorrow.
I just got back and I'm dead dead dead.
P.S. I didn't fall asleep, I was sniffing Maud, who's bouquet is
reminiscent of a spring elf. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Secret staircase to Brontë's WMD chemical lab found
We should have invaded England
when we had the chance. You could hide just about anything in all
that heather. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Peter C. Newman
Now an old man and ripe for memoirs.
Most
painful of all, for a writer, is his admission that his prose
style was occasionally on the purple side. Newman is the author
of perhaps the most famous bad simile ever turned out by a good
writer in Canada — his description of Joe Clark as acting like
a fawn caught eating broccoli. Newman ducks his head even now.
"What the hell was I trying to say?"
(discuss)
(posted by George)
America, book of the year
I
love it. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Oz loves the fantastic
A list
of Australia's favourite books shows a distinct lean toward
the fantastic: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Hitchhiker's Guide,
the Holy Bible.. the list goes on. (discuss)
(posted by George)
How does a bestseller get made?
Well, honey, when an author and a story love
each other very much... (discuss)
(posted by George)
12/08/04:
Do
books have genders?
I was browsing through the author
interviews at Powells when I stumbled across this
piece by Neil Gaiman about the genders of his books.
 When
I wrote the ten volumes of Sandman, I tended to alternate
between what I thought of as male storylines, such as the first
story, collected under the title Preludes and Nocturnes,
or the fourth book, Season of Mists; and more female stories,
like Game of You, or Brief Lives. The novels are
a slightly different matter. Neverwhere is a Boy's Own
Adventure (Narnia on the Northern Line, as someone once described
it), with an everyman hero, and the women in it tended to occupy
equally stock roles, such as the Dreadful Fiancée, the
Princess in Peril, the Kick-Ass Female Warrior, the Seductive
Vamp. Each role is, I hope, taken and twisted 45 per cent from
skew, but they are stock characters nonetheless.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Europe's lost stories
Julian Evans muses on the history of the novel in Europe, and
the
gap between BritLit and the Contintent:
If the novel is a European form,
it is more accurately a western European form, and only later
central and eastern European (and Russian). It came to central
Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, and central
European novelists impinged only slowly on western consciousness.
Neither Kafka (d. 1924) nor Musil (d. 1942) was widely recognized
as a writer of European rank until after 1945. The collected works
of Joseph Roth (d. 1939), the great elegist of the tottering circus
of Austria-Hungary, were not published in German until 1956. (In
Britain, we began to read Roth only in the mid-1980s.) Kundera,
first translated into English in 1970 with The Joke, was
the exception, and his rapid ascendancy became the key to British
readers' entry into the aesthetic identity of central Europe --
a unity of small nations cyclically kidnapped by "protective
powers" and other tyrannies.
But
not everyone agrees with him. (From Splinters)
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Great Canadian Speeches
Quick, quote a line from one! Can't do it? Then
you'd best get this book.
 But
although the book has been called "a history of Canada from the
podium," the speeches aren't all historically or politically motivated:
Pierre's not the only Trudeau in the book, for instance: Justin's
teary eulogy to his father, "Je t'aime, papa," makes it in, as
does an entry from David Suzuki about the environment, as well
as a speech by Stephen Lewis on the HIV pandemic in Africa.
(From
Sarah) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Just Pooh
Your one-stop info centre for all
things Winnie, including Pooh
history and the real
Hundred Acre Wood.
 'Winnie-the-Pooh'
was published by Methuen on October 14th, 1926, the verses 'Now
We are Six' in 1927, and 'The House at Pooh Corner' in1928. All
these books were illustrated in a beautiful way by E.H. Shepard,
which made the books even more magical. The Pooh-books became
firm favorites with old and young alike and have been translated
into almost every known language. A conservative figure for the
total sales of the four Methuen editions (including When We Were
Very Young) up to the end of 1996 would be over 20 million copies.
These figures do not include sales of the four books published
by Dutton in Canada and the States, nor the foreign-language editions
printed in more than 25 languages the world over!
(From
Things) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
When academia meets comedy, dude
About ten years ago I used to watch a lot of stand-up. I don't remember
the name of the comedian, or the entire sequence, but this one fella
had a bit on the word "dude" that went on about it's multiple
uses. He said dude could be used as "hello" and made a
happy-to-see-you face and waved and said, "Dude!"; he
said dude could express disappointment and hung and shook his head
and said, "Dude..."; he said dude could be a word of disgust
and curled his lip and shook his head and said, "Dude!";
and my favourite: he said dude could be used to express "Is
that you in the closet with a knife?" by craning his neck,
looking frightened and whispering, "Dude...?" Now, years
later, someone else raised on that same bit has turned
it into an academic paper saying, it seems all the same things,
but with bigger words.
Historically, dude originally meant "old rags" — a "dudesman"
was a scarecrow. In the late 1800s, a "dude" was akin
to a "dandy," a meticulously dressed man, especially
out West. It became "cool" in the 1930s and 1940s, according
to Kiesling. Dude began its rise in the teenage lexicon with the
1981 movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
Ah,
academia... taking the raw materials of life and selling them back
to you as intellectual product. (Thanks to ZW for the link) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Now airport buyers can add "used" books to their
wide selection of "crappy" books
In an effort sure to screw someone, I'm not quite sure who, an airport
bookstore chain is offering the following:
The
program works like this: A customer walks into a Paradies
store, such as the CNBC newsstand at the international airport
in Milwaukee, and buys My Life by former President Bill Clinton
for the full retail price of $35. The cashier staples the receipt
to the dust jacket or attaches it with a piece of Scotch tape.
The customer also gets a bookmark that lists the airports nationwide
where Paradies does business. Providing the traveler holds on
to that receipt, he can return My Life within six months (whatever
its condition) and get $17.50 back. The retailer then resells
the book -- unless it has sustained too much damage -- as a used
book for $17.50.
Oh,
wait, writers. Yeah, screw the writers. (discuss)
(posted by George)
[Click here to see a special
graphical hearsay.](posted by George)
Asking the questions we don't want to hear the answers to
Michael Crichton is about to smash the world over the head with
another book and Mad Max Perkins, pseudonymous proprietor of the
best anonymous lit blog out there (if you haven't been following,
he claims to be a bigshot editor in NYC, and from his posts I would
tend to believe him), having talked to editors and writers, now
reaches out to booksellers:
 Popular
as it is in blog-dom to bemoan cultural de-madeleinization, and
book industry conglomeration, and brand proliferation, and literary
marginalization, and animal exploitation for the purposes of a
better facial lotion, is there any bookseller--
(HONESTLY, now)
--is there ANY bookseller who is not glad, in a dollars-and-cents
fashion, that today is Michael Crichton Day?
I
can't imagine a no in the house. Even the used bookstores ought
to have copies the day after tomorrow. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Firebombed library reopens
The
United Talmud Torahs elementary school library in Montreal received
donations of books and money from around the world. The piece(s)
of shit responsible for this attack and racist graffiti are still
at large. There's a special non-denominational hell reserved for
them. I and my workforce of thousands will be in attendance to oversee
the lakes of acid and fire pokers. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Buddy-buddy reading lists
What happens when your
best friend foists a book on you* and you hate it?
Reading
literature is the solitary practice of a cultural minority, and
fervent book recommendations -- like the book groups that have
flourished over the past two decades -- are one way readers respond
to how this situation makes them feel: lonely.
My
secret is this: have friends who are invested enough in literature
to be intrigued by your dislike of their favourite book. More frightening
than any of this is the idea that a friend's new novel might be
snorer. Then yer fucked. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Berton gets the royal sendoff
A
fet for Berton turns into a television
special. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Do computers impede learning?
I certainly believe they
do. Especially when they have HalfLife2 loaded on them... Ooo...
the graphics... (discuss)
(posted by George)
Sorry we missed your book, please leave
a message...
A books editor offers a
recap of what he wishes he hadn't missed this year.
They
were overlooked largely for the same reason that they were overlooked
around the country -- their relative obscurity among the thousands
of titles arriving at offices daily.
...
The competition for attention was tough and the logical approach
was to go with the big names.
Can
we blame him for this? Yes, but we can also thank him for the candid
honesty. (discuss)
(posted by George)
America gets some good TV
Hopefully someone from the US will report into our boards to give
us some commentary on this
documentary,* "The
First Amendment"... As the little-brudah country that receives
America's legislative hand-me-downs, the information could come
in handy in the next few years. (discuss)
(posted by George)
The "ambulance-chasing"
bio
When the
insta-book gets it's necrophilia on.
Less
than six weeks after his death, two books about John Peel, the
DJ and broadcasting icon, were in the shops - just in time for
the Christmas market. Now his younger brother has launched an
attack on the unseemly haste of the publishers who rushed out
the works to cash in on the DJ's popularity.
I
don't know anything about this fellow, but I think the sentiments
here are fairly universal. Someone dies and people want/need to
make money from it. It's like taking their boots. What I find the
most revolting is the publishers trying to justify it as noble and
affectionate. Just be honest graverobbers. (discuss)
(posted by George)
What's the rent on your books?
Books are expensive to purchase and store. So if libraries are feeling
the pinch, why don't they go
electronic and outsource the storage and paperwork to the cheaper
realm of the interweb?
Having
a fully outsourced, electronic library would mean giving up control
of the information available on your campus, and allowing lawyers,
accountants, and vendors' content specialists to make decisions
about access to published research -- much like HMO clerks deciding
what medical care your doctor can provide. Can innovation and
excellence flourish in that kind of environment? That is one of
the questions that keep librarians awake at night, but it is a
large question -- a bit too taxing for a tired librarian at the
end of a three-mile run.
Interesting.
So what you're saying is there's an insomniac librarian who can
run three miles? (discuss)
(posted by George)
You know you heard it here first, right?
I know I said we wouldn't bring you book of the year lists, but
this is the Voice and two of our favourite Canajuns are on it. -
Michael
Redhill and Derek McCormack. Here's the blurb for shizzy D:
 Gay
vampires. Lonely highways. Country songs. No, it's not a Stephin
Merritt musical (not yet, anyway). It's the double debut of Derek
McCormack, who conjures creepy worlds using little more than elliptical
triads. Weird, inventive, magical, the omnibus Grab Bag features
a lonely closeted teenager named Derek McCormack and a grotesque
fascination with carnivals, drifters, and disease. The Haunted
Hillbilly reimagines Nudie the Rodeo Tailor, who in real life
dressed Elvis in gold lam?, as a bloodthirsty undead Svengali
with a crush on his doomed client, c&w legend Hank Williams?perverse,
mesmerizing, heartfelt. With a morbid comic vision and a delightfully
twisted imagination, McCormack delivers a one-two knockout punch
that establishes him as one of the best new voices of the year.
Yahuh.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Remember that Aussie favourite books thing?
Tolkien won it, right? Well, now a
salmon of doubt has been cast over the whole voting process.
See, some nutbar evangelist on the list too, and in a place that
would make him Australia's third most popular author -- over people
like Patrick White and David Malouf.
Now
perhaps there are thousands of Stringer enthusiasts out there
- there must certainly be a quite a few Stringer voters - but
I found it hard to track down one of his books in my regular bookshops.
Clearly the Christian fundamentalist vote has come out in force
- much as it did it last month in the US presidential election.
Block voting like this casts
the whole exercise into doubt. Given that there were 5000 titles
nominated, it would be interesting to know exactly how many votes
managed to propel the Reverend Stringer to such dizzy heights.
Hm.
I knew they were a pious people, but... (discuss)
(posted by George)
They used to seem so much smarter in Britain, didn't they?
Scum
of the earth poetry.com reaches out to deceive and rip-off people
from around the world. Can't someone put a stop to it? It's eating
me alive! I actually had to ban their URL from our Google ads...
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Bible Only Work of Fiction in Family's Home
LAWRENCE, KS—After a weekend visit to the home of Gloria and Ben
Kirchbauer, nephew James Fenderman, 26, said Monday that he was
unable to locate a single work of fiction in the house. "I
just wanted something to read before bed, but all my aunt and uncle
had was a row of Time-Life how-to books, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,
a yearbook, and Sincerely, Andy Rooney," Fenderman said. "The
only book with any narrative whatsoever was the Good News Bible."
Fenderman said he finally settled for a March 1995 issue of Prevention
magazine that he'd found on a shelf with his aunt's cookbooks. (From
The
Onion) (discuss)
(posted by George)
12/09/04:
The
Naming of Parts
The other day I was walking to work and "The Naming of Parts"
popped into my head. I couldn't remember who wrote it, and forgot
all about it once I was at work. Then Metafilter
linked to this
site all about Henry Reed. Curious.
 'Naming
of Parts' is section one of a five-section sequence called The
Lessons of War, and it can claim, without much fear of contradiction,
to be the poem of the Second World War -- the cleverest and, by
some distance, the most likeable: good-humoured, funny, sexy and
resigned, it captures perfectly the period's strange mix of tedium
and fear. Reed's parade-ground protagonist is being taught how
to handle weapons but his mind is elsewhere: he is thinking about
sex, he is thinking about spring, about renewal. He is thinking,
in other words, about life, the life that wartime now prohibits
and that he himself, the soldier-poet, is being taught how to
destroy.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
"Dig a hole and dump them into it"
More
on the Alabama monster leading the charge to burn gays "protect
marriage" by outlawing open-minded homosexual propaganda
texts such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Colour Purple
and even Shakespeare. So I guess Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain"
about cowboy lovers is probably out too, huh?
Cutting off funds to theatre departments
that put on A Chorus Line or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
may look like censorship, and smell like censorship, but "it's
not censorship", Allen hastens to explain. "For instance, there's
a reason for stop lights. You're driving a vehicle, you see that
stop light, and I hope you stop." Who can argue with something
as reasonable as stop lights? Of course, if you're gay, this particular
traffic light never changes to green.
Unless,
perhaps, if you live in Canada.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Roald Dahl photo auction
Some
new Dahl pics have turned up, just in time for the upcoming
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. The pics are so-so,
but the article reveals some of the origins behind Dahl's more memorable
creations.
 Dahl's
grandson, Luke Kelly, 18, an assistant photographer at American
Vogue, came upon the photographs in the form of negatives
and contact sheets in the writer's archive as it was being sorted
for the new centre.
When he developed the negatives
-- he did some of the work in a potting shed near his grandfather's
hut -- Kelly was amazed at the insights they gave into Dahl's
life and at the quality of the photographs. "They are very striking.
The photos he took show what a strong, creative, highly visual
mind he had," said Kelly who knew Dahl as Mouldy.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Gatenby update
Apparently the deadline has passed for Canadian buyers to drop
$2 million on Greg Gatenby's book collection, and he's
now free to sell it to the Americans lining up at his door.
At a press conference at his Toronto
home on Nov. 24 to announce the proposed sale, Gatenby had hinted
that he was prepared to sell at least part of his collection to
an American buyer should he not find a willing party in Canada.
Gatenby did not return calls yesterday to say if whether or not
he had found a domestic buyer or if he would proceed with the
foreign sale.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Look for the verb
Nobel
lecture, delivered
by video, postulates what 7 x Tuesday to the power of blue might
be. Plus an eggtimer.
Please,
dear language, don’t you for once want to listen first? So that
you learn something, so that you at last learn the rules of speaking
... What are you shouting and grumbling about over there? Are
you doing it, language, so that I graciously take you in you again?
I thought, you didn’t want to come back to me at all! There was
no sign, that you wanted to come back to me, it would have been
pointless anyway, I wouldn’t have understood the sign. You only
became language to get away from me and to ensure that I got on?
But nothing is ensured. And by you not at all, as well as I know
you. I don’t even recognise you again. You want to come back to
me of your own accord? I won’t take you in any more, what do you
say to that? Away is away. Away is no way.
Huh?
Is this about me using a fork to scratch my back, again? (discuss)
(posted by George)
Medal of honour
In other
Nobel news, Tagore's stolen medal is replaced by the Swedish
Academy. Also included in the package was a primer on making those
delicious red jelly berries and an all black print out of Elfriede
Jelinek's translator's brain scan. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Is Michael Crichton too smart for his own good?
Hahahaha! Why no, you silly goose!! He
just thinks he is...
Crichton
is like a college professor who insists on lecturing 10 minutes
after the class period ends, when his students are edging toward
the door. In State of Fear, the narrative stops cold for climate
charts that are printed on the page ("Goteborg, Sweden: 1951-2004").
When one of Crichton's heroic skeptics makes a controversial statement
about global warming, Crichton tags it with a footnote—look it
up for yourself, liberal critic! The novel ends with 20 pages
of bibliographical references and the author's 25-point "message"
about global warming. It's a bulwark for what Crichton thinks
will be a backlash from the newspapers, the same sour reaction
that greeted Rising Sun and Disclosure. But first, doesn't somebody
actually have to finish reading State of Fear?
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Killer has a way with words
Henry VIII's love
notes prove he loved his wives to give head. I am so proud of
that one. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Book about death of god becomes film about birth of money
This is why these people feel empowered. Because they're powerful.
The
film version of His Dark Materials, a book about the
defeat of God, won't contain references to God. Puke puke puke.
And I for one, a huge fan of the books (well, the first two), won't
go see this film.
Chris
Weitz, the director, has horrified fans by announcing that references
to the church are likely to be banished in his film. Meanwhile
the “Authority”, the weak God figure, will become “any arbitrary
establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual”.
The studio wants alterations
because of fears of a backlash from the Christian Right in the
United States. The changes are being made with the support of
Pullman, who told The Times last year that he received “a large
amount” for the rights.
I'm
most surprised and disappointed to hear Pullman's going along with
it. It kind of washes away the general admiration I'd built up for
the man. For the love of Authority, Phil, at least pretend to care.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Plish-Plath I was taking a blath
But
is it a halcyon moment for Plath's
poetry? The new edition is undoubtedly useful (though it is
marred by several factual mistakes). But there's a good case to
be made that Hughes' version of Ariel is actually superior to
Plath's—and that Plath herself might have agreed.
I
have no idea what that title is about. I'm just so sick of writing
about this psycho. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Can we have one meeting that doesn't end with us digging
up a body?
Lorca's family thinks maybe it's not such a good idea to dig
him up. Imagine the impudence! There are Discovery Channel specials
to be filmed here! Reconstructive plastic surgeons to consult! Voice
overs from academics to be recorded! Philistines! (discuss)
(posted by George)
|
12/10/04:
Movie
updates
Tis the season for film adaptations of great books. Boing
Boing points out the trailers for Tim Burton's Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory and Spielberg's War
of the Worlds (Quicktime link). Meanwhile USA Today
interviews Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) about
the Unfortunate Events movie.
Last weekend, he saw the movie,
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which
is based on the first three books, and says he's pleased. "I'm
still in a continued state of amazement that it was made." It's
"more Perils of Pauline than Wuthering Heights,"
he says.
And don't forget the librarian parody of Cops, Overdue.
(From Moorish Girl)
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
December OED newsletter
The new
OED newsletter is online. My favourite part is the archivist's
entry.
What is really satisfying about
this job is seeing the looks on the faces of visitors when they
are able to see some of the OED archives first-hand. I often
conduct presentations of the archives for interested parties,
be they members of OUP staff either from the UK or visiting
from abroad, visitors to the OED, such as University and summer
school groups, or researchers interested in OED history. Items
of particular fascination include the original appeal for readers
made by James Murray in 1879, the minute hand-lists of words
compiled by the Broadmoor patient Dr Minor, slips for the entry
for "walrus" worked on by J. R. R. Tolkien, and even
a letter from Buckingham Palace granting permission for the
Dictionary to be dedicated to King George V in 1927. We are
fortunate at OUP that we have an in-house museum where I am
able to display such items from the archive. Organizing displays
and exhibitions is another great facet of being the OED Archivist.
So
many archivists, such little time.... (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
OK, but how do they explain the talking dog?
Somebody
needs to give Tintin an MRI.
 Comic
book hero Tintin never aged during his 50-year career because
the repeated blows he took to the head triggered a growth hormone
deficiency, according to an analysis in the Christmas edition
of a Canadian medical journal.
Claude Cyr, a professor
of medicine at Quebec's Sherbrooke University, said a study
of the 23 hugely popular Tintin books showed the intrepid Belgian
reporter suffered 50 significant losses of consciousness during
his many adventures.
(From
Elegant Variation)
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Nice guy Nick Hornby
Everyone else is linking to this
piece about Nick Hornby and the Believer magazine,
so we may as well jump on board.
 Sometimes
Hornby and the Believer butt heads. He writes in one
column that he and the magazine's editors reach an agreement
"that if it looks like I might not enjoy a book, I will abandon
it immediately, and not mention it by name." Listed at the top
of that column are "Unnamed Literary Novel" and "Unnamed Work
of Nonfiction." In the magazine's debut issue, Julavits wrote
an essay arguing that most book criticism is too snarky and
negative, and Hornby has more or less been instructed to avoid
negative reviews.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Your Giftmas dilemma solved!
Check out the new Bookninja
store. Aren't you tired of being a book geek who doesn't kill
things? These shirts and assorted items are everything but bullet
proof. And a small portion of each sale goes toward paying future
Bookninja contributors. (We may tinker with some of the design
and add and delete things over the next couple days, so let us
know if there's anything you're looking for. Inexplicably, they
don't seem to have black T-shirts. A crime against Robert Smith
to be sure.) (The new logo was designed by the fantastic Charlie
Orr. Thanks, C-money.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Licence to ill
Censors tell publishers to "get
a licence" to publish foreign material from countries
on the bad side of the Bush junta. PEN and others are going after
the regulations with legal challenges.
The regulations seem shaded by Joseph Heller's classic novel
"Catch-22."
U.S. publishers are allowed
to reissue, for example, Cuban communist propaganda or officially
approved books but not original works by writers whom the Cuban
government has stifled.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Cleaning up for company
What happens when someone wakes you from your suburban slumber
with a call asking whether you can entertain
Michael Moore and assorted fans for a book signing on your
dining table? Hypothetically speaking. (discuss)
(posted by George)
League of extraordinary
gentlemen
Poetry as social force as practiced by Cleveland's
Distinguished Gentlemen of Spoken Word.
Even
at home, on the tough streets of Hough, Spencer says “people
are dying for dumb stuff — drugs, guns, clothes and gangs. We
ain't really where Martin Luther King would have wanted us to
be, for sure.”
SPENCER IS ONE OF THE
FOUNDING members of the group. For the last two years, they've
spent their Saturdays reciting poetry under Ms. Honey's direction,
which echoes with the phrases “do it again” and “sit up straight,”
and “tuck your shirt in.”
Ms. Honey calls them by
name. “Sammy, do ‘I Too Sing America,' by Langston Hughes,”
she'll say. And he will. Next it's “‘Who'll Cry For The Little
Boy,' by Antwone Fisher,” she'll say to Dimitrius General. “Not
that fast, slow it down.”
When one of them stands
up, the others sit down in prayer, hands folded, heads bowed,
eyes lowered.
(From
Bookslut) (discuss)
(posted by George)
English about to explode, implode
By
2015 three billion people will be speaking or learning English.
By 2050 that number will drop significantly, decimating a culture
of shady ESL schools sure to have sprung up to take advantage
of graduating BAs. All this from the author of a report titled
"The Future of English" (as opposed to the recent Quebecois
report "Deh Future of deh Hanglish", subtitled, "Get
out of 'ere and leave your money when you go"). (discuss)
(posted by George)
Lynn Coady
Ninja favourite Coady interviewed
at TDR.
Maybe part of the problem, or part of the reason popular magazines
don't have as much of an interest in promoting fiction anymore,
is the ubiquity of the idea of the "New Yorker short story".
The work of Munro is an exemplar of this, and it's fine work,
but somewhere along the line this orthodoxy seems to have sprung
up that the fiction featured in magazines has to be of a certain
character -- third person narration (usually), carefully crafted,
with no particular surprises when it comes to language, structure
or voice. It's possible this is an outmoded ideal. Maybe magazine
fiction needs to change with the times, adjust itself to the
new media environment.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Richard and Judy blah blah blah
Rhubarb rhubarb, rhubarb,
rhubarb rhubarb. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Speaking of PEN
and ex/implosions
"Songs that made the Hit Parade... Guys like us, we had it
made. Those were the days!"
The
casus belli is apparently simple. In one camp are the ascetics,
who believe that PEN's only purpose is its traditional one of
working selflessly and frugally for persecuted writers around
the world. In the other are the modernisers - decadents, say
their critics - who envisage a rather more glittering future
involving celebrities and media events. In both - as you might
expect - are some of the most sharp-tongued people in Britain.
The reluctance by those involved for the fighting to be made
public is, for others, a further reason to be bitter. This summer,
after the executive of PEN defeated a vote of no confidence,
president Alastair Niven pleaded with members to keep their
grievances "in
the family", and was accused of censorship - embarrassing
for an organisation dedicated to freedom of expression. But
one thing cannot be concealed: the rift has become a major literary
feud; and it threatens to damage both PEN's reputation and its
effectiveness.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Creative writing, Russian style
One
CW programme for the entire country? Count me in, Comrades!
(RB writes in the with link) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Book biz Santa
Author MJ Rose's blog, Buzz,
Balls & Hype, is running letters to Book biz Santa this
month. Very interesting stuff in some of these. Like this from
an anonymous agent:
No
queries that imply your protagonist will harm me if I reject
you. Color me neurotic, but personal threats that come from
strangers are... eh, not so funny. Especially if the culprit
is, oh right, a fictional character.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Breslin blogging for transparency
Susannah Breslin's new novel, Porn Happy, is excerpted
at her blog where she is trying to make the process of selling
it completely transparent. Browr! (Not completely work safe) (discuss)
(posted by George)
US not totally gone to pot
But Footloose 2 (subtitled, Electric Mormon Boogaloo) seems to
be dead
on the cutting room floor. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Weekend
Edition:
Annie
Proulx profile
The Guardian has all
you want to know about Annie Proulx, and lots of things you
wouldn't have guessed, like Montreal is her favourite city.
 She
went back to university, studying history at the University
of Vermont, then commuting to Sir George Williams University
(now Concordia), in Montreal to do a PhD. It is her favourite
city, and her eyes dance when she describes her time there,
living, after she abandoned the PhD, post-orals and pre-thesis,
"with somebody else" in a tall house near St Laurent market,
occupied by a German ex-PoW landlord and his daughter, a man
who drank a case of beer a day and never went out, and a 6'6"
transvestite. She remembers "lots of friends coming to visit
and having to sleep on the kitchen floor and under the table.
It was a funky, crazy place."
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
The next generation of text messaging
The
cellphone novel?
One day soon, when your cellphone
sounds, it could be a novel calling to recount how the headstrong
heroine dumped the handsome heartbreaker. Or it might be a guidebook
surfacing at a critical moment in a crowded bar to provide you
with pickup lines in Spanish, French or German.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Erica Jong on Sylvia Plath?
In
the New York Times?
 Now
the brilliant, bipolar Lowell is dead and so is the fierce,
sexy Ted Hughes with his vampirish warlock appeal. He tried
it on me full force when we briefly met in 1971 after his publication-day
reading of ''Crow.'' He was a born seducer and only my terror
of Sylvia's ghost kept me from being seduced. Now the children
he raised are grown. Frieda is a painter and poet who somehow
survived her childhood. She gets to tell her mother's tale,
as is only right.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
What did you do/will you do with your first book?
Not
many writers are proud of their first efforts.
My first novel, thank God, was
never published. The typescript still lies at the bottom of
some drawer box, its pages no doubt yellow and impregnated with
dust. I have not destroyed it because, even though ashamed,
I am grateful to it.
(From
Literary
Saloon) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Marginalia
I'm incapable of writing
in books these days. I did it a little in university, but
then I had a crisis and stopped. I used to lecture people I saw
scribbling notes in their library books, then highlighting their
notes in various shades of pink and yellow. You can imagine my
popularity.
Many readers, thrilled or disgusted
with a book, feel the overwhelming urge to reach for a pen (or,
better, a pencil) to add their pennyworth in the margin: "Oh
yes!" or "Oh yes???", "Nooo", or something
earthier. Most of us, however, disciplined by school librarians
and awed by the sanctity of the written word, resist the temptation.
This is a shame, for marginalia once formed a vital element
in literature, a way of taking part in the otherwise one-sided
conversation that is reading. Books are now so cheap, and the
sharing of books so widespread, that the time has surely come
to restore the digressive art of marginalia.
(From
Literary
Saloon) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
12/13/04:
Warning! Warning! Entering Holiday Mode! My hooks are
flailing wildly!
 Just
like we did last year,
the Ninjas will soon be slipping into holiday mode - a somnolent
state marked by periods of drunkenness, bloated abdomens, and
fist-clenching induced by association with family. This means
that from sometime this week until the start of the new year,
posting will be light and/or sporadic. There'll still be new material,
but just not as much and not so reliably often.
Look for (hopefully) a couple new features before the end of the
year. And remember to check out our
new store full of crazy gift items. You may even want to treat
yourself! Who couldn't use a shuriken-spangled thong? I've killed
giants with that sling-shot. I personally guarantee these items
will make you a god among men (note: this is not a guarantee.)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
The Drunken Gunboat
Scholars
gather in Ethopia to talk about Rimbaud, who after turning
his back on writing, settled there for 10 years.
There are few remaining traces of Rimbaud in the town, and many
of the town's residents confuse the poet with the American film
character "Rambo".
I
love waking up to stories like this. It just doesn't get any better
than that. (From grandpa Moby)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
(Shaking head sadly) O Canada...
Ah, Canada: enlightened home of gay marriage, end of the underground
railroad, beacon of opportunity to the world's emigrants... Filled
with heartbreaking vistas, awe inspiring weather and a
bunch of racist bigots.
"Furthermore,
black and white presentation materials carry no meaning to aboriginals,"
says the study, commissioned by the Public Service Commission
and Treasury Board Secretariat.
"Earth tones and
aboriginal designs will immediately attract their attention."
The description was panned
as "extremely racist" by Taiaiake Alfred, a Mohawk
author, scholar and activist who teaches at the University of
Victoria.
"What are we, monkeys?"
Alfred said after an incredulous hoot of laughter.
When
I was down in New York last week, I was explaining to some people
that Canada's version of white guilt is directed towards a wider
range of past atrocities, but primarily those committed against
the aboriginal population. America seems to have forgotten (or
absorbed into a fuzzy Hollywood dreamland) its own role in destroying
these people, concentrating instead on its love/hate guilt over
black slavery. We, on the other hand, can't walk past a street
corner in Toronto without being reminded of our role in crippling
some of the world's most beautiful cultures. That's why we "give"
wide swaths of useless land "back" to the Natives. And
why we try so hard to avoid/ignore stuff like this. It reminds
us we're not as superior to those below us as we like to think...
(discuss)
(posted by George)
It's the lure of the book sales...
Another book
festival founding director hits the road. The Vancouver International
Writers Festival's Alma Lee is following in Greg Gatenby's footsteps
(you have no idea how I'm restraining myself here), leaving her
post and looking, perhaps, to cash in on her vast library of books.
But in a striking illustration of the differences between Toronto
and Vancouver, Lee is undercutting Gatenby's $2M asking price
and holding out instead for some hash and a bag of chips. (Seriously,
it's got to be burn-out city doing this kind of thing. I can't
imagine being able to keep it up 20+ years.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Zut alors!
The language
gap in Canada is growing like a poutine addicts waistline.
Language
alarm bells sounded when the 2001 Census data was released in
December 2002. While more than 43 per cent of francophones said
they were bilingual, only nine per cent of anglophones - and
only 7.1 per cent of anglophones outside Quebec - could make
similar claims.
Soon
barely anyone will speak joual, because of you fucking hanglish
bas-tards! But seriously, folks, think of the children. (Story
first seen at PFW)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Which will she squeeze out first?
 JK
Rowling is positively glowing these days, but she's also getting
pushed back further and further from her keyboard. Will she finish
Harry Potter 6 (subtitled, One for the Money) before
she pops? Millions of children wait to see whether Rowling
v 3.0 needs to get his/her ass kicked for holding up the process.
Kids can be so mean. But they can also be highly perceptive. Oi!
Rowling. Yer mum's the rich one, eh? Give us yer lunch money or
we'll put the boots to yeh. (I hope she's taking her folic acid...
And maybe not wearing the scads of mascara - that stuff looks
lead based...) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Micro-Marketing Man! The Boringest Man Alive! (Since Accountant
Man was slain by Dr. Inexplicable Discrepancy and his henchwoman
Miss Appropriation Probe)
Ever wondered how comic book stores promote themselves? Me neither,
but here
it is... (discuss)
(posted by George)
Stepping stones to... what?
Educators
are using comics* to reach out to reluctant readers (ie, boys).
Is this a good thing?
Interest
in comics as an educational tool is rising amid a publishing
renaissance for comics and their grown-up cousin, graphic novels
-- more-sophisticated combinations of words and pictures featuring
longer stories.
Back
in my first year of undergrad I wrote a paper outlining bridges
from comics to classic literature and yet, despite my prof's overjoyed
A+, I slowly lost faith in the strategy. See, my ethnographic
research (ie, hanging out with highschool buddies) shows that
comic book reading leads to Robert Jordan and David Eddings reading,
not classic literature. Fewer pictures, same worth (and before
you freak out, I'm talking about trashy comics and poorly done
graphic novels, of which there are many). My suspicion now is,
the people who are going to find literature find it, whether they
read comics or not. (discuss)
(posted by George)
That's
more than I'm making...
Hee hee! It's
a cat. And he's talking! Aw! (At least, I think it's a cat...)
(From Bibliovixen)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
12/14/04:
Google
U
First came Google Scholar,
now Google is going to put
the contents of research libraries online.
It may be only a step on a long
road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the
collaboration of Google and research institutions that also
include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the
New York Public Library is a major stride in an ambitious Internet
effort by various parties. The goal is to expand the Web beyond
its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create
a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's
books, scholarly papers and special collections.
The
influx of new information available online will no doubt add to
the growing clutter of search results, so I'm hoping this will
lead to a new way of managing searches as well. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Are literature profs too smart for their own good?
The Chronicle traces the evolution of literary scholarship
and the
idea of "smart," from good old-fashioned, strong
scholarship to the imperative to come up with new theories and
display a unique intelligence.
The dominance of smart in the
academic world has not always been the case. In literary studies
-- I take examples from the history of criticism, although I
expect that there are parallels in other disciplines -- scholars
during the early part of the 20th century strove for "sound"
scholarship that patiently added to its established roots rather
than offering a smart new way of thinking. Literary scholars
of the time were seeking to establish a new discipline to join
classics, rhetoric, and oratory, and their dominant method was
philology (for example, they might have ferreted out the French
root of a word in one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales).
They sought historical accuracy, the soundness of which purported
a kind of scientific legitimacy for their nascent discipline.
And
sure enough, the Germans find a way to turn thought into violence.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Books spread like diseases
Publishers have one
more tool to help judge how soon they should toss your ass
into the remainder bin. Scientists have examined the phenomenon
of book rankings/sales and come up with a model that .... something
about skeletons and fat people?
The
model predicts how sales will decline after they peak according
to how the peak occurred. The decline after an exogenous shock
is fairly steep, while the decay after an endogenous shock is
more gradual. The model was 84 percent correct in the researchers
tests.
Book publishing houses
and marketing firms could use the method to quantify how books
will sell post-peak, and to time the market, according to the
researchers.
If my last book were a disease, I think it would be bubonic plague.
Or syphilis. Hopefully syphilis. (And thus begins a peculiar night
of sexually off-colour posts... My apologies, I've only noticed
the pattern in retrospect.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Three-Day Novel Winner Announced
It's a threeway tie between
Imperial Tobacco, Starbucks, and the good odour people at Mennen!
(discuss)
Novelists can't
tell stories anymore
Well, finally
someone's said it.*
Most
people blame themselves for being unable to finish modern "literary"
novels. I have another theory: it's not us, it's the books.
Somewhere in the course
of postwar fiction, most highbrow novelists have forgotten how
to tell a great story. They can sustain a theme, they can do
symbolism, they can allude to history and Hamlet ... but they
can't propel us to the end of their books.
The problem: too few rattling
good yarns.
Personally,
I blame education for it. If we were all dullards we wouldn't
need literary novels or novelists and could just be spoon fed
semi-literate pap. Think of how little political turmoil there'd
be then! Nirvana! Gosh, how I wish I could just open up and say
aw for the flaccid, anti-intellectual phalli of embossed cover
set. Life would be so much simpler, if kind of choky. (For the
record, I don't know any novelists who sit down to write with
a "theme" in mind, though I imagine a few edit back
to it after the first draft is out. Speaking of which, someone
should take the letters T, H, E, am M, out of this chick's Alphabits.)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Goob Dooking
A
critical examination of Penguin's Good Booking promotion (I
just typed that as Goob Dooking, which, while I don't understand
it, is somehow far far more apt.) followed by some suggestions
for sex-based book marketing strategies that might actually work.
Then
Penguin could brand sex-enhancing accoutrements that sport the
names of famous characters. For example, when the son doesn’t
always rise, there could be a Jake Barnes line of herbal supplements,
lotions, and videos. For the women attracted to bad boys, how
about a Heathcliff riding crop? For those who always say yes,
there could be Molly Bloom lubricant. Anais Nin French ticklers
are a natural. Penguin is known for publishing classics, so
how about honouring Anna Karenina’s obsession with a Vronksy
vibrator -- cunningly shaped like a pistol.
This
is my kind of article. (discuss)
(posted by George)
When you have eliminated the nutbar, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the body
A Sherlock Holmes scholar commits suicide and, in a grisly
act of revenge, tries
to implicate a rival. Who knew the world of Holmes scholarship
was so... stupid. I wish more fanatics would kill themselves in
the styles/methods of their heroes.I'm holding out for the Xmen
suicide pact. That should be messy. (From Moby)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Funny enough, they've also told Joyce
Carol Oates to "freaking relax"
France loves writers. What's more, while generally appearing to
despise Americans, they love American writers. What they don't
love is the
frequency with which Americans publish.*
But
if France loves writers, it is also impatient with them. Donna
Tartt took quite a beating from a reporter at Festival America:
''I am sure you have been asked this question thousands of times,
but let me ask again: why -- oh why -- are there 10 years between
your first and your second novel?'' He seemed to expect to hear
of an incarceration or dire illness. ''I guess I'm just slow,''
she replied. This, to the French way of seeing things, is inconceivable.
This
ought to please a few folks I know. Finally country that understands
their urge to publish everything they write. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Novelist full of opinions about opinions
Jonathan Franzen, inciting Maud to
bust a verbal cap his ass, says writers oughtta shaddap about
their political views. I think the quote may be out of context...
At least in this
article, it seems more like he's bemoaning the state of the
author as public intellectual than pulling a Neal Pollack. (discuss)
(posted by George)
RIP: Emilio Cruz
Artist/playwright,*
dead at 66. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Don't "get" blogging?
Responding to upcoming books about blogging, this
guy has made a list of books that will teach you everything
you need to know about blogging without ever mentioning the word
blog. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Tom Wolfe is bad at sex
Mostly because he refuses
to take the suit off. You're surprised? (discuss)
(posted by George)
12/15/04:
Relax
and put down those want ads
More
funding is on the way for all you lazy arts types.
The sense of dread engulfing
Canada's arts community is about to be lifted -- for now. Canadian
Heritage Minister Liza Frulla will announce today that Ottawa
is renewing its Tomorrow Starts Today arts-funding program,
the Toronto Star has learned. That translates into about
$200 million for 12 months starting April 1, 2005.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Alice Munro starts looking about nervously for the Grim Reaper
Given
her company in the Penguin classics line and all.
 At
a party at the AGO last night, Penguin's Canadian president
Ed Carson and publisher David Davidar announced that nine Canadian
books -- by Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, Timothy Findley and
Robertson Davies -- will join Penguin Modern Classics, a uniform
international series that includes books by Evelyn Waugh, D.H.
Lawrence, Anais Nin, Saul Bellow, Paul Bowles, F. Scott Fitzgerald
and John Steinbeck, among others.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Will Google replace Babel?
Like me, Salon
worries about being overwhelmed by information as a result
of Google's new deal with libraries. Unlike me, they use it as
an excuse to link
to Borges. Damn their smug hides.
But where will it end? Certainly
not with the inclusion of every book in the world that already
exists. On the Internet, there will also be every critique of
every book, every alternative history, every conspiracy theory,
and all the real facts and fake facts to back every story up.
You think we suffer from information overload now? Just wait
until the sum total of all human knowledge is one click away.
We are doomed! In a good way!
Well,
a good kind of doom would be a nice change. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
The greatest Christmas story ever is...
"The
Dead"?
 Joyce
was just 25 when he wrote the story, and Huston 80 when he filmed
it, but the intentions of the self-imposed Irish exile and the
American émigré who adopted Ireland were not dissimilar.
Both the youthful writer and the aging filmmaker were coming
to terms with their ambivalence toward both their families and
Ireland; both gave themselves over to moments of reverie about
home, family and the Christmas holiday (though, actually, the
story is set on Jan. 6, 1904, on the Feast of the Epiphany --
the last of the 12 days of Christmas) that aren't to be found
anywhere else in their work.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Bloggers sexing up the publishing world
Bloggers
making the leap to print. Traitors. But I don't see anyone
lining up at my door for a unique look inside the mind of a facetious,
snide snark-machine. If I did, you could call me Benedict Arnold.
Several
factors make bloggers' books attractive to agents and editors.
"Word-of-mouth buzz is much more valuable than paid advertising,"
Ms. Lee said. "I think if there's a reason people come
to your site, there's a built-in audience."
Hm.
By this logic, I should have sold several thousand more books
than I have. Maybe I need to write more about flinging shurikens
into various people's eyes. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Is England failing
its poorest kids?
Why should they be any different than here? (Oh, the accent, right.
Phonic intelligence.) Some recent
statistics show the reading levels well below what they should
be, particularly in the worst schools. (Well, duh.) There are
some heartbreaking anecdotes here. (discuss)
(posted by George)
George Bush: author
No, calm down. Not yet... And besides, when he finally gets around
to it, it's almost a sure thing he'll use a ghoulwriter. But his
ancestors are another matter entirely.
 The
censors at al-Azhar, Cairo's center of Islamic learning, have
recommended the government ban a 19th century biography of the
Prophet Mohammad by a scholar portrayed in the Arabic media
as an ancestor of President Bush.
An al-Azhar official,
who asked not to be named, said on Monday the ban applied to
the original English version of The Life of Mohammad by the
scholar George Bush, first published in 1830 and reissued in
the United States in 2002.
Oh,
come on... we all know illiteracy is genetic... (discuss)
(posted by George)
Berton tribute
By TWUC members.
How come I don't recognize most of these names? (discuss)
(posted by George)
A list of lists - or, to be sassy, a
"metalist", as it were...
It's like freshman postmodernism. GalleyCat
goes way above and beyond to bring together scads of holiday top
ten lists and then performs some interesting
analysis with them. Really good work that makes me wonder
why I'm not doing this kind of thing. Oh, yes: inherent laziness.
(O, for the days when "metalist" was about your musical
leanings... I, my serious dudes, am a metalist.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
A true web phenom
Bookcrossing
profiled at CSM.
BookCrossing
is one of those creations that could only exist because of the
Web. Not only is there the unique encounter between complete
strangers as they compare something as personal as their opinions
about someone's favorite book, but there's also the fascinating
- albeit occasionally depressing - act of tracking the movements
of books that are better travelled than we are.
I
have my own, semi-involuntary, version of Bookcrossing. It involves
friends who never return my books. (discuss)
(posted by George)
My vote for upstart blog of the year
Mad Max Perkins (notice I didn't say "start up"...)
His
coverage is actually clarifying some things for me.
Recently
an unpublished writer--a businessman who is considering a second
career as an author--offered some comments that provoked in
me two somewhat contradictory reactions. In Part I we'll consider
his plan to invest his own capital into the eventual publication
of his book. In Part II (which will be posted in the next few
days), we'll consider the ways in which an editor might respond
upon receiving this manuscript.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
In which Iron Man battles gay people and Democrats with
rays from the palms of his hands...
Orson Scott Card will
be writing for an "Ultimate Iron Man" miniseries.
Before I found out he was a fucking nutbar I would have said,
Oh joy! (I have an old friend who's got this great acid story
about watching the "iron man" on the cover of a Black
Sabbath album get up and go traipsing off into his parents house.
Said friend proceeded to destroy his parents' home (in their absence)
in hopes of ferreting the lil fucker out of the cupboards, but
strangely couldn't find him until he returned to his room and
looked at the album cover. Sneaky fucking Iron Man. I don't why
I thought about that other than missing my old buddy.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Wanted: poetry terminator, ya
Here is the perfect proof that Republicans are completely out
of touch with reality. Cali
is looking for a poet laureate to take over from disgraced
Quincy Troupe (who left two years ago after it was revealed he'd
lied on his resume), but candidates should be rich as well as
qualified.
 In
addition to transforming the ordinary, applicants will be asked
to traverse the Golden State for little or no compensation.
Although Gottlieb said legislation provides for an unspecified
stipend, a Schwarzenegger spokeswoman suggested that candidates
who choose to forgo pay could earn a leg up in the selection
process.
"As you know, this
is a very tight fiscal year," said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman
Terri Carbaugh. "Quite possibly, a poet laureate may step
up to the plate and volunteer their time. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
(With
the exception of John MacKenzie, I can't think of a poet who could
throw out the first ball at Dodger's stadium and make it to the
plate.) (P.S. Does the rest of the world laugh too when they see
" Schwarzenegger's office" delivered with a straight
face? What office? You mean the humvee shaped humidor stocked
with steroids, porn mags, and that bewigged skeleton he calls
a wife?) (discuss)
(posted by George)
"Bismarks"?
A
dialect map of America. Note the lack of a linguistically
distinct Jesusland. And check out Mormonville (#13) for some weird
shit involving jelly donuts. It's the most pious that harbour
the darkest secrets, says I. (From Incoming
Signals) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Tough Love for the bookclub set
What do you do when someone hogs the floor at your bookclub meeting?
Eh, hotshot? What
do you do? Turn the bitch out, yo. (From Bookslut) (discuss)
(posted by George)
12/16/04:
Canada:
arms folded, lip curled, body half-turned away
Google-schmoogle.*
Given
Google's technological and financial clout, notions of a new
wealth of knowledge being made readily available immediately
spring to mind -- a Library of Alexandria at everyone's fingertips.
But among major libraries and national archives, Canada's in
particular, the push to digitize collections of books and documents
is already well under way.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Plagiarism: not just for journalists anymore
Plagiarism
is on the rise? Quite a stupid time for it, don't you think?
When I was teaching I just plugged key (read: intelligent sounding)
phrases from students' essays into Google. Busted. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Let your Giftmas
dollars vote
DLJ over at Moby tells
us about Buyblue.org,
a site that tracks corporate political spending so Democrats (and
conversely, one would suppose, Republicans) can buy at companies
that supported their candidates.
For
example, wondering whether to buy books online at Amazon.com
or at BarnesandNoble.com? Does it make the decision easier for
you to know that 98% of B&N's corporate political donations
went to the Democrats, while 61% of Amazon's went to the Republicans?
Or maybe you'll be encouraged
to get offline entirely and shop at an old–fashioned brick and
mortar store upon hearing the news that Borders gave 100% or
its donations to Democrats?
Hmm.
I read this about ten seconds before buying something from Amazon.
Good thing. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Hugh Grant takes Goob Dooking to the max
He's somehow weaseled his ever-so-charming arse onto the Whitbread
judges panel. Let's hope your book is a romantic comedy with
befuddled cardboard characters. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Poet against the war
Sam
Hamill is leaving Copper
Canyon (simply one of the best American presses going) to
concentrate fully on his website
of protest. Now that's commitment. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Nobel committee
picks new chair for literary award
Note: not Hugh Grant. New
chair promises to pick five unknown women from New York for
next year's award. (From MoorishGirl)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Last Poets
A brief profile of one
of the real pioneers of rap.
“When
I speak about victory in my poems, the real victory is to become
content with yourself,” Bin Hassan says. “I’m not ashamed of
that part of my life. The drugs and crack and all of that. That’s
me. You have to stand up and face yourself, face the inner demons
that lurk within your soul. You can’t hide and pretend. If I
hadn’t faced myself and hit the bottom the way I did, I might
not be alive today.”
If
you haven't heard This is Madness, you should really
try to track
it down. It's amazing to think it was made in '71. (discuss)
(posted by George)
JK Rowling gets her name back
Rowling has won
an intellectual property war with a known typosquatter. Betcha
he's a real charmer to meet. Sometimes I wish there were a leaf
blower equivalent for humans. I could just walk around the world
with this loud machine strapped to my back, and piles of idiots
tumbling ahead of me. Aside from the trail of obnoxious two-stroke
gas fumes, what could be a better way to spend your time? (Now
she is free to build her own online casino at www.jkwowling.com.)
(From TEV)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Good Ol' Charlie Franzen
Patricia Storms gives
her take on Jonathan Franzen as Charlie Brown, with accompanying
illustration. God, she's good. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Anyone got CSPAN?
Hell, anyone got TV? I don't. Could someone who loves me tape
this
for me? Dec 20th. It's the blogging panel I did down in NYC with
the A-list bloggers (as apparently the panel was referred to in
literary conversation at other venues that night). I'm a little
afraid I sounded like a moron because I can't remember a word
I said. And those CSPAN things go into rotation for about 20 years.
(Check out the prime time slot, baby! Yeah! I think we're following
an Ohio state assembly meeting. Woot!) (Thanks to Alex for tracking
down the link) (discuss)
(posted by George)
12/17/04:
Writer
in residence job in Vancouver
The Vancouver public library has just started a writer-in-residence
program. Details
are here (PDF link). Salary is $4,000/month, for Aug.-Dec.
2005. Deadline for applying is Jan. 15. Thanks to Kevin Chong
for this. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
No, we don't have any forks
Eye weekly
(which has a new blog)
draws our attention to the New Yorker's cartoon
caption contest. It's no Litterati contest, but it'll do for
now. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Philip K. Dick -- horror writer?
A comprehensive essay about Dick's
genre wanderings. I hadn't even heard of many of these books
before.
 Dick
may not be a writer of horror novels, yet he frequently exploited
features of that genre to create his stories of multiple realities,
whether parallel and distorted. Dick deals with paranoia and
taboos -- central elements of horror fiction -- from different
perspectives. The precarious psychological and mental situation
of many of his characters fuses with Dick's inclination to create
universes that fall apart.
(From
Wood's Lot,
who also links to this interesting collection of Czech
book covers) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy has a new
novel on the way. And a movie, it seems.
 Llewelyn
Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men
shot dead, a load of heroin, and over two million in cash. Packing
the money out, he knows, will change everything. But only after
two more men are murdered does a victim's burning car lead Sheriff
Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes
that Moss and his young wife are in desperate need of protection.
One party in the failed transaction hires an ex-Special Forces
officer to defend his interests against a mesmerizing freelancer,
while on either side are men accustomed to spectacular violence
and mayhem. The pursuit stretches along and across the border,
each participant seemingly determined to answer what one asks
another: How does a man decide in what order to abandon his
life?
(From
Rake's
Progress) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Yes, Virginia, there is a Patriot Act
What
exactly does "censorship" mean today?
The definition of censorship
has loosened so much that the word has become nearly devoid
of meaning. Long gone are the days when the government banned
racy books like D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover,
Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer or James Joyce's Ulysses.
When it comes to the written word, censorship debates are no
longer about taste and decency -- although those issues are
much in the news concerning the visual arts, television and
radio. Instead, the debate over books tends to center on geopolitics,
national security and foreign policy.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
I'm really sick today
So sorry for the lack of proper bile in my posts. A return to
venom when my white blood cells get their fucking asses in gear.
(posted by George)
Like the desert needs the rain
More on the return
of money to the arts community. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Bestseller lists: a tough sell
An
interesting piece.
The
worst of it is that nearly everyone involved in the world of
books is a part of this cosy conspiracy, whether they like it
or not. I write the kind of minority-taste titles whose publication
is effectively subsidised by John Grisham and co, and to complain
about his clogging up of the high street counters is to complain
about one's own continued existence. In the meantime the task
of letting the public know about the really good stuff grows
ever more difficult.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
The e-pistolary
A new mystery novel,
delivered
by email. (discuss)
(posted by George)
The living dictionary
Ew. Touch
it. It's warm...
Ever
since Dr Johnson compiled his highly opinionated dictionary
in 1755 (excise: "a hateful tax levied upon commodities";
oat: "a grain which in England is generally given to horses
but in Scotland supports the people"), language has been
a battlefield.
Collins Dictionaries today
recognises that fact with the launch of an online Living
Dictionary, in which netheads can suggest new words and
argue over whether they should be added to the print version
of the dictionary. In fact, "netheads" itself might
be a useful starting point for discussion.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Random House to sell books
Now they
just have to learn how to properly market them by sending out
review copies when requested. (From Moby)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Mad Max
Gives us an
editorial response to self-publishing. Then he opens his mailbag.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Holy Shit! Peaceful protest works!
The US backs
down from its embargo against foreign authors. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Art of the novella
I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but Melville
House (run by DLJ of Moby
fame) has started a series of novella reprints that quite exciting.
They sent us some and I was floored by some of the titles I'd
never read. Why? Because no one publishes novellas anymore! So
go browse
and maybe buy a few. They're really quite attractive, in an FF
kind-of-way. (The Edith Wharton is divine.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
12/20/04:
Holiday
Reminder
Just a reminder that we're starting our holidays this
week and so posts will be fewer and farther between, but not completely
dead. If you're new to the site (as my email box suggests you
might be after watching the CSPAN
thingy), look around. Check out our reviews
and the comics and some of our
rants. Buy
your loved ones a Tshirt and visit our advertisers. All money
made here at Bookninja goes to paying for the site and to contributors,
not us. Speaking of which, we have upcoming new material from
Kevin Chong and Kathryn Gray (the Welsh poet shortlisted for the
Eliot for her first book). Stay tuned. (posted
by George)
The transparent jury
Alex Good of Goodreports
leads a mock jury
to reexamine the GGs of this past year. Steven Laird and Zach
Wells participate. Interesting stuff. (discuss)
(posted by George)
The bookphrodesiac
The
writer, the groupie, and you.
And
yet I have to concede that, as anyone who has earned an M.F.A.
or attended a writing conference already knows, a surprising
number of those over-the-top rumors about writers and their
torrid affairs are actually true. If books aren't aphrodisiacs,
then what else can account for a guest opening the coat closet
at a post-reading party a few years ago in Greensboro, N.C.,
to find Mr. Very Famous 60-Something Poet and a young blonde,
with whom he was not, apparently, discussing ''Ode on a Grecian
Urn.''
Do
you know how many friends I've lost (okay, given up) because of
their groupie crushes on flaccid old men? Ew. And where in the
name of god are my groupies? Am I just not old and disgusting
enough yet? I'm getting there, I swear! Give me some time! I'm
letting myself go to pot! I'll even grow jowls so big I can't
shave in the folds! Will that do it for you? Ear hair? I'm dying
here! (discuss)
(posted by George)
Party on!
The Guardian examines literary
parties in a very fun article.
There is nothing like impending doom to add pep to one's festivities
and there is a kind of party whose carousers seem on the brink
of disaster. (When you come to a chapter in DH Lawrence's Women
in Love entitled "Water-Party", you can be fairly
sure that it will conclude in tragedy.) Within the breast of
every writer beats the heart of a moralist and in literature
really smashing parties tend to come before the fall, the deluge,
the end of all things. Vanitas vanitatis. Or carpe diem. Take
your pick.
And
then there was the time I danced to Mama Mia by Abba with Christian
Bok. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Goodbye, Frank
Frank magazine bites
the big hotdog in the sky. (discuss)
(posted by George)
File under: I hate to burst your bubble, but...
A book
writing kit for kids sells like cabbage patches in the UK.
A book-writing kit for children has proved a massive hit - dispelling
the myth that youngsters no longer want to read.
More than 40,000 My First
Novel packs have been snapped up since it went on sale at supermarket
chain Sainsbury's in the first week of December.
Um,
I know plenty of writers who don't read... (From Moby)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Merle Haggard for poet laureate
Yes, you read that right. Cali
is looking for its new laureate. Hey, why not? They've already
got a single brain celled sexist bigot in the governor's mansion...
If
you're like most people, you probably haven't given much thought
to the question of who should be California's next poet laureate.
Partly, that's because
the poet laureate doesn't have much impact on most people's
lives. But there's a larger reason, which is that contemporary
poetry itself doesn't have much impact on most people's lives.
Few people read poetry anymore, and the poetry they do read
is sniffed at by literary types as "popular."
And
before you say I'm one of the "literary types" this
article speaks of, remember that California was a laughing stock
years before I came along. It just keeps churning out reasons
for people to shake their head. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Christmas letters to Christopher Walken
Um, yeah.
(From Incoming
Signals) (discuss)
(posted by George)
12/21/04:
Michael
Moorcock's Christmas editorial
It's online
over at Fantastic
Metropolis, which is a very cool SF site.
For me visionary fiction is
at its best when it references modernist concerns as well as
the more objective concerns with which 'hard' science fiction
is most commonly associated and which derives most of its literary
machinery from Victorian popular fiction. For this is not exactly
a 'post-modernist' form, as we see from the variety of material
published here, but more an alternative to modernism. My generation
did, to one degree or another, reject the concerns and methods
of modernism, but the movement found its inspiration as much
in pre-modernist work as post-modernist.
(From
Wood's Lot)
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Fantasy overview
The Boston Review takes a look at the state
of modern fantasy novels (fantasy being the likes of Harry
Potter and Jonathan Strange in this case). (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
You can't go wrong with punctuation humour
New
Posy Simmonds cartoon. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Manybooks.net
At last, all the classics
available for reading on your cellphone or PDA for free. I've
only browsed through the site's selections, but they had everything
I looked for, from Aristotle
to Moby
Dick. Check it out if you've got a device that'll let
you read e-texts. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Black book gets boost from Canada Reads
Shamefully, this is still news.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Three novels Margaret Atwood won't write soon
Pity, I could really have gone in for Beetleplunge...
 “Could
we sprinkle salt on it?” Amanda asks, with appealing hesitation.
“Honey, it’s not a slug,”
says Chris masterfully.
Should these be his last
words? Should the sponge fall upon him with a soft but deadly
glop? Or should he be allowed to defeat the monstrous bath accessory
and save the day, for Florida, for America, and ultimately for
humanity? The latter would be my own inclination.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Traditionalists receive short, stinging chop to back of
neck
Did Chaucer
invent free verse?
An
English professor is taking a new look at Geoffrey Chaucer’s
often-neglected short poems, and suggests the writer intentionally
broke some of the rules he is so well known for following.
English professor William
Quinn will present his paper, “Chaucer as the Father of Free
Verse,” during the Modern Language Association convention being
held from Dec. 27-30 in Philadelphia.
“Chaucer has traditionally
been seen as the single poet who determined that, for the next
four centuries, we’d be counting syllables,” Quinn said. “My
title suggests he broke the rules on purpose, and anticipated
change.”
The poet saw that there
were problems with absolute regularity in such poetic forms
as rhyming sequences and numbers of lines in a stanza, so he
would try things, and if they didn’t work, he would move away
from them, according to Quinn.
We've
seen it before, folks. One academic striving to end the careers
of others with one fell swoop. But it's so fun to watch! (discuss)
(posted by George)
At the flag pole, three o'clock...
More on the publishing turf
war* between publishers and booksellers-who-want-to-be-publishers-to-make-more-
money-which-seems-ridiculous-when-you-think-about-it... (discuss)
(posted by George)
Yeah, but I don't want someone elbow deep in my pancreatic
cavity to be itching to get home to his PS2...
It's a brand new day, kiddies.
Surgeons
who play video games three hours a week have 37 percent
fewer errors and accomplish tasks 27 percent faster, he says,
basing his observation on results of tests using the video game
Super Monkey Ball.
(I
wonder what the powerups are like... do they get extra men? Now,
THAT would be useful.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Speaking of doctors
not concentrating on what they should: Gollum gets his head shrunk
A
psychological profile of one of literature's most beloved,
raw fish eating psychopaths. (From BoingBoing)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
12/22/04:
Looking
for last-minute Xmas gifts?
How
about Trivial Pursuit: Book Lover's Edition or Booktastic:
Booktastic is a cross between
Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. Players move around a board that
shows a town made up only of bookstores, reading rooms, and
cafes.
Only
in a game.... (From Rake's
Progress) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Dear Elizabeth
Letters
from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Hullalaboo down
under
Judges
of an Aussie lit prize quit in protest.
Three judges of Australia's
major book prize have resigned over a new charter that strips
them of decision-making powers and has been branded the "ludicrous
commodification" of the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
The Melbourne bookseller Mark
Rubbo, the Adelaide writer-critic Kerryn Goldsworthy and the
Herald journalist David Marr left the five-judge panel
just as they should have been cracking the spines of the 43
entries for next year's prize.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
12/23/04:
Boxing
Day cheer
Just a reminder to check out Michel
Basilieres' dramatization of the life and works of Emile
Nelligan on CBC Radio One, Dec. 26 at 10:00 p.m., or CBC Radio
Two, Dec. 27 at 9:05 p.m.
 The
Nelligan Variations by Michael Basilieres, featuring the
poetry of Emile Nelligan. The year ends with an hour devoted
to a talented young poet named Emile Nelligan, whose career
was cut tragically short. Emile Nelligan (1879-1941) is French
Canada's most beloved and admired poet. His collected works
were printed in 1904, shortly after a psychotic breakdown ended
his writing career.
Awful
lot of psychotic
breakdowns in the French Canadian lit scene.... (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Where have all the good books gone?
Bert
Archer thinks the selections of the Penguin Classics lines have
little to do with merit. Except for Alice Munro, of course.
There's a problem with naming
recent books classics, though, as evidenced by this initial
selection; there are no sharp edges. Robertson Davies is a Canadian
Dickens, predigested. Timothy Findley is a romance novelist
whose literary credibility stems entirely from his fourth and
fifth books (the two being canonized: highlights in a career
that went nowhere). Mordecai Richler wrote the same book at
least six times (though to his credit, it did get better in
fits and starts). This Classicsfication is not a process of
making the good popular -- Penguin founder Lane's initial business
proposition -- but of dubbing the popular good.
And
what's going on with Insomniac and Arsenal? (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Shakespeare on film
The London
Review of Books considers The Merchant of Venice.
Many would agree with the general
proposition that the best Shakespeare movies are not in English
but in Japanese or Russian, the reason being that these works
are treatments of the stories of Macbeth or Lear:
the stories behind or inferred from the plays, rather than the
plays themselves, so there is no direct debt to the English
texts.
The
hell with Shakespeare -- when are we going to see a film version
of The Duchess of Malfi?
There's a play that speaks to our times. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
12/24/04:
Twas
the night before Christmas...
...William
Gibson style.
 And
while, from somewhere far above, now, came that sound, that
persistent clatter, as though gunships disgorged whole platoons
of iron-shod mercenaries, I could only wonder: who? Was it my
estranged wife, The Lady Betty-Jayne Motel-6 Hyatt, Chief Eco-trustee
of the Free Duchy of Wyoming? Or was it Cleatus "Mainframe"
Sinyard himself, President of the United States and perpetual
co-chairman of the Concerned Smart People's Northern Hemisphere
Co-prosperity Sphere?
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
12/28/04:
RIP:
Susan Sontag
Writer, public intellectual, dead
at 71. (discuss)
(posted by George)
What's to blame for the Democrats' losses of late?
Could
it be the New Yorker?
 Because
of what enfeebling bad habit did the proud and potent thinking
class that gave us F.D.R. and J.F.K. fade into a cynical, ironic,
smirking bunch of spiritual weaklings headed up by Al Franken
and Michael Moore? Was the problem attending movies instead
of church? Deserting Burger King for Whole Foods Market? No,
I've concluded. The blame lies elsewhere. The seduction of America's
elites by the vices of humanism and skepticism can only be blamed
on the New Yorker cartoon, an agent of corruption more
insidious than LSD or the electric guitar.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Hard News
Two new books look at the
New York Times' Blair affair and the role the paper played
in selling the Iraq war.
 Looking
too closely into the Miller affair, then, would raise the question
of how America's leading newspaper, which prides itself on its
impartiality and its "non-crusading" character, was so readily
hypnotized by a mendacious administration that it splashed that
government's most spectacular untruths across the front page,
over and over again. This question goes well beyond Judith Miller
or Howell Raines or Bill Keller, all of whom have to look in
the mirror every day and wonder to what extent they are responsible
for a misguided war that has cost thousands of human lives and
now feels like a bottomless disaster. Jayson Blair was just
a weird kid who told some fibs.
(discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
Barnes and Noble the best pick up joint in NYC?
That's funny... The same survey
conducted in Georgia found Slippery McWillie's Bait Shop and Segregated
Eatery to be the best. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Postmodern Poo
Those MLA eggheads are meeting
this week* to decide what comes after "post-postcolonial".
 There
is, in fact, something achingly 90's about the whole affair.
The association has come to resemble a hyperactive child who,
having interrupted the grownups' conversation by dancing on
the coffee table, can't be made to stop. Citing Professor Crews's
book in The Partisan Review last year, Sanford Pinsker said:
"In my better moods, I try to convince myself that 'Postmodern
Pooh' marks the end of the arrant foolishness that has turned
literary studies into a laughingstock; in my darker moments,
however, I fear that there are other, even more outrageous would-be
celebrities hoping to cash in on whatever post-postmodernism
turns out to be."
My
guess is, sadly, "colonial". (discuss)
(posted by George)
Little magazines: the wheel-chair kids of publishing
I love that places like the NYT still, however occasionally, give
space to marvel at the
world of little magazines,* but how about spreading the love
around. What would it hurt to halve the repetitive little-guys-done-good
human interest crapola and give a line or two each to a list of
25 actual mags? (discuss)
(posted
by George)
The once and future library
Google's
coming. Is it all good?
Coverage of Google’s agreement, announced this month, with a
host of major research libraries (including Harvard’s, where
I work) to digitize their collections and make them available
on the Internet, might lead one to believe that we have entered
a final phase in the long-sought emergence of a universal library
– a compendium of knowledge at once comprehensive, densely cross-referenced,
and instantly accessible.
And yet, as happened with
the advent of the Web itself little more than a decade ago,
we’ve lost sight, amid a flurry of splendid mystifications,
of the impossibility of this goal, as well as the pitfalls that
lie along the way. Op-ed pages in recent days have blossomed
with talk of Flaubert and Alexandria, Borges and Babel. Such
metaphysical speculation notwithstanding, Google’s project will
begin modestly with a few tens of thousands of volumes belonging
to elite institutions. Alternately smitten with and horrified
by Google’s ambitions, we tend to overlook the challenges that
libraries, books – and the word itself – face on their way to
a digital future.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
He said, she said
A roundup
of quotes from the year in letters. I so desperately want
to meet Jeannette Winterson's girlfriend now, booting down the
road on her moped, bedecked in her purple wellies, cardigan, falcon
gripping her shoulder... (discuss)
(posted by George)
Vixen freak out
Like a diva freak out, only hotter. Bibliovixen
gets some bad post-holiday service at Borders.
...when
I come to your fucking customer service department, I have not
only the author, his latest work's title, the amount for the
hardback, the ISBN and the edition, *but I've also checked your
fucking store's own database* and have scouted the goddamn general
section (twice) for the book before coming to your pathetic,
eye-rolling, deep-sigh-bordering-on-hyperventilation self for
further help. I do not approach you fresh from my car saying,
"It's like a strange orange cover with some funny characters
drawn on it."
Therefore, I expect fucking
H-E-L-P from your sorry ass, I don't give a fuck the reason
for your shitty-ass, fucked up sense of entitlement when a K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E-A-B-L-E
customer arrives and patiently, calmly asks for your assistance.
I
wish I had been there. Browr. (discuss)
(posted
by George)
12/30/04:
The
Onion interviews Art Spiegelman
The creator of In the Shadow of No Towers reflects
on his career and the solace
of comics after 9/11.
 I
know poetry books spiked almost as much as religious books after
September 11. When I couldn't take another moment of Internet
or broadcast or radio news trying to figure out what the hell
was going on, I had to have some kind of respite. The only things
that would give it to me were comics.
(From
Bookslut) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
"There will be no betrayal of any kind"
Philip Pullman addresses the claims he's happily agreed to
remove
anti-religious overtones from the movie version of His Dark Materials.
To take an answer from one context,
invent a question that hadn't been asked, and put the answer
next to it is not what used to be called honest journalism.
To flag that answer in large type beside the new story, as if
it came from the story itself, compounds the dishonesty.
(From
Bookslut) (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
12/31/04:
America beats Clinton...
Heh... I could go so many ways from here. A veritable banquet
of innuendo and bad puns. Meh.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
inCivility
YourDictionary.com has released its top
words and phrases of 2004, most of which seem to be lead by
the election. I like the Van Buren tidbit at the end of this
article. I find the list of California cool words to be surprising.
How does a geezer like me know all of these? (discuss)
(posted by George)
Burning books - the artistic way!
Altered
books not nearly as fun as altered states, but somewhat less
harsh on the body.
OK,
it's not just about torching tomes; the obscure art of altered
books also involves cutting, painting, writing, pasting, and
just about any other modification that can be made to a volume
to transform it into something not quite itself.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Regina Loses its bookstore
I'm sure there's more
than one. Isn't there? Out by the hitching post? Just kidding.
Not more than one like this, I suppose. Sad story. (Second item)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
File under: a fundamental
lack of understanding regarding the current state of affairs
A woman is trying to raise money to adopt a child by selling
her poetry on eBay. (From PFW)
(discuss)
(posted by George)
English is melting! Meeeelllllting!
When
you had finished reading your October Prospect,
were you purple with rage? One contributor, writing about Gordon
Brown, described him as an "heir apparent" who might
find that someone else inherited after all. But an heir apparent
must necessarily succeed; the term the writer should have used
was "heir presumptive." A second contributor discussed
why parliament is "like it is"; that should have been
"as it is," or so we used to be taught at school.
A third contributor wrote about the norms of something being
"flaunted," when he meant "flouted." So
it seems that even Britain's intelligent conversation is being
conducted by people what haven't been learned to talk proper.
Fetch me my green ink bottle: I have an article to write.
(I
can't remember who I ganked this from. Sorry.) (discuss)
(posted by George)
Forgotten books
Are usually best left forgotten, but not if they just came out
this year. Macleans
rounds em up with its usual unintentional lightness and iron-fisted
brevity. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Coupland: smarter
than I think?
I guess so... What a pleasant surprise this
interview is. I may actually buy a book of his instead of
reading it in the store.
"Depression
is an extreme form of homesickness. The only cure for homesickness
is going home. I think loneliness is when you feel homesick,
but there's no home to go to. Even if your parents are both
alive and living in the same house and you go back and sleep
in the den or see your old school friends, there's no past to
go back to. It's a mourning for something that doesn't exist."
(discuss)
(posted by George)
Rare books stolen
from Transylvania, KT library
My suspicion is it was either the Jiggy Jack the Crackhead Wolfman
or Count von Fridgeontheporch who
gone and done it. Those twins that's the ones what solved
the bingo hall robb'ry last'n year says they's about due for a
trot out to the haunted trailer park on the edge of town.. (discuss)
(posted by George)
Fight Club: the video game
For losers
who can't fight.
Maybe
if you can forget that the fighting system is not only derivative
but boring, and the game breaks just about every rule of Fight
Club (inexcusable) you may squeeze some precious minutes of
enjoyment out of it. Until you realize that Fight Club stars
Brad Pitt and Edward Norton (wisely) left themselves out of
the game, and Fight Club novelist Chuck Palahniuk told the developers
he wanted no involvement in any way, shape or form in its creation.
(discuss)
(posted by George)
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