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02/02/04:
Dale Hanging Up
the Gloves
Peck's tired
of being called names. (discuss)
Sometimes You Just Can't Look Away
As much as I swore I would try to not post on Sylvia and Ted, I
just couldn't help but look when the headline was "I
paid for the gas that killed Sylvia Plath." (discuss)
Enter the Exotic World of Typewriter Porn
Oh yeah, there's other stuff about the history of the typewriter
or something. Typewriter
porn! (Probably not worksafe.) (LOL* Fleshbot) (discuss)
Better than Ezra
Finally in the Library
of America** series. (discuss)
A Ghost in the Machine
Text
is now infinitely malleable.** So says you. I can barely write a
thing! (discuss)
Another Bunch of Small Town American Yokels Lacking Taste,
Foresight, and Education...
Poor Judy Blume. 30 Years later and still fighting
the same battles. Is there no rest? (discuss)
Why Are the Characters' Eyes about 3/8ths of Their Face?
And other
mysteries of the blue-haired, pedophilic land of Anime/Manga.
(Note: I didn't read all this, so I hope it's good.) (discuss)
"If you want to understand the Matrix trilogy, think
of it as a capsule history of baby boom rock. The original Matrix
is a three-chord riff of a movie: a simple, familiar idea --
"What if reality is a great big fake?" -- amplified and
transformed into an irresistible hook. The Matrix Reloaded
is a 1970s concept album: sprawling, pretentious, and ultimately
incoherent, but brimming with ideas and virtuoso displays. And The
Matrix: Revolutions is an over-the-hill pop star recycling
someone else’s material -- the sort of music you’d hear on a
Michelob commercial, circa 1987."
"Call it the demiurge cycle, after the Gnostic notion that our
world is governed by a mad ersatz God." 'Nuff
said? (discuss)
Elsewhere a Disenchanted Goth Throws Down Her Powder Puff and
Black Lipstick, Crying into the Night:
You
betrayed me, Anne!!! I'm going back to school to become a
lawyer! (discuss)
World's Worst Still Producing - Just like World's Best... McGonagall
still churing 'em out. (discuss)
02/03/04:
Ishrad Wisely
Takes a Bodyguard...
The
Trouble with Islam author has a
fulltime bodyguard during her tour. (discuss)
"Prepackaged meals are generally inferior to home cooking.
What about prepackaged anthologies?"
Best
American - like being off shore and looking at the country
through a powerful telescope. (discuss)
Art Theft, Poetry Style
Thief foiled in attempt
to steal Russian poet Alexander Blok's papers (third item
down). (discuss)
"People used to say if you threw a stone in Grafton Street
you were sure to hit a poet"
Where's a stone when you need one? Joyce's
house restored. (discuss)
Hypergraphia
AKA, donut
shop poets' disease. (discuss)
Every Now and Then It's Good to Remind Ourselves What the Other
Side Thinks
A conservative American's opinion
on Dana Gioia and the NEA... I wonder if Gioia has seen this. His
head might implode. (Hey, American Ninjas, can your conservatives
ever write in anything but this over-the-top, silly rhetoric? I find
it snicker-worthy that the site name is "intellectual
conservative.") (discuss)
Tired of Wallpapering Your Room with Rejection Letters?
Now you can put them
online. (LOL* Boing Boing)
(discuss)
Don't Kill the Courier!
The X-Files will never look so
authentic again... (LOL* Boing
Boing) (discuss)
02/04/04:
Writers' Trust
Awards Shortlists Announced
Article
and press
release (in pdf). (discuss)
Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced
There are more
categories here than I've ever seen at any other award... (discuss)
or (discuss)
Lingua Franca Freelancers Have a Powerful Ally Against the
Bloodsucking Suits
Judge
(not Juris) Prudence. (discuss)
When I Wrote the GREs, I Answered "B" to Every Question
and Scored Higher Than Anyone Else I Knew
Ah, standardized
testing. (LOL* Boing Boing)
(discuss)
"The generation that grew up watching Japanese cartoons on
television in the 1980s now reads manga, not Molière."
"If we did not have manga, a whole generation would
have stayed in front of the television and never held a book in
their hands," says Mr Glénat. "Better that they read manga
than never learn to read at all." Ummmm...?
(discuss)
More on Sappho
All we
fragments
Carson
Reynolds
review.
(discuss)
I Am Not Well
Maud Newton
points out that Joyce's "The
Dead" is available online. I'm more partial to Barthelme's
"Game"
myself, especially given the times. (discuss)
Eudora Welty, Paparazza
Welty's
pics of ol' Mississip. (discuss)
Worklit
This
oughta appeal to a few of the gruffer, more manly ninjas out
there. (discuss)
In Keeping with the New Tradition of Keeping Tabs on "The
Others..."
What are those pesky
Christians up to lately? Crusades? Inquisitions? Witch burning?
Bookselling? (discuss)
02/05/04:
Literature on
Trial in Iran
Very
interesting piece on Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in
Tehran. (LOL* Elegant
Variation) (discuss)
Luke... Lend Me Your Hand
People can quote
Star Wars easier than Shakespeare. Well, duh. (Of course, what
they're not telling you is that their sample was randomly selected
at three a.m. from a line up at a night falafel stand outside a
trendy nightclub.) (discuss)
"I dream of seeing the Poetry Foundation built and operated
like a well-run company."
Um,**
maybe get rid of the
poetry** then? (discuss)
Oprah - The Literary Matrix's Agent Smith
Oprah
pseudopod sighted off British Coast. Tony Blair, seeing to late
the terror his lube-fuelled carousing has brought upon his people,
turns to Japan - desperately seeking help from Godzilla, or maybe
Mothra. (discuss)
File This Under: Tell Me
About It
There's poetry
in baby-talk. "What you can see happening is the mother
adjusting the pitch and choice of language to attune with the baby.
So when the baby's attention wanders, it's a strategy to get the
baby's attention back again." Is this the origin of the dreaded
"poet
voice?" (discuss)
Milosz on the Future of
Europe and Poetry
Could
you imagine this here? He's being interviewed like a
philosopher/statesman. (discuss)
This Online Novel Is Old, But I Just Discovered It
Geoff Ryman's 253
(LOL* Neil Gaiman) (discuss)
Like Oasis With The Beatles...
It's my considered opinion that there are lesser talents that
could have been ripped
off - er-hem - heavily borrowed from. (discuss)
Funny Haha
Except for the second
last one which might just be funny cause it's true. I'm comin'
for ya, Meg!! (LOL* Maud) (discuss)
02/06/04:
Joyce's Ulysses
Leads Students to Porn
Well, actually
it was the profs, who justify it by saying: "Watching
pornography in a classroom becomes a Brechtian experience, causing
discomfort and alienation. Porn then reveals not just flesh, but
also its formal conventions, its repetitive narratives, its tableaux
of power, its cold ideologies, its descent into bathos." Uh
huh. (discuss)
A N Wilson
Proust
cultist. (discuss)
Cory Doctorow When Will You Learn?
You don't make friends by proving people wrong! Way
to go, man (P.S. my wife had a crush on you when you two were
eleven and attending summer camp.) (discuss)
Upward Mobility
Gluck (pronounced Glick, don't forget) is taking a
big step up. Hm. (discuss)
Oodles of Poodles
The Danforth Review reviews
Stuart Ross's Hey, Crumbling Balcony, which has been getting
some attention on
our boards. (discuss)
Queer Eye for the Young Guy
You know queer is becoming mainstream when kids
are writing about it. (discuss)
Philosopeanuts
Charlie Brown, existentialist.
(discuss)
02/07/04:
Happy
Birthday, Silas!
Shrapnel
In my Sisyphean struggle to find online tidbits to feed you lit
vultures, I occasionally come across interesting
things that aren't book related. I've decided to post them at
irregular intervals in short article form on my website. (discuss)
HAHAHAHAHA!
Hahahahaha! Hahahahaha! Aaahahahahaha!
(In case you don't have my home under surveillance, I am pointing at
the screen as a I laugh uproariously - much like one would laugh at
the kid whose pants fell down while he was carrying the lunch tray
back to his table (not that it was his fault, you see, he had weak
drawstrings and I'd recently lost a lot of weight and it really
really hurt me when ... never mind.)) (discuss)
"I knew from experience that making six copies of the book
at Kinko's would cost seven million dollars."
David Rees discusses
the history of My
Fighting Technique is Unstoppable. (LOL* Boing
Boing) (discuss)
"Boiling jumps to the eyes. One strolls in a bookshop
devoted to the ninth art, even in a chain specialized in the books,
the reviews and the candlesticks, is enough besides to be convinced
some."
A delightfully Google-translated
article on Quebecois comics. (LOL* Sequential)
(discuss)
"New" Language
Siberian
language on the brink of extinct "discovered" by
Western scholars (ie, stumbled across). Most fluent in it are over
50. (LOL* Languagehat via Maud)
(discuss)
Parrot Has Greater Vocabulary than Average Canadian Poet - Sure
to be "Last Standing" After CBC Poetry Face-Off (snicker
... snort ... hehehe ... "full contact" ... woo! Rich!)
Well, last perching. But rest assured - without arms he can't
properly accentuate his poet voice or stuff an envelope... or
can he? (discuss)
02/09/04:
I've Really,
Really Been Trying to Not Post About This...
But this is a good synopsis of the NYT
Book Review drama so far. (discuss)
Motion Wants to Halt Flow of Art
From the British Kingdom... (Particularly pointed seems to me the
last line of this
article... BBC editorializing?) (discuss)
"It's not enough for a Canadian poet with a Jewish
background to write good poems. He or she has to survive comparison
to Leonard Cohen, A.M. Klein and Irving Layton. A novelist or
polemicist has to walk in the shadow of Mordecai Richler."
The
plight of the Montreal Jew. (discuss)
Bradbury on What Could Have
Been
50 years ago, it was suggested
to ol' Ray that he write a sequel to Farenheit 451 in which all
the memorized books get rewritten and come out all garbled. Would
that he had. (From PFW)
(discuss)
Books Alive is Back in Australia
Oz's largest literary
promotion will do just about anything to get people reading,
including $5 reads. (From Literary
Saloon) (discuss)
We Get What We Deserve
Richard
Ford on football. (discuss)
Holy Crap!
It's the column
of Pete's dreams! How did we not find this before? (discuss)
Something Important is Happening at York University? Who knew?
Not really book related, but this
bit on how we started, as a species, to think, is interesting..
(Hey, btw, don't you have to actually publish something in 40 years
to keep tenure?) (discuss)
Grisham Comments on His Books
[Ed. note: 252 instances of "Duuuh..." have been
removed from this
article.] (discuss)
02/10/04:
PWAC Takes the
Gloves Off
The Periodical Writers' Association provides Paul Martin's new
government with a wish list
to avert a "shameful cultural emergency." (discuss)
Can Soft Skull Press Do Anything Wrong?
They've snagged about 20 thousand famous
authors to write lyrics for a Brooklyn-based rock band. I love
these guys. Love 'em. Especially that sexy bastard Richard Nash.
(From Maud) (discuss)
Marian Engel's Writing was Garbage
I mean, it was in
the garbage. But it's not now. (discuss)
Operation Books
Thousands
of books taken into the north. (discuss)
It's Not Funny Because It's True
The other day I made a joke about journalists being the next to lose
their jobs to overseas outsourcing*... (From Maud)
(discuss)
Not Sure What to Call the Offspring of an Eel?
The Beastly Garden
or Wordy Delights has the answer. (From Languagehat)
(discuss)
Ah, Proust...
I once won a gaudy shirt because I hadn't read
Proust. I still have the shirt and I still haven't read Proust.
(discuss)
Reading Iris
See, I want to read
and like Iris Murdoch, but it's kind of like swimming in toffee
for me. (discuss)
Little Duck's Big Night Out
With the dealer incident behind him, Little Duck cuts
a line on the mirror and stares at his pallid reflection, the
thin strip of snow bisecting his face. Outside the club's music
thumps just like it always has. Next to him Little Hen is slumped
against a garbage can, one stocking slid down her bony leg. "So
this is my life," thinks Little Duck as he bends to snort the
line through his bill. (discuss)
|
02/11/04:
Doyle Putting the
Boots to Joyce
Seems like Roddy's
biting the hand
that feeds him, eh? And a
response. (discuss)
Less is Jolly Well More
The small
presses of England. (discuss)
Hear Hear
The new Internet-First publishing programme at Cornell publishes
books online for free. No copyright, no fee, just info for the
world. Positively utopian. (discuss)
Speaking of...
E-books are really almost
here. No really! Swear this time. (I for one will buy one once
the prices come down -- if just to carry around a few hundred
reference texts with searchable capability... Imagine how it will
revolutionize the life of the academic. I may get speak to my wife
again!) (discuss)
"Rather than God blessing America, God wants to give America
homework."
Meet
Jun Nagai, Japanese translator of the blockbusters. (From Golden
Rule Jones) (discuss)
Maybe This Will Balance Out All the Other Things I'm Doing...
"How spending 10 minutes a day with a simple pen and paper
can dramatically
boost your health." Um, how come I sometimes feel like it's
killing me then? (discuss)
Grendel? I Mean, I Can Understand Banning Where's Waldo, But
Grendel?
The Forbidden Library
is a nice little resource on banned books. (From Bookslut)
(discuss)
Ted Hughes Could Fill a Room
But it seems he's having trouble
filling a museum. (discuss)
Sci-Fi OED
Now there's an OED
for sci-fi geeks! (From SciFi
Weekly) (discuss)
Light a Sparkler
It's Pushkin
day! (discuss)
Paris in April
Or maybe a
fall launch. Gak. Blagg! Rolf! (From
Bookslut) (discuss)
02/12/04:
Anne Carson Stole
My Girlfriend...
And Slate thinks that's
just fine. (discuss)
...But I Found a New One at Harvard
Harvard approves H-Bomb: a student
sex mag. (discuss)
My Money's on Horatio
Figuring
the odds in Hamlet. (From Kitabkhana)
(discuss)
Wiebe on the North
A
profile of said Rudy. (From PFW)
(discuss)
A Pictorial History of Type
Cool
little site for the unemployed to waste their time on. (From Maud)
(discuss)
Floetry
Spoken
word duo "must surprise some new listeners who might think
poets are only finger-snapping turtleneck-wearers. Floetry's art is
rather a music of upbeat and joyous hip-hop and soul." (discuss)
We Should Really Change Our Name to Dictionaryninja
It's the Dictionary
of Newfoundland English! (From Languagehat)
(discuss)
More Boobs, Please
AL Kennedy on watching
television. (discuss)
02/13/04:
The Walrus Gets a
New Editor...
So last month several sources revealed to Bookninja that The
Walrus fired its entire in-house copy editing staff. The reason
cited was "financial difficulties." Now
a widely circulated press release says David Berlin, the
"outgoing" editor famous for inappropriate quips about the
WTC and working class Joes, is leaving and publishing partner
Ken Alexander is citing "health reasons." (This, like
"to pursue other projects," smacks of industry code, to
me.) If this is all true, I'm actually curious to see where the mag
will go. (discuss)
Journalists Portrayed as Ass-wipes
World
rocked to molten foundation, sun black as sack-cloth.* (discuss)
Angelou Gets Another Standing Ovation
It makes me wonder how
she feels when she doesn't. (P.S. The real news here is that all
those clapping people paid between $30 and $70 to see her. Makes
passing the hat seem not so bad, eh?) (discuss)
RIP Jasper
Comic artist Seth on the
passing of James Simpkins. (discuss)
Nazi Porn
Who wouldn't want to publish
it? Um... (discuss)
CanLit Journals
Get help
from technology (From PFW).
Note: not letterpress. (discuss)
The Best Combo Review Ever
Lords of
Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground and David
Frum and Richard Perle's An End to Evil: How to Win the War on
Terror. (From Snarkout) (discuss)
Stars and Knights
Playwright
upset that theatre, music and film are judged out of five stars
(in the Guardian) while books are not. (discuss)
Because God Knows They Won't Learn About it in the Schoolyard (or
the Back of a Station Wagon in About Six Years...)
A Hallmark Sales Day, er, Valentine's
Day display at a bookstore in the US contained a book called
Wild Sex (is
this the one?). Police grew concerned when they noticed a couple
of 8-year-olds flipping through it. Presumably the cops had been
staking out the display for some time. (discuss)
Ah, Dignity...
Thy
name is Lord Archer. (discuss)
02/16/04:
New Cartoon -
Litterati
We're starting a new feature here
at Bookninja - a cartoon lampooning the lit scene and its denizens.
Hope you enjoy. (discuss)
It's That Time of the Year Again
If you're a Canadian, don't forget to register
with the PLRC. (discuss)
A Peak into the Future - And the 2092 Book of the Year is A
Romantic History of Crack
Absinthe
is just like so cool man. Especially when you don't have to watch
people dying from it in a roach-infested asylum. (discuss)
It's About Time Someone Told All Those Joyce Nuts to Shut Up
I just didn't think it would be the
Joyce family. (From Boing
Boing) (discuss)
Shakespeare the Family Guy
New book doesn't give too much new on Shakespeare, but plenty
about his
family. (discuss)
Bookstore Tourism
Why does this make me think
of zoos? (discuss)
Ever Heard of a Cartoonist Named Crumb?
Not this
one,* you haven't. (discuss)
Word Menu
Interesting
(and cheap!) software re-words the reference dictionary. (From PFW)
(discuss)
"There is nothing that occurs in the spectrum of human
experience that cannot be explained or detailed through the use of
language; all beliefs, desires, intentions, and concepts are
ultimately linguistic in nature."
"It is through our abilities
of language that we formulate concepts; the concepts were not
there before the language." Yes, yes, it's true. My eyes and
ass weren't sore from trying to read this until I complained to my
wife, "Hey, Ailsa, my ass and eyes are sore from trying to read
this." (discuss)
Bonus
My work
life in a nutshell.
02/17/04:
Another Bounty on
Rushdie
This has got
to suck. Even the more insignificant extremist groups are
getting in on the action. What must it be like to live with that
moment always just around the corner? It's especially humane of them
to include his family in the offer of $100,000. (discuss)
Canada Reads
I wish. No, it's just a
contest. (discuss)
"Detractors dismiss this as the 'Dead White Male'
curriculum. But in an academic world increasingly geared to narrow
specializations and job training, this small corner of a sprawling
university dares to be different."
Great
books at Concordia. (discuss)
This Should Put an End to the Question of Whether or Not Scotland
is a Country
Meet Edwin
Morgan, Scotland's first national poet. (discuss)
Fiction Sales Are Down, KidLit Sales Are Up
And the new
trend is dead people. That's it, my next book is going to be
about a dead kids. Oh,
wait. (From Bookslut)
(discuss)
Octavia Butler Profiled
"This solitary person who readily admits 'writing
is the only thing I ever cared about' found herself battling
worries that 'maybe I cannot write anymore."' (discuss)
Obligatory Faulkner Post
It seems like there's about one
a month. Funny how often they're from Thuh Sowth! (discuss)
Newsflash: Writing for TV Sucks
What we have here is an example of cause
and effect! (discuss)
Doesn't This Suck by It's Very Nature?
The MFA programme at Columbia
is under fire -- from it's own students. (discuss)
Sullivan Entertainment: Class Act
Ooo, wait. Can I get sued
for that? (discuss)
02/18/04:
More coming late
tonight. Check out the new toons
until then.
Ah, Adjective, My Unnecessary Nemesis
Has your time come
again? (discuss)
"I spent half the article saying how much I admire Amis and
how good a writer he is, but no one pays attention to that bit"
Tibor
Fischer speaks out about the fall of Communism and Martin Amis.
(discuss)
And Here I Wasted My Puberty With Penthouse and Playboy
I should have been reading Asimov's
Science Fiction magazine. (From Boing
Boing) (discuss)
02/19/04:
Happy Anniversary,
A! We've beaten the odds and are on our way to sharing a suite
in a nursing home!
Once Again, the Short Story Goes Down in Canada
Alice Munro is voted
off Canada Reads. (discuss)
"To Americans, a bestseller in Canada is
like a tree falling in the forest. Unless it's written by Margaret
Atwood, they don't hear it and it doesn't exist."
This
is news only to writers and readers outside Canada, I think. (discuss)
"...the only people who have anything to worry about are
terrorists..."
Isn't this one
of the seven signs? (discuss)
And People Say the Semicolon Doesn't Matter
Apparently
it does when gay marriage is at stake. (From Boing
Boing) (discuss)
Squinting at the Present
Gibson on how he's not
a prescient futurist (you know, that's what all prescient
futurists say). (discuss)
The Heaney Centre for Poetry
And a bog people drop in centre
(you can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal) (From PFW)
(discuss)
We Don't Need No Stinking Poet Laureate
Some in Wales are arguing against following Scotland and appointing
a poet laureate. They're all poets there, so who needs an
"official" poet? (discuss)
Publishers Greedy, Say Greedy Retailers
Publishers are selling
their wares direct through their various online presences. (discuss)
Isn't This How the Matrix Thing Got Started?
A
robotic "librarian." If this ends up with me sleeping
with Carrie-Anne Moss, then I don't really care what happens. The
whole reality-is-sacred thing won't mean so much to me once I've
moved beyond the realm of real possibility.... (discuss)
02/20/04:
Maisonneuve
Magazine Scores Dale Peck's Last Negative Review Ever
Maisonneuve, the mag
that brought you world-exclusive
excerpts from BHL's Who
Killed Daniel Pearl has now scored the lead piece of criticism
from Dale Peck's forthcoming book Hatchet
Jobs - right out from under The
New Republic. Peck skewers Sven Birkerts in a 10 page review,
the beginning of which can
be read here as an exclusive web excerpt (a teaser, really). You heard it here first because,
frankly, we are in the bloodstream of this country like a pair of malignant spirochetes.
(Plus, I am an editor there and am privy to the inner workings of
this phenomenal factory of eclectic interest.) (discuss)
More Peck News
Peck's
memoir survives a review. If it's good enough, no one should
trash it "just because," but you know that eventually
someone will. (From Maud) (discuss)
Everything You Need to Know About Typewriters
Can be found at this
site, including an
illustrated history of typewriters. (discuss)
Authors Take Sides - On Iraq War
Barnes, Crace, Drabble, Gordimer, Guterson, le Carre, Pinter,
Theroux - the
list goes on. (discuss)
SF's Poetry Center Turns 50
And they're looking for money to protect the country's largest
collection of poetry on tape. (discuss)
Owwoooooo!
A brief history
of Howl, which is also 50. (discuss)
Snowplough? Or Snowplow?
Stephen Henighan thinks Canadian authors have a lot to learn
about spelling. (discuss)
First Time Novelist, 71, Hits the Jackpot
This is such
a nice story. And gives all of us hope. Except Pete who is
devoid of human emotion. (discuss)
Technovelgy
Cool site about
science fiction inventions. (From Boing
Boing) (discuss)
02/21/04:
National Magazine
Award for Poetry Reinstated!
Well, you did it, people. The outcry against the cancellation of
the poetry award has lead to a
NMAF turnabout. Read about it in
our letters section. Congratulations to everyone who put effort
into this. And congratulations to the NMAF Board and President Terry
Sellwood for having the wisdom to listen to the community and the
courage to revisit their initial decision. (discuss)
Vanderhaeghe Scores a One Two Combination to Knock Out
Competition in Final Seconds of Blood-Soaked Battle Royale! Munro,
Proulx Lose Teeth!
Look at us Canajuns! We race
poets as though they were NASCARs and throw fiction
writers in a pit to battle to the death - all for our amusement!
Who says America's got the lock on low brow? (discuss)
What About The Atlantic Monthly? Harper's? Maisonneuve?
Interesting
discussion on the evolution of magazine covers. See also the
piece on Nabokov
and hypertext. (From Maud)
(discuss)
More On Roddy and James
They're billing this as a
tempest in a teapot* (at least both Doyle and Joyce can write).
(discuss)
Imagine! People Caring Enough About Books in Canada to Ban Them!
Feb. 22-28 is Freedom
to Read Week in Canada. Celebrate by freeing
a book. Or just read about the books that have been banned
in Canada (PDF link). (discuss)
Corporate Culture and Publishing
An
old but still relevant piece on the tension between culture and
commerce. It's from the Culture
of Publishing Journal, which unfortunately seems to be defunct
now. (From The
Elegant Variation) (discuss)
"High concept is really not a road to take with Chekhov,
since his plays depend on a respect for the fluidity, perversity and
subtlety of human personality. Any Chekhov production that works
starts from the inside, not the outside."
Chekhov's Seagull
a Drowning Cow.* (discuss)
Cuuuuute!
Awwwww!
(discuss)
|
02/23/04:
Canada's Older,
Less Interesting Dale Peck Gets His Spleen Served Up with a Side of
Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti
Another critic known for strong opinions (the Globe's Fraser
Sutherland) tears
Solway a new hole. (Maybe he should have just taped up an
existing one?) (discuss)
"While many couples finish each other's sentences, it takes
a special closeness to be able to finish your partner's book as if
he had written it himself."
Timothy Findley's last
book finished by his partner William Whitehead. (discuss)
Books on Books - Yes!
A sloppily
written review of what looks like an interesting book for
bibliophiles. (discuss)
"These days we read biography partly because criticism has
become so technical, and so politicised, that it isn't always
conducive to imaginative pleasure."
It seems Baudelaire
was often caught "knocking at the cellar door." (discuss)
"I think it’s true for all of us that the role of the poet
is not fulfilling enough on a day-to-day basis - it’s not a
full-time job"
"When my first novel came out and I was doing readings, one
bookshop manager actually introduced me with the words: 'Here’s Simon
Armitage - you probably know him as a poet, but now he’s an
author.'" I can't write 'em that funny. (discuss)
Nabokov Museum Fallen on Hard Times
Something
tells me I just really don't want to shake this
"benefactor's" hand... (discuss)
Poet Blows England a Sweet Scottish Kiss
Morgan's
first poem as Scotland's Makar poet is being heralded as a
"clarion call" for a republic. (discuss)
August Kleinzahler
Profiled
in the NYT.* (discuss)
Mr. Rogers'to Publish Two New Books
He'll be conducting a reading
tour with VC Andrews and L. Ron Hubbard. Attending children are
advised to get tetanus shots and rain slickers beforehand. (discuss)
02/24/04:
Filthy Smut
Peddlers Respond
Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine takes
issue with being portrayed as pornographic. (From Bookslut)
(discuss)
Clive Cussler Hauls Out the Big Guns to Deal with Hollywood
Hm. I didn't know you COULD ruin
a Cussler novel, but you gotta admire his stones. (discuss)
Holy Crap! It Woiks!
PEN works.
(discuss)
She Was a Female Crime Writer. Better Yet, She Was Gay. Better
Yet, She Was Queer. Better Yet, She Was Conflicted
The Chronicle attempts to explain Patricia
Highsmith's popularity. (discuss)
Alas, Poor Courier, I Knew You Well
Slate weighs in
on the slow decline of Courier. (discuss)
"Some literary agents, who are scarcely superior to conmen,
trade on these banal formulae, scattering their synopses/outlines
across the publishing landscape like so many snake-oil salesmen.
Forget books; in America, synopsis-mania has got so bad that there
is already an annual prize for the best one."
The
synopsis - Satan's playground. (discuss)
Getting an Agent
A practical
primer. (From Maud via Boing
Boing) (discuss)
RIP: Frederick Morgan
Longtime Hudson
Review editor* dead at 81. (discuss)
"Best" American Poetry
National Book Critics Circles award nominees
for poetry profiled. (discuss)
Rant v Poetry
An
LA Times letter* regarding last week's post
on Howl.* (discuss)
Whoopti-doo
Whoopi
hops on the celebrity author gravy train. Yah! (You know, this
would be so much less offensive if I didn't know plenty of
non-celebrity authors who were working shitty day jobs to compensate
for not being famous.) (discuss)
02/25/04:
In Praise of Used
Book Stores
Okay, it's really in
praise of City Lights in London, Ontario. (discuss)
And a Giant Robot with Dryer Tubing for Arms and Flashing LED
Eyes Will Greet Patrons by Crushing Starbucks Cups Against Its
Glass-Domed Forehead
Seattle has built the library of ... the
present. It just seems futuristic because the rest of the
world's libraries are stuck in the 1950s. Those Seattleites are like
busy little bees. Wet, busy, little bees. (What else is there to do
when it always looks like someone crapped in God's breakfast and
you're hopped up on caffeine? The sound domes are really cool,
though...) (discuss)
"If a French Canadian feminist is on the panel, avoid books
by Mordecai Richler."
Zsuzsi Gartner presents a
guide for future Canada Reads panelists. (discuss)
Surrealism "101"
Or should that be Surrealism
"Flaming Black Spade Cutting Umbilical Cord"? (From Maud)
(discuss)
Filming Poetry
Welsh
poetry gets a Hollywood treatment. (discuss)
Want a Bigger Unit?
Spammers
read too, when not spreading disease. (discuss)
Books in 25 Words or Less
Some funny
summaries in here. (From Bookslut)
(discuss)
02/26/04:
The
Earth's Coolest Non-Existent Used Bookstore
Apollinaire's Bookshoppe has
a nice new site from which to sell the books no one wants to buy.
Please spend your money here. (I kind of miss the old, lo-tech site
that looked like it was done in about 1994, but this really is much
prettier...) (Thanks to DFB for the link.) (discuss)
Access Copyright: Superheroes
Bam! Zang! Piff! I love these guys. They just get
in there and start swinging. It's like the doorstep of the Rox
in Barrie on Friday night (they used to serve pitchers of ale for
four bucks... God I could use a beer.) (From PFW)
(discuss)
Gabriel García Márquez: Military Man
García Márquez's grandfather may get promoted to General today -- 60
years after he died. (discuss)
Sex and the City Prequels
I don't remember any blowjobs
in Anne of Green Gables. I'll have to read it again. (discuss)
Soft Skull Continues to Rock
They made MSNBC's
book club with Matthew Sharpe's The Sleeping Father. Also,
check out this Amanda
Stern interview by Ninja reader Nathaniel Moore. (discuss)
Forget the UN
Fonts
will save the world! (From Collision
Detection) (discuss)
When the Law and Ethics Meet
Should a murderer be allowed to profit from a book about his
crime? My heart says no, but the
law might say yes. (discuss)
Soon Emily Will Be Safely Behind Bars and Won't Be Able to Once
Again Roam the Countryside Seeking Warm Flesh Descended
from Those Who Rejected Her in Life....
Dickinson's
gate found. (discuss)
Canada Pub Crawl
Where
do we sign on? (Hell, we're willing to just run alongside this
guy like he was a drunken Terry Fox... If you stumble, my friend, we
will be there...) (From Sarah)
(discuss)
Can't... Bear... Pain...
Of... Knowing... What... This...
Means... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Poor... Innocent...
"Heartfelt..." Woman... Gaagh!! (discuss)
02/27/04: American
Publishers Can Publish Work from the Pentagram of Evil
But if they want to avoid jail,
they better not even think about editing it.
"The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets
Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works
authored in nations under trade embargoes, which include, Iran,
Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba. Although publishing the articles is
legal, editing is a, quote, service, and the Treasury Department
says it's illegal to perform services for embargoed nations. It can
be punishable by fines of up to half a million dollars or jail terms
as long as ten years."
When is someone going to freak out down there and lead the people in
a revolt? (Thanks to JLG
for the tip.) (discuss)
Canadians Are Not Americans
Riiiiiight. Next you'll be saying Aussies aren't a bunch of
dirty English castaways and the French aren't ... well, who's
occupying them today? (discuss)
Literary Dick? Just One? (Can I Get a Rimshot, Please!)
Jonathan Ames has started a
blog to answer literary mysteries... (On a side note, my first
ever NYC reading was one given by Ames in 2000. It was at the Housing
Works Cafe down in Soho. I had been in the city about a week. Novelist
Ames went on for quite some time about how he was balding and
then read about this guy who made prosthetic vaginas for men (called
The Mangina). The character was this warped, one-legged artist who
traipsed about in a strap-on vagina that used excess scrotum flesh
pulled through slots in the prosthesis to simulate labia. As he read
the piece, I thought, "Wow, this is freaky. But, hey, I'm in
New York now... I'm down with the freaky-deak." Then he closed
his book and said, "So ladies and gentlemen, here he is: The
Mangina!" and out comes this one-legged dude, naked but for a
prosthetic vagina and an old fashioned diving helmet. Two
scantily-clad female assistants began to pump water INTO the sealed
helmet while people from the audience were encouraged to pay $1 to
come up and "finger
the mangina" before he drowns. And there were many takers.
My wife and I stared in disbelief for a few minutes more before we
backed slowly to the door. In the vernacular of my
slack-jawed hometown: I shit you not.) (From Maud)
(discuss)
More Poetry On Op Ed Pages!
"The
first recognized political commentators, the first political talking
heads, the first true Op Ed professionals, were bards. Before there
was even writing, members of ruling elites never really knew where
they stood until the old blind guy with the lyre posted the insiders
scorecard in rhyme." And
we're to be paid for
this? Um, okay, do you prefer iambs or dactyls? More hometown
lingo: F-in' eh! It's so crazy it just might work! (discuss)
A Nice Cozy Place Where You Can Have a Drink, a Smoke, and a
Bucket of Bull Gore While You Close the Deal that will Ruin the
Lives of Your Employees
London investors to launch
an upscale version of the Floridita, Ernesto's old watering
hole. I'm sure Papa would approve. (discuss)
File This Under: Well, Duh!
"With book sales flat and the public increasingly
choosing other ways to spend its leisure time, publishers received
some blunt advice Thursday on how to expand the market. Get to know
your readers." That,
or maybe, have some dignity, scruples, and taste. One of the two.
Hey... Maybe
both! (discuss)
Bookninja Was Robbed!
If you find our fourth column, keep it. It might be worth
something someday. Do you like the new look? (discuss)
02/28/04:
Soon We'll Be
Lucky to Have Freedom to Remember Freedom of Speech
Laws
that severely impinge civil liberties are always being
passed in the name of security, ethics, and decency. But as of late,
things seem particularly dire for "freedom of speech" here
in the West. As is often the case, the first targets are creative
works by fringe artists. Now, the dude in question here is a fringe
of a fringe and only really an artist of self-denial, but the ripple
effect is in motion and has serious implications for serious
artists. Russell Smith examines bill C-12 and how its impact might
be felt in Canada. (discuss)
The Cultural Gutter
Eye weekly columnists Jim Munro and Guy Leshinski launch The
Cultural Gutter, an online paper devoted to video games, comics
and science fiction. They had me at the first one. "But
gutter genres aren't known for their subtlety. In fact, their
obviousness and their barenakedness is why they're destined to
remain beneath the radar of Serious Culture -- and why they will
continue to thrive despite this. Where else can you experience
dreams of power and heroism as directly as through a superhero
comic? Or take out your aggression as primally by smashing in the
face of a digital opponent? Meet the Other as obviously as on a
voyage to another planet? Indulge a sexual peccadillo either mundane
or less-mundane? I mean, it's obvious that anything that is as
upfront and honest about what we fantasize about as a species is of
immense cultural value. But don't tell the intelligentsia -- if they
caught on, it would take all the fun out of it." (discuss)
It's a Good Thing Libraries
Were Created Way Back When...
Because there's
some question whether they would be today. "Suppose Ben Franklin and his ilk never existed, and we didn't have any public libraries. Then suppose somebody proposed creating them.
Can you imagine the fuss?" (discuss)
Yeats Beats Keats, Pounds
Ezra, Lords it Over Tennyson
"The
best poet since Shakespeare?" Perhaps... But what shocked
me in this piece on the new Yeats bio (for people who didn't get
ripped from hefting the Lowell Collected) is Auden's ranking
in the rest of the 20th C. I would have thought him a rung or two
higher. Was it the Russian judge deducting points for late life
Christianity again? (discuss)
Digging Up Wilfred Owen's Poetry
An archaeological crew has uncovered the dugout, complete with
bodies, that inspired "The Sentry" for a BBC documentary.
"Owen's poem speaks of the sentry in his platoon being blinded in an
attack and the poet placing a candle near his face to see whether
his sight was irretrievably damaged:
'Oh
sir, my eyes - I'm blind - I'm blind, I'm blind!'
Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids
And said if he could see the least blurred light
He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.
'I can't,' he sobbed'.
The skeleton was
found with three
candles beside it." (discuss)
我是的途中!
It seems scholars now
think English might not be destined to become an only child (despite
fratricidal tendencies). For a long while, it's been relatively
common knowledge that English is killing off other languages
worldwide -- take a look at air traffic control, computer
programming languages and the Internet, Jim Carey movies -- but now
it seems English, the little language that could (enslave you all),
has some competition. Forget putting your kids in French immersion
-- Mandarin
is the way to go. (discuss)
Langston Hughes
A
primer. (discuss)
"The unforgettable becoming the irretrievable"
"The
death of a cherished friend sets life askew, leaves a hole that
cannot be filled: One can think of the person, and does, but he is
not there to think back, to reply. Perhaps that sense of dialogue
can be replicated by simply talking about that friendship,
describing how it was." Anne
Atik's elegy (How
It Was) for the friendship between her husband, painter Avigdor
Arikha, and Sam Beckett sounds like something I must have. (discuss)
Ruins
An interesting piece, not wholly bookish, on ruins
and their place in art. "A ruin has two values. It is a
material record of a past age. It is also an inspiration. How do we
quantify one value against the other?" (discuss)
Electronic Literature 101
Hypertext
fiction. Didn't that, like, happen already? And didn't nobody
not give no care? I found those pages full of hyperlinks kind of
boring. I want to be taken somewhere, not to wind up somewhere...
But, because I like you, I'm going to show you something I've been
saving -- hording, really. Something I hope will knock your socks
off. This
is what electronic literature has the potential to be... (Flash
and speakers required, a decent connection speed or patience urged.)
(discuss)
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