Hearsay Archive:

March 2004:

03/01/04:

Bookninja Cartoon Contest!
Besides the regular new Litterati 'toons that go up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, this week we've got an uncaptioned tableau we want you to fill out. Click here to see the panel and then send your entries to us by Friday, March 5th. The funniest entry will be added to the Litterati archives (with full credit to the writer) and there may even be a prize! Your fame awaits. (discuss)

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, eh? And that is that I know nothing. Hoser."
Dudek is getting his due - apparently as the Canadian Socrates... (From PFW) (discuss)

Tibor Milks His Amis Kneecapping Publicity for a Good Gig
Fischer is going to be a Booker Prize judge in 2004. If this is a trend, I think we might see Dale Peck working the Pulitzer next year. Maybe he's interested in the karmic value of lauding someone? (discuss)

I Wish I Could Tell You This Were About Gum...
More chick-lit than you can shake a sticklit at. (discuss)

''Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life: & it ought not to be.''
Ladies and gentlemen, The Brontë Sisters!* (discuss)

Black Buying Power Changing Publishing
Black authors forced to self-publish their initial efforts are getting picked up by some big companies. Random House, William Morrow, Ballantine, and others are developing Black imprints. When I was in New York, I often saw street vendors specializing in books for Black readers. The line ups were deep, but the books themselves often had that self-published look (the one you get when you let your cousin design the cover...) I remember thinking, aren't the publishing folk noticing this? There are twenty people crowded around a table selling awful looking books. Put a decent cover on those and some publicity behind it and... voila. (discuss)

James K. Bartleman, Book Saint
500,000 books donated by Ontario residents are headed to remote communities in the far north. 40,000 books have already been transported and the rest are waiting in army bases. Now if we can just go through them and take out the Bonnie Burnard... (discuss)

Rider on Pale Horse Spotted Near Philly
Wow. Self-publishing "houses" run by large book-based companies such Borders, Random House, and Barnes and Noble, are responsible for 45,000 extra crappy books... Shame! (discuss)

The World's Longest Poem
If you can call a series of random lines a poem. Hey, it works for a lot of Canadian poets I know. And there are some good lines here. My favourite: "Everything smells a little worse underground." So true. (From Collision Detection) (discuss)

03/02/04:

"There are roughly three kinds of book available to writers in their twenties: Look Mum, I'm Dancing, All Men Are Bastards, and What I Did on My Holidays."
I know one of each of these! Some of them are two! Oh, my friends... "Then there is that almost-forgotten figure: the writer, who stays at home, keeps regular hours, does the work, accumulates a readership and is virtually invisible." But I also know several of these, though they're mostly in their thirties... (discuss)

Rebel Edit
Want to protest the U.S. Treasury Department's decision that works from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba can be published but not edited, under penalty of imprisonment? Why not edit the work of a writer from one of these countries and post it on Rebel Edit? (discuss)

Ten Long Years - One Long Novel
I love these It-took-me-ten-years-to-write-this stories... Don't ask me why. (discuss)

Buying Ad Space in Literature
Ford has bought ad space in a new novel by Carole Matthews. We are Bookninja are taking up a collection to buy a mention in Margaret Atwood's next sci-fi book - something about how in the future people will read us on strange and wonderful devices such as "computers" and "The Internet" and will send our articles around via "email." (discuss)

£33m Deal Struck to Save Murray Literary Archives
"They included a letter from Charles Darwin telling the publishers to print only 750 copies of the first edition of The Origin of Species, in which he outlined his theory of evolution, because he thought it would attract little interest." And to think I'm not going to see a shilling of that. It all goes on lawyers, brokers, and Grey Poupon. Tut tut. (discuss)

Scottish Detective Writer Brings Undesirable Element to Rich Neighbourhood
Good for him! (discuss)

We Are Basically Alone in This Universe
Apparently there aren't too many people blogging... Then where the hell did we steal all these stories from? Seriously, I probably read about twelve blogs a day - and I am constantly seeing links to others that look tantalizing, but I haven't the time to check. Here are some of the other blogs and news-sites I try to read every day. (discuss)

A Little Extra Brontë Never Hurt Anyone
Another take on Miller's Brontë sister romp. (discuss)

George Saunders Speaks Out on Same-Sex Marriage
A guide to live by. "Because my feeling is, when God made man and woman He had something very specific in mind. It goes without saying that He did not want men marrying men, or women marrying women, but also what He did not want, in my view, was feminine men marrying masculine women. Which is why I developed my Manly Scale of Absolute Gender." (discuss)

NaNoWriMo
"Why do this to yourself? Because you'd never do it otherwise. The aspiring amateur novelist promises himself he'll get around to it "someday," but that day never comes. The 30-day deadline is intended to provide focus so you actually get the thing done, for better or for worse. (Odds heavily favor "for worse.")" (discuss)

03/03/04:

"Coetzee seems ill at ease with people, as if fearing he will be tricked into falseness by a casual remark or exchange. He was also reluctant to tolerate the overwrought meanings others might seek to find in his work."
I'd love to chat with him but would be loathe to interview him. Why does his personality come as a surprise to people? Haven't they read his books? (discuss)

Bloggers Apparently a Bunch of Drunken Kids
Undercover story by a reporter who got in way too deep. She's awfully proud of herself for digging up the trash on a bunch of normal people. Coming this summer - Blog People: The Betrayal. Is it too much to hope The Voice will teach her a lesson in opening her big yap? (discuss)

Baraka's Daughter's Killer
"A Newark man killed the daughter of former New Jersey Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka and her friend in order to torment his estranged wife, authorities said." (discuss)

Seussical
It's the centennial of Theodor Geisel,* otherwise known as Dr. Seuss. The NY Times has a piece describing the festivities, but I think I'll just listen to Jesse Jackson do "Green Eggs and Ham" one more time. (discuss)

Stephen King: Television Magnet
Though apparently with a polarity too much like this critic's. King's foray into television is Kingdom Hospital, where the all the patients are DOA and the prescription for television boredom is for another injection of HORROR HORROR HORRORRRRR! OooOoo! Rowr! Boo! Agh! Reuters' prognosis is much kinder. (discuss) or (discuss)

Gibson's Passion Responsible for Driving Book Sales
Um, but not Stephen King's.... It seems the new movie Passion, which many have hailed as anti-Semitic (and from the reports I've read, I offer no argument in his defence), has driven closet Christians out to the bookstores in mobs. (discuss)

RIP: Jerome Lawrence
Inherit the Wind playwright dead at 88. (discuss)

Roam If You Want To
I like these kinds of stories. Though hardly original, the idea remains enchanting. Like that bicycle exchange that was going on in Europe. So civilized. (discuss)

"Masters In Writing Fails To Create Master Of Writing
PALO ALTO, CA—Despite completing all the requirements for a Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing from Stanford University in January, Jeremy Craig Kessler somehow failed to become a master of creative writing, sources reported Monday. "Mr. Kessler's short stories, all written in the style of T.C. Boyle, show little more than excellence in spelling and grammar," said literary agent David Conrad. "Somehow, Kessler advanced to the very highest level of the academic program and has only an average body of work to show for it." Photocopies of Kessler's short-story collection can be purchased at jckessler.com." This is from The Onion but is unavailable as separate link. This, however, is available, and is dedicated to Ailsa and Zach. (discuss)

03/08/04:

We Have a Winner!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... le comique parfait. To those who didn't enter, your silence robbed you of meaning this week. I pity you and those who know you. No, seriously, we'll have another contest next month, maybe. (discuss)

Embargo This!
Can you drink an embargo? Snort it? I wonder if the author will care? (discuss)

File This Under: Well, Duh!
You know, despite loving a brilliant sociologist, I am of the opinion that social "scientists" often get away with bloody murder. They publish entire books devoted to statistically proving true something everyone already knew. They are in the business of codifying common knowledge. Like this: apparently nursery rhymes have dirty double entendres. Well, well, well! Jack and Jill? Doing something up that hill?! Gasp!? Call the cops, Ma Parker! (In fairness, I think he's got a sense of humour around it, but still....) This guy's next book is going to be about the links between retaining blood and staying alive. (From GoodReports -- welcome back Alex!) (discuss)

Tintin - The First Avant-Garde Comic?
Forget the theories about Tintin comics being pro-fascist, pro-capitalist or pro-queer. They're pro-art. "By the time HergÈ died in 1983, avant-garde painters had caught up with him. Pop Art dissected the conventions of the comic strip cartoon, which he had been doing for half a century; accepting the compliment, he acquired a collection of Roy Lichtenstein's grainy blow-ups - frozen frames from spurious cartoons, in which girls weep oceanic tears and fighter jets belch out fire." (discuss)

"As a folksinger once sang, how many roads must an individual walk down before you can call them an adult."
Just like the NYPD, the New York Language Police are kicking ass. "New York identified as biased such male-based words as 'masterpiece' and 'mastery.' Among the other words singled out for extinction were white collar, blue collar, pink collar, teenager, senior citizen, third world, uncivilized, underprivileged, unmarried, widow or widower, and yes man. The goal, naturally, is to remove words that identify people by their gender, age, race, social position or marital status." (From AL Daily) (discuss)

"The best comedy in Shakespeare is King Lear."
"There's something enchantingly comic about it, and this is what makes the tragedy so unbearable. The imperceptible slide into wickedness, which is the other thing I find so interesting. It's what Hannah Arendt calls the banality of evil-the dismal suburban commonplaces of those sisters and their husbands." Jonathon Miller also thinks it's a Jacobean play. I think he's right there. (discuss)

Stock Up on First Editions of Potter
The books are fun to read (I only got through two and then lost interest... sorry, it's true) but are also, like nerd magnets worldwide, collectable. Should be the type of collector who buys books on speculative value, I think your first, second, third, etc., editions of Harry may have just gone up in value... Rowling plans to "revise" all of the books in the series, for some reason. I have no idea what she could do, besides adding literary value, but: cha-ching! (discuss)

"Some critics said the selection was a ploy by the book industry to counter the declining interest in and sales of serious Japanese literature, especially among young people, or that it represents a drop in standards for the prize."
"Nonetheless, marketing and publicity strategists appear to be capitalizing on the two women's youth and beauty, depicting them in stark contrast — Kanehara, a Tokyo native and high school dropout, being a portrayed as a free spirit, and Kyoto-born Wataya, a second-year Waseda University student, being somewhat more demure and old-fashioned." And people are confused by Japanese culture? It's just like our own! (discuss)

Hey, This Isn't a Game. This Is Learning!
This BBC Dickens game would be so much better with a rail gun. (From Bookslut) (discuss)

"In this country, the word "romantic" usually implies unreality, a lack of judgement. Foolishness, in fact. What would she say to people who call her a romantic? "The easy path is to wander through the madness being dictated to by your fears and doubts. The harder path is to follow what feels right for you, but that's where the beauty and satisfaction lies.""
Poetry tattooed on the back to prove love. Ahh. I love it. I collapse in a sorrowful joy. I weep. Well, I sniff. Okay, so I am unmoved, but I can see how others might be. (discuss)

Iron Maiden Rules!
Artists for Literacy present songs inspired by literature. Oh, the time I spent as a youth listening to Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." (From Moorish Girl) (discuss)

03/09/04:

Chuck's Workshop
I like the fact that Chuck Palahniuk is a writer who interacts with the world rather than hiding away somewhere trying to be a Writer. Now he's teaching writing online for free. "Chuck's Workshop, as it is affectionately referred to on the Web site, offers essays and homework assignments written by Palahniuk, regular question-and-answer sessions, and a forum where writers can share their own writing and practice the formal techniques that the author applies in his best-selling novels." (From Maud) (discuss)

I Feel So Old and Conservative When I Read This
Susannah Breslin, author of You're a Bad Man, Aren't You?, has a short graphic story about bukkake on Artbomb. Not really worksafe. If you don't know what bukkake is, read this. If you're offended by what you read, you probably shouldn't click through to Breslin's piece. Or maybe you should. Whatever. (discuss)

More Changed, Less Visibly
As many of you know, one of the long-time snarls in doing this whole thing has been the fact that Ninja Pete, way out dere in Vancooover, BC (that's a long time ago), hasn't been able to manually update the pages here. He's been sending changes along to me and I've been updating them through the craptacular program "Frontpage." No more! We have switched programs and are now both able to make changes and updates. How does this affect you? It doesn't, really. Changes will now be made over the course of a day, rather than all at once at night. So, if you don't want to miss anything, you should check back several times to see what's new. Also, because we're working in a new program, there are bound to be inconsistencies and oddities that pop up (and not just in the text). Would you be so kind as to point these out to us, should you notice any? (discuss)

Press Gallery
Canada finally gets a decent media commentary/review website. And I'm not just saying that because it's run by my girlfriend. "Press Gallery aims to offer an intelligent perspective on Canadian media, with an emphasis on recognizing outstanding investigative and literary journalism while ceaselessly belittling those who willfully degrade the craft." (discuss)

Toronto Libraries in Danger
A budget crisis in Toronto has prompted city hall to warn the Toronto Public Libraries it's time to get out the scissors. Short by $1.7M, the libraries are considering some drastic measures, including buying fewer books (egad! no! my PLRC payment!) and closing earlier on Friday nights, sending thousands of ugly people out into the streets. This just might be the most significant blow to the socially awkward this millennium. (discuss)

Apparently There are OTHER Good Reasons to Get With Zadie...
Zadie Smith's boyfriend gets £100G deal for two books. Suh-wheeeet. (From Maud) (discuss)

RIP: Spalding Gray
Gray's body found. Enough said. (discuss)

Book Thief
A single Londoner responsible for driving booksellers mad. You gotta have some nerve. (discuss)

Death Row Poet
In 1977, while intoxicated by drugs and alcohol, Stephen Todd Booker sexually attacked and murdered a 94-year-old woman. Can this gruesome act be redeemed through art? I say no. Not because murder cannot be redeemed, but because it is not something to ask of art. "His story does, however, raise questions about poetry (what is it? what is it worth?) and poets (who are they? what do they need?), and about the value of individual lives and capital punishment." Can you say it's a shame to lose his poetry,* but perhaps not such a shame to lose him? (For the record, I don't believe in capital punishment... It's just that I don't believe in redemption through poetry either.) (discuss)

Battle of the Plaths
Kirsten Dunst thinks she would have been a better Sylvia than Paltrow. I myself am inclined to not give a fuck. (discuss)

Oh, Please!
There's no trend toward one word titles, is there, Pete? (discuss)

03/10/04:

The Next Testament
What texts would we use to make the Bible today? I like the selection here: "The biblical books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are largely collections of laws, rituals, and recommended practices -- the ingredients of a coherent social order. The Next Testament version could be fashioned from several sources -- Jane Brody's Good Food Book and the Joy of Sex, perhaps, but also the Internal Revenue Service's Form 1040 information booklet, The Rules, the U.S. Army's Ranger handbook, the columns of Ann Landers, and the Mayflower Compact." But it's missing that Old Testament-style bloodthirstiness. May I suggest Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian? (discuss)

Dead Thesis Society
A nice little academic site that serves as both a discussion forum for beleagured grad students and a long-overneeded call for change of the way humanities programs are run. It's full of depressing stats, such as the following: "In some humanities programs, only one of every three entering students goes on to earn a doctorate. No comprehensive national statistics are available, but studies suggest that the attrition rate for Ph.D. programs is 40 percent to 50 percent." If you're a grad student and don't feel like slitting your wrists after reading that, you may want to head on over to Invisible Adjunct. That should finish you off. (discuss)

ReLit 2004
The long lists for the 2004 ReLit Awards have been announced. (discuss)

Bill C-12 Protested
Artists gathered Monday to protest controversial Bill C-12 (so adequately summed up last week by our own Peter Darbyshire). "The Toronto rally against bill C-12, set for third reading in the House of Commons in Ottawa this week, was scheduled by the Writers' Union of Canada, the Canadian Conference of the Arts, and other arts and culture groups to take place at the Ontario College of Art and Design." Okay, no more slagging the Writers' Union for a while. They seem to be under new management. Or on Viagara or something. (discuss)

RIP: Miriam Waddington
Giant of Canadian letters dead at 86. We are less for the loss. (discuss)

"Not Canadian nobodies"
Nice. Thanks, Jimmy. That is to say, not us. But he's right. Atwood, Shields and Munro will save Canadian television. Much to their collective artistic dismay, I'm sure. (discuss)

Zadie, Zadie... Where Did It Go So Wrong?
Bookslut has an interesting take on a rather depressing Zadie Smith. Depressing, maybe, but I agree with her. (discuss)

Hemingway Swearing (Warning: Foul Language and Male Bravura)
An early Hemingway letter eviscerating Ford has recently surfaced and is up for auction. (discuss)

Literature Butchers Get Their Hands on Judy Blume
Disney has bought the rights to Blume books such as "Are You There God?" and "Deenie." Wave bye bye to your youth, ladies. (discuss)

'PS, I Love You follows 30-year-old Holly Kennedy in the 10 months after her husband Gerry's death from a brain tumour. Gerry has left behind envelopes for Holly, one for each month, which are filled with reassurances and advice. No wordy Abelard, Gerry's letters urge her to bid goodbye to his old clothes, to learn to love again, to buy that bedside lamp they really needed, to face her fear of karaoke and so on. Each note ends with the postscript "I love you."'
Survey says? BLAAHP! "Ahern tells me the book only took her three months to write. And the publishers bought it after the first several weeks, solely on the basis of her first 10 chapters. (The finished book has 51.) I ask, in as neutral a tone as I can manage, if this quick success surprised her. "I was surprised that everyone else was surprised," she says, adding in a tone that will be familiar to anyone who has ever interviewed a recent college graduate for a job: "I was 21. My friends and I were all like, are we really all supposed to be that stupid? I didn't know 21-year-olds weren't supposed to be writing books. You know, we do all have degrees."' BLAAHP! (discuss)

Mischevious Potter Gets Into Dumbledore's Secret Stash and Finds Out Why the Old Coot Was Always So Calm and Easy on Him...
I really want to see this. (discuss)

03/11/04:

Is the National Post Finished?
Five columnists from Ken Whyte's days at the Post weigh in on Trudeaupia, stupid columns, schmoozing with Conrad, and the future of the Post. My favourite comment is from Adam Sternbergh: "Yes, I believe the Post made its name by being a lively and controversial read. And, yes, I believe it shook the city's long-slumbering editors, who could no longer rely on a readership delivered to them simply through habit and birthright. But it's one thing to say that the Post is a better read than all the other papers. It's another to say the Post made all the other papers a better read. To the contrary, I think the Post touched off a pan-industry plague from which the papers, and their readers, have not yet recovered. Thanks to the Post, there are now way too many damned columnists." Note: To access the article, click on "Post Mortem." (From Press Gallery) (discuss)

It's an Amis Clearance Event! Everything Must Go!
"According to Nielsen BookScan, through the first week in March Yellow Dog has sold 10,200 copies in the United States, a figure that trade-book editors say is very low for a writer of Mr. Amis's stature. Even the long-shot winner of last year's Booker Prize, DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little, a scathing satire of America considered by many in publishing to be a hard sell here, has a Nielsen BookScan total of 18,700. (Nielsen BookScan measures about 60 to 70 percent of total sales, people in the industry say.)" Martin appears to be up for sale.* (discuss)

Nancy Drew Gets a Makeover
Worse still - George gets a makeover too... "You have to attract the kids - they're not (voluntarily) picking up Nancy Drew in the store," says Katherine Axt, who used to faithfully read the detective series when she was in elementary school. Instead, says Axt, while kids are still introduced to Nancy through parents and older relatives, she faces stiff competition from the slick, media-savvy Mary-Kate and Ashleys of the world. But Nancy's makeover gives her a fighting chance, says Axt, 24, of Dallas. Whereas other age-old children's figures might seem stuck in a time warp, Drew "can remain a literary icon as long as she's updated." (From PFW) (discuss)

Speaking of Makeovers...
Danforth Review is looking new. If you haven't been by in a while, check out the granddaddy of small press webmags. (Whose logo has always looked like it was scrawled by Freddy Kruger -- a design choice I don't think I've ever understood. But who can complain when the editor has been updating the site weekly for years?) (discuss)

Lynne Cheney Dare Not Speak Love's Name
Her 1981 lesbian romance novel - "a breathy, gothic romance, horribly written. It's celebrating lesbian love and promotes the value of preventative devices, condoms, to women who want to remain free. It features a woman who has unmarried sex with the widow of her sister - all this by Lynne Cheney, the culture warrior of the right" - gets a revival. I shit you not, amigos. (From Maud) (discuss)

03/12/04:

NYBD
The high-drama world of Ken Sanders, book detective. "Sanders' investigations, however, have undeniably led to results. He has shut down gangs in Belgrade operating with stolen credit card numbers and eBay accounts -- though not before they managed to scam dealers of about $40,000 in rare books. Sanders has also disrupted gangs of credit-card fraudsters based in Nigeria and Ghana, baiting them by accepting orders and then shutting down their stolen card numbers. Sanders takes pleasure in asking for another card, and then another, until the fraudsters realize he's on to their schemes." (discuss)

Is Maisonneuve Porn?
Barnes and Noble seems to think so. "How noble of this largest of bookstore chains to take a stand against full-frontal nudity, thereby protecting all the impressionable children who (security cameras have shown) can't stop themselves from riffling through literary periodicals in search of smut. Sorry, kids, no Maisonneuve for you, only the whole wheat goodness of Maxim, Blender, FHM, Razor and Stuff." (discuss)

"I didn't want a poet's novel that would continually run aground on beautiful epiphanies."
Bless you, Don Coles. (I have been collecting Coles' poetry for a few years -- having been at York but not in his classes, I developed a love of his work -- and I wrote to him at one point years ago regarding something or other. After we corresponded, two of his older books, missing from my collection, made their way mysteriously into my mailbox. Not just one of the greatest, he's also a doll.) (discuss)

Combat des livres
Quebec's Radio-Canada launches its version of Canada Reads. "The week's live debates will revolve around three French Canadian novels -- Gaetan Soucy's La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes, Gil Courtemanche's Un dimanche ala piscine de Kigali and Une histoire americaine by Jacques Godbout -- and two novels by English Canadian authors: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Yann Martel's Life of Pi." (discuss)

E E! rotica
Everyone's favourite erotic poet, E.E. cummings, inspires music porn! "A West Coast musician has composed a racy musical tribute -- complete with simulated sounds of squeaky bedsprings -- to avant-garde poet E.E. cummings." (discuss)

Dead Books, Live Students
A not-for-credit course that brings readers together to learn about books that have fallen out of favour.* Nice. "Not that the crew that shows up Tuesday nights at Wilbur Wright College for the Scholars at Wright program has any shortage of personal experience. Its 75 students range from hip-hop high-schoolers to Gladys Pledger, a 101-year-old avid reader who likes to correct writers she feels are wrong." Crap, I think she went to York, and was somehow always seated next to me. They are a species unto themselves, these old women. (Hey, maybe the people who started this course can get my work on a reading list about books that never were in favour.) (discuss)

People Still Attached to Their Maugham-ies
Somerset has survived the test of time. (But will he survive the part where he has to eat a sheep's eye and then jump off a radio tower into a bucket of spicey condiments? Find out on the next Fear Factor.) (discuss)

Award News
The finalists for the Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction were announced yesterday. Stop it! You're making me yawn too! (discuss)

Invented Languages (And No, We're Not Talking About Christian Bök)
Esperanto, Ehmay ghee chah, UNI -- deliberately constructed languages meant to bring the people of the world together. And they did, but largely in apathy. (discuss)

Books That Changed the World
Bible, Koran, Origin of Species, the Dragonlance Saga... the list goes on. (discuss)

Now Why Couldn't Sleeman's Do This Instead of Axing Awards?
Literary beer mats (coasters). The world just got slightly, if imperceptibly, better. (From Elegant Variation) (discuss)

03/13/04:

03/14/04:

Author? Or Nut?
Alice Flaherty discusses hypergraphia, graphomania and reader's block at Identity Theory:

RB: [laughs] Right. Trying to get published is more like robbing a convenience store: a lot of aggression and anti-social behavior.
AF: Yeah. It's also a way of justifying and proving to others you are not crazy. You may be hypergraphic and say, "Well, if I can turn this into a book, then I have transformed myself from a nut into an author."

Yeah, I used to think like that. (discuss)

03/15/04:

Hear That Banging?
It's another nail going into the coffin of the blurb. Who can lend credit to anything anyone has to say in this least of self-serving forms when we all know this kind of stuff is going on? (Who the hell is the crack interviewer who got these people to admit this?) (discuss)

Fake Readers
"Have you ever read a few pages when your mind was elsewhere? Or finished a book and then are unable to summarize its plot? If so, you're not alone. In fact, kids in Colorado are famous for it." I can solve this problem in about two seconds - hook them up with all the fake writers... (discuss)

Everything is OKAY! Return to Your Book Buying Immediately! Do Not Heed Dire Warnings! This is Only a Text! Everything is OKAY!
"I am optimistic about the book industry and the future of books because, in their unflamboyant way, books penetrate the cynicism, confusion, and anxiety of the age." So says Gail Rebuck - someone I will never meet, but whom, I am told, I must fawn over at parties should the chance arise. (discuss)

Muldoon in Montreal
Prize-winner Muldoon, the heir apparent in Irish poetry, will be at the Blue Metropolis Festival. (discuss)

" Japan, more than other nations, faces a crisis of written culture due to the relentless publication of ideas presented in a conversational mode. This conversational style of communication, which seeks compromise, conformity and consensus, is replacing real intellectual critical discourse, [Kenzaburo] Oe said. He pointed out that there are no longer any national magazines catering to an intellectual audience, and that the remaining outlet for criticism--the newspaper book review--has become shorter and seems to include less and less analysis of theme, methodology and style."
"The superficiality and celebrity culture engendered by this conversationalism in publishing is beginning to infect other areas of culture and even politics, Oe contended, citing the "frantic support" enjoyed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi when he first took office on the basis of structural reform slogans that offered little substance." Once again, I ask you - how is this different? (discuss)

Danforth Review to Curb Reviewing
Editor Michael Bryson has sent a letter to publishers indicating his intention to steer the ship in a different direction - towards publishing original work - and has asked that no more review copies be sent. As Alex Good reports, this is no small loss. As far as we know, The Danforth Review is the only consistently updated site specializing in the Canadian small press scene. Many of the books reviewed are highly unlikely to ever see an inch of column space anywhere else. This announcement follows an earlier RFP posted on the Review site which called for interested parties to submit applications to take over completely. Bryson seems done with Danforth, a least as it currently stands. Who's going to take over reviewing all these books? (discuss)

"Far as I'm concerned, Dylan Thomas' "Fern Hill" is one of the two greatest 20th century poems in the English language (the other being T. S. Eliot's "Perforce")"
New Thomas bio reviewed. Earle Birney namedrop worked in to article. (discuss)

Sex, Nazis, Accusations of Thuggery
He claims it's humour, his publish claims it's right wing propaganda and has withdrawn the title... I'm sure none of this will hurt sales. (discuss)

Bookninja.com - Always Ahead of George Michael
The real news here is not that the Internet is becoming society's prime method of pop culture consumption, but that George Michael has finally finished cooking and needs to be removed from the oven right now before we end up with another Siegfried and/or Roy. (discuss)

Architecture v. Literature
Oh, for shelf space.* (discuss)

Egad. Po-faced Might Have Been Better...
Motion produces the limerick that wouldn't die to honour rugby champs... This reminds me of Lorna Crozier's flub a couple years back, when she tried to extend her Angels franchise by blasting one off about the Canadian Women's Hockey team winning - "Angels on the Ice" (or something to that affect - can anyone find me this online?). (discuss)

Maybe He Should Run for President
Chicago mayor likes the author Uptown Sinclair.* (discuss)

03/16/04:

Ottawa International Writers Fest Hit by Cutbacks
The popular OIWF is scaling back from 10 to five days this year after being hit by budget cutbacks. (discuss)

Against Creative Nonfiction: A Manifesto
Brian Fawcett really, really doesn't like the term "creative nonfiction." "'Creative non-fiction,' which has been recently promoted vigorously by some Canadian writers as a legitimate writerly genre and by others as a commercial market niche, is really just definitional vagueness piled atop philosophical imprecision. It is an intellectual embarrassment". (discuss)

Richard Ford Dumps Agent, Signs with Don King
No, not really, but he did spit on Colson Whitehead, so we hope there's some serious ear biting ahead. There's not enough ear biting in contemporary literature. (From Jeff MacIntyre) (discuss)

Orange Prize Longlist
The usual suspects, plus some younger folks. (But no Anne-Marie MacDonald...) (discuss)

Newsflash: The Rest of the World Better Than Here
Holy crappola. I nearly fainted dead away when I read this. Italian newspapers bolster their profits by including books of literature - lately, the poems of greats Montale and Neruda. Neruda's edition sold for over $7 and 250,000 copies went. In a bold move, the Toronto Sun will distribute copies of poems written in Grade 9 (four years ago) by Sunshine Girl Missy Brown. Missy is an Aquarian with eyes of brown who likes to keep fit and tan by dancing and sunbathing on the beach. Missy would like to be a cardiologist someday. What the fuck am I doing here? (discuss)

Proust Museum
Could two more boring words be combined? ... Um... Beef... Stew. Nope. Doesn't come close. (I once won a shirt, in part, because I hadn't read Proust.) (From TEV) (discuss)

One-Letter Words
This is a fantastic little dictionary (guess how many pages long) of one-letter words. Other titles in the series read like a Christian Bok tribute. (From Incoming Signals) (discuss)

Note to Self: Magpies Bad (But Sell)
More than 30 rejections later he's on the top of the British bestsellers and has sold film rights to Disney for $1,000,000. (But, see, I LIKE magpies...) That's got to feel good. He "is still working part-time at the supermarket, where he has become something of a celebrity. His dream is to become a full-time writer and to build a home in Ireland..." Um, I think you're a full-time writer now, dude. Top o' the marnin' to ye. (discuss)

Clive Thompson on the M-Novel
Which he and Al Gore basically invented (but he really did!) (discuss)

And in Follow-up News
Andrew Motion's doggerel has inspired a country to verse (last item). (discuss)

Not Bookish, but Wordish (in a cautionary sort of way)
Beware the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. It's an odorless, tasteless chemical in more things that you'd think and can be dangerous if inhaled in quantity. Is it in you right now? (discuss)

03/17/04:

Is Philip Larkin Redeemable?
Adam Kirsch thinks the answer lies in the poems, not the poet: "The central fact about Larkin is that he accepted, with harrowing seriousness, the challenge of W.B. Yeats: 'The intellect of man is forced to choose / Perfection of the life or of the work.' In 1944, at twenty-one, Larkin wrote to a friend: 'I feel that myself & my character are nothing except insofar as they contribute to the creation of literature. . . . To increase one's value as a pure instrument is what I am trying to do.' If every great poet essentially feels the same way, Larkin was unusual in the extent and ferocity of his renunciations." (discuss)

Bring Back the Salon?
Andy Brown, author of I Can See You Being Invisible, is interviewed at the Danforth. He's got some interesting ideas on new ways of publishing: "The real solution I believe is the revival of the salon. Get rid of bookstores altogether and have publishers sell directly from their own 'salons,' which will also be focal points for the artistic community in general. Look at Hogarth House and Bloomsbury. We need to reclaim the book as a cultural artifact. Of course the problem arises because how do I sell my books in Saskatoon if my salon is in Montreal? Well, it is through groups like the LPG that I can envision a network of publisher salons which will act co-operatively in different cities." (discuss)

Happy St. Patrick's Day
On this festive day, the Toronto Star would like to remind you of all the great playwrights Ireland has given to the world. The Star would also like to introduce you to Irish chick lit:
"Leading the chick-lit pack is Marian Keyes, whose seven novels (among them Sushi For Beginners, Angels, and Last Chance Saloon) have sold millions of copies in 29 languages. They feature jaunty young single women in Dublin, agonizing about their waistlines or hair, bedding a lot of unsuitable men while looking for Mr. Right and holding down trendy jobs on fashion magazines, in advertising or as event organizers. Another representative of this featherweight genre, Cecelia Ahern, was in Toronto last week to promote her first novel, P.S. I Love You, a 424-page story of Holly, a weepy widow of 30, whose too-good-to-be-true husband Gerry secretly wrote her a series of letters as he was dying of a brain tumour, to be opened at intervals during the year after his passing." (discuss)

Hip-Hop Lit
Is it ready to hit the mainstream? "Most urban literature comes from the presses of independent publishers such as Triple Crown Publications, Black Print Publishing and Toronto-based Urban Books. But recently, larger publishers have spun off subsidiary publishing houses called 'Black Imprints.' Doubleday has Harlem Moon, for example, while Random House has One World and HarperCollins owns Amistad. It's all to launch the growing number of urban books that young people are demanding." (discuss)

Canadian a Brit Lit Idol
Monday, after the weekend's story about difficulties selling CanLit fiction surfaced, several other bloggers made snide comments about Canadian fiction being ... shall we say ... light ... in the excitement department. Now a Canadian has won the Lit Idol contest in London. In typical Canadian fashion, I'll admonish these assorted naysayers with an apology. I'm sorry your writers suck and spit on people. And for the British: I'm sorry you have to live with Tibor Fischer, but cultures get the writers they deserve. Ah, I'm just kidding. We all suck equally. And here's where the whole Idol thing can't possibly play out further. In the Pop Idol circles, a record contract and distribution follow a win by, what, weeks? months? Well, this guy hasn't actually finished writing the novel! Now he's in the same predicament as so many of my friends have been - sold on 60 pages and scrambling to meet deadline. What happens when the story comes in and the rest of it (that hasn't had virtually unlimited time and attention from the author) looks rushed and/or anemic? And even if it's finished by the fall, when will it be published? Next spring? You can bet the reading public who might be swayed by an Idol win will be saying, "Mail it to last year, pal, when we might have given a damn." (discuss)

But Who Gets The Knife He Used to Stab Marlowe?
Shakespeare's will is now online (PDF). This is how the Internet was meant to be used. Other famous wills are also available from the National Archive's DocumentsOnline. (discuss)

Lambda Lit Awards Can Finalist...
"Written by J. Michael Bailey, chair of the psychology department at Northwestern University, and subtitled, "The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism," the book has been under fire from transgender activists and academics since its publication last April. Critics have derided it as lacking in science, perpetuating stereotypes about transgender women and casting gender-bending as a perversion. A panel of Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF) judges reviewed the finalists in the transgender category and deemed the book "not appropriate for the category." LLF then made the "difficult and humbling" decision to remove the book from consideration altogether, according to a press release on the LLF Web site." One might reasonably ask how the book made it on the list in the first place. Poor reading? A critic notes, "It would be like nominating 'Mein Kampf' for a literary prize in Jewish studies" Still, is removing it, at this point, itself an ethical violation? (discuss) or (discuss)

The Good People at Geist Feted
Lynn Coady begins, "The culturally minded of Vancouver are a particularly dogged, tenacious tribe — they have to be. I've heard colleagues describe efforts toward fostering a vital, thrumming arts scene in the "City of Glass" as being like trying to get a really good cup of tea at Starbucks. That is to say, you can get tea, and it's not bad tea, but this doesn't change the fact that tea, ultimately, is not what Starbucks is about. It will always be an afterthought, a begrudging concession to us mulish, unfashionable tea-drinkers. So it is with Vancouver as brewer of artistic ferment." (discuss)

Walcott Backs Out of Festival Appearance
After a measly Paris robbery in which his entire life was likely ruined. Wimp. (Can you spot the major typo in this piece? Not you, Pete.) (From PFW) (discuss)

Holy Frolicking Novelists!
Novelists are getting into writing comics* - as sure a sign as any that the genre is growing up, we are told. I don't think it's actually growing up - I think the age at which people come into serious income and at which mental maturity is reached are no longer in synch. This isn't to say that comics shouldn't receive a wider audience, or that "high" artists shouldn't get involved, but to suppose that nerd culture has begun to dominate the West because our adolescence, particularly among males, now extends well into our thirties. Dude. (discuss)

God is Just Up There, Rubbing His Hands
'Member that story about the bible mag for girls? Ooh, goody! Here come the boys! This is the biggest religious coup since DC Talk. (discuss)

RIP: Cid Corman
Prolific American poet dead at 79.* (discuss)

We Don't Normally Link to Reviews
But this book, combining medieval lit and video games, sounds insanely interesting. (discuss)

Bloomsday Party
"What happens when you cross a St. Patrick's Day parade with a literary walking tour?" Um, I think the answer to this should be apparent to any sentient being: it becomes a literary stumbling tour. (discuss)

Pam Gets a Smidge of Help Spelling the Big Words
Like "Pam." (discuss)

03/18/04:

How Many Words Do the Inuit Have for Snow?
Seems there have been some myths spread about this. "The story about Inuit (or Inuktitut, or Yup'ik, or more generally, Eskimo) words for snow is completely wrong. People say that speakers of these languages have 23, or 42, or 50, or 100 words for snow -- the numbers often seem to have been picked at random. The spread of the myth was tracked in a paper by Laura Martin (American Anthropologist 88 (1986), 418-423), and publicized more widely by a later humorous embroidering of the theme by G. K. Pullum (reprinted as chapter 19 of his 1991 book of essays The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax)." (From Language Hat) (discuss)

Cloak and Gown
I just stumbled across this article about how the CIA was influenced by literary scholarship. "Mole-hunter James Jesus Angleton, the most controversial figure in CIA history, began his career as an apprentice of the New Critics on Yale's English faculty, and his literary training in 'close reading' may have shaped his hyper-skeptical (some would say paranoid) approach to counterintelligence." (discuss)

Mordecai and Ye
A conference in Montreal is trying to "jump-start" criticism on Richler. Yet, from the rest of this article I get the impression it's going to be a bit of a circus. Some quotes from a new biography. (discuss)

Attention Winninjapeggers
Hey, Winnipeg Ninjas, it's time to step up and perform your duty as a (virtual) card carrying member of this ragtag band of balaclava'd superheroes. A schizophrenic book lover has gone missing in your frozen berg of a town and the authorities need help finding him. This is real. Normally I wouldn't advocate cooperating with the authorities, but the guy is a protected under the Bookninja Booklovers Statute of Reciprocity. That is to say, we'd find you if you were missing. (discuss)

St. Patrick's Day
See, unlike my Teutonic friend, Pete, I don't really dig St. Patrick's Day. Imagine the same festival but with First Nations People... We could all stagger around in feathers and buckskins, hooting and beating drums, drinking cooking wine and sniffing glue. The Irish that drank did so because they were starving and self-exiled, subjugated and unwanted, unemployed at all but the most menial tasks. They didn't name their newborn children right away because so many died at under a month. Take that tradition of pain and suffering and co-opt it to sell plastic hats and beer. Nice. But what do I know? (My racially radical pal Kym from New York doesn't consider Irish people White for these very same reasons - something the glare off my skin might argue with). Anyway, here's an anthology celebrating Ireland's link to the Rock - another place we should think about celebrating with a day to buy things. We could dress up like cod fishermen and wear nooses around our necks. Oh, yes - and drink. (discuss)

Comics
An article that could easily slide into our comics (discuss)ion on the boards.

Note to Self: Thrillers Are Better When You're Stoned
Hey! You got your drugs in my book! You got your book in my drugs! (Significant look) Prisoner gets his potboilers and pot in the same envelope... (discuss)

Something About Dylan Thomas, Hammered at the Pub...
The pub where a man drank himself to death is up for sale! Tourist dollars - cha-ching! (discuss)

And in Related News: The House that Jack Built
If Kerouac had shat on something it would today be a mecca for people wearing tams. Now people live in a shack in Florida in order to capture some ethereal essence of his spirit's ghostly manifestation, or some shit. "I would still not say I am a huge fan - I think there is a lot of macho shit in his writing that you have to wade through. But I have been thinking about him and I suppose what I like is that Kerouac's view was that he wanted to have adventures and write about them. That is what I also want to do." (discuss)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I'd like to have a drink with Kaufman sometime. We wouldn't even have to talk or anything. We could just look perplexed at each other over a table full of peaches or something. Right before I leave, I'd say: "Why, Charlie? Why Carey?" (discuss)

Fun/Useful Stuff
As we discussed on the boards, nerdism knows no bounds. And remember this? (Pray for Mojo) And a verb conjugator (significantly, Basque is included). (discuss)

03/19/04:

"Nihilists... fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism... at least it's an ethos..."
While a lot of people really don't like The Big Lebowski, it's my favourite Coen brothers film. Now you can read the script online, or use the Big Lebowski Random Quote Generator. (From Rake's Progress) (discuss)

Take the Seuss Quiz!
In my next life, I want to make quizzes for the Guardian. (discuss)

The Art of Translation
A translator of books speaks out on her craft. "Translation involves not only knowing the country and the language spoken, but also their different 'languages,' their literary language, their vernaculars, their speech, their literature, their way of life, the way they make coffee, their schooling, their political system, what 'nature' means to them, what 'industry' means to them, what distance means to them, what climate means to them, what everyday life is actually like. Then comes what translation actually is: putting all of that into your own language in a way that the reader in your own language will be able to absorb and somehow realize not only that languages are different, but that language is rooted in 'culture' -- that difficult word which has not the same connotation in English as it has in the Germanic languages. Not for nothing have we British, mistakenly perhaps, called culture 'the arts.'" (From Langauge Hat) (discuss)

Comedy for Kids
I'm not sure kids' books aren't funny - do they need to be? This all smacks of gimmickery to me. (Sorry for the link to USAToday - it makes me feel dirty too.) (discuss) or (discuss)

The Blog as Political Power Tool
This is mostly about political blogs and cautions against a form not bound by journalistic "ethics" - a valid concern - but I think as a form of reportage, blogs will only get better over the years. As with everything else, reliable work will find a readership and crap will sink to the bottom like so many PCBs in the Hudson River. (discuss)

Writers' Papers Highly Sought After
And here I would love it if someone would just throw all mine in a garbage bag sometime... I had to clear papers from my keyboard just to type this. (From PFW) (discuss)

Biggest Poetry Reading Ever
Don't shudder yet... It's a bunch of kids trying to get into the Guiness Book for reciting Wordsworth... Aww! (discuss)

Gioia Is Changing the NEA
From "an organization which has traditionally seen itself as serving the arts community into an agency which serves the American people.'' I guess what he means to say is that those who have ponied up to the trough for the last little while will be feeding next to some new folks. I just find it so hard to trust anyone who has W's support. (discuss)

Capitalis Pirata
For all you radical activists and/or corporate whores out there, this font made of corporate logos is for you. (discuss)

Twenty-five Years of Anarchy
Toronto's eye weekly has a piece about This Ain't the Rosedale Library: "Established 25 years ago, This Ain't the Rosedale Library is the definition of quirky -- a neighbourhood literary bookstore in the heart of gay Toronto that also has an impressive baseball section. Run by two Americans who fled Nixon-era politics in favour of Canadian diversity, the shop has weathered Mafioso landlords (at a previous location) and, more recently, upheavals in the book business. It expanded in 2001 to include the upstairs gallery space/classroom." (discuss)

Some Respit from a Blessing in the Skies
100 most often misprounced words and phrases. Some of these are pretty hard to believe (Old Timer's Disease?), but I have been guilty of a small number myself. All that said, the big news here is I've just won a long-standing argument with my wife about the word "respite". Boo-yah! (From Goodreports) (discuss)

Weekend Edition:

Baby Pi
You know, I'd like to say something worldweary and cynical about this, but I can't. After all, there's nothing wrong with kids reading adult books. It's better than adults reading kids' books....
"More than ever, authors and publishers are chasing lucrative crossover markets. But how to ensure books reach all possible readers is an inexact science. Harcourt Publishing, the American press that publishes Canadian author Yann Martel, is trying to do something about that by tapping into a new market for Life Of Pi. It is reissuing Martel's Booker prize-winning novel next month for teens, using the same text but a more naive jacket design."
Note the misspelling of McCormack's name at the end of the piece. (discuss)

At Least It Kept Him Off the Streets
A Joyce scholar has spent seven years translating Finnegans Wake into Japanese.
"In this remarkable work, a seven-year labor of love and a masterpiece in its own right, Yanase made constant use of furigana to add new layers of meaning to words written in kanji. Furigana allowed him to emulate -- while not literally reproducing -- the puns, double-entendres and allusions that fill every sentence of Joyce's original text. Indeed, furigana enabled Yanase to layer meanings in an even more elaborate fashion than Joyce could within the phonetic constraints of the English language." (From Language Hat) (discuss)

Dying as Art
Would the Plath industry exist if Sylvia hadn't committed suicide? And has that industry turned her into a series of caricatures?
"Would we believe in Plath's poetry as much as we do had she not followed it with suicide? It's a distasteful question, and to answer it in the negative would seem to imply some untenable things: first, that she did well to kill herself, and second, that her poetry might not have made the grade without the violence in its history." (discuss)

Is Hip-Hop Saving Poetry?
Its emphasis on spoken word performances may save poetry -- or kill it.
"Whether you like the forms or not, spoken-word and the poetry slam have resuscitated poetry for popular consumption. 'I think poetry is more popular now than it has been in the last 100 years, at least,' says Eleveld. 'Poetry Speaks, published by Sourcebooks, sold 100,000 copies because of three CDs that had canonized poets like [Walt] Whitman, [e.e.] cummings and [Sylvia] Plath reading their own work. Spoken Word Revolution sold 20,000 in its first run. In poetry, these numbers are unheard of. The National Poetry Slam in 2003 ran for four nights, taking up eight clubs in Chicago's Wicker Park area, and boasted 1,100 people at the individual finals at the Metro, which is where the Rolling Stones, Smashing Pumpkins and more have played.'" (Note: This is a Salon article, so you'll have to watch an ad. But it's quick and painless.) (discuss)

Arthur Miller: Experimental Playwright?
The London Review of Books has a nice review article about Arthur Miller and the politics of realism. I've always had a soft spot for Miller, and think he kind of got lost in the avant-garde trend. Glad to see someone else thinks the same way.
"Death of a Salesman supports the anti-realist-from-the-start thesis thanks to its remarkable form. The original title was 'The Inside of His Head', and its action is the unravelling of the dreams that the failed salesman Willy Loman had for himself and his sons. The contrast between Loman's dreams and present-day reality is exposed not through reminiscence or the arrival of a character from the past, but by dramatising Loman's memories at the moment they come into his mind." (discuss)

"We're very resourceful and strong as a race. We should cheer ourselves up by thinking of the horrors we've survived. We should stay calm."
You know, Doris Lessing says this and they call her a tribal leader. Me, I walk into a crowded theatre and shout, "Remain CALM!" over and over through a bullhorn and they just put me in prison. What gives? (A month after I moved to New York, I saw Lessing read at NYU. There were only about 100 people there. I was very surprised. She read beautifully, of course, and then proceeded to talk mostly about politics. At first I wanted her to get back to fiction, but she's so persuasive a speaker... This is a nice, if fawning, profile.) (discuss)

Hey, Cancer-Seekers - Your Salvation Awaits
Hate those warnings on yer smokes, dere chief? Get yourself a "cigarette novel" to cover em up! (I remember when the ones with pictures of smoking related illnesses first came out - kids were collecting them.) (discuss)

You Need an Agent, Trust Her
Read this ad for agents. You just can't get by without one. Unless you're a poet, in which case, reread the last sentence, but omit "by without". (discuss)

Soft Skull Does It Again (Or, Rather, Is Still Doing It Again...)
"This kind of success almost never happens in contemporary publishing." No shit. The Sleeping Father continues to rack up unprecedented kudos for a small press book. This is partly due to the power of the story, but the book would never have seen print (it was rejected by 20 publishers, including the author's former press) if it hadn't been for Nash and his ragtag band of bookheroes. (discuss)

More 'Ick-Lit
Well this article is icky, anyway... Just write the facking story and let some grad student with nothing better to do label it. (discuss)

Poetry Wars
No, no. We don't get to dump them in a pit and watch them tear each other to shreds... It's a story from Russia illustrating how things aren't really so different. "The main obstacle to putting together this year's celebration of International Poetry Day was a matter of logistics. Not the usual kind of logistics, since Moscow's lively literary scene ensured organizer Yevgeny Bunimovich both fail-safe venues and a devoted set of listeners. No -- here, the challenge lay in getting all of the festival participants to tolerate being in the same room for more than five minutes." (discuss)

That's a Whole Lotta Daffodils
A quarter million kids recite Wordsworth. Blake spins in grave. (discuss)

You Can See How Much Better Things Would Be If the Press Actually Did the Damn Job They Signed Up For
This little video is so sweet it will make you squirm. Rummie caught in an outright lie. Not book related, but let's hope some journalists who might otherwise be cowed by a strong personality see it. (Worth the wait to download if you're on dialup) (discuss)

Personally, I'm Not Such a Big Fan of the Words "Hit" and "Train" in the Same Sentence...
CBC BC (BCBCBCBC) reports that the Poetry Train is a hit. "Vancouver poet Kate Braid is delighted by the response. "You get the feeling that people have been hungry for this," she says. "They're a little bit embarrassed at first, and then they're into it."" Um, I don't want to be a downer on this little parade, but bill bisset is on that thar train. I can't imagine any unsuspecting rider trapped on a train with bill bisset not being "embarrassed." I sure hope fantastic poets Jay MillAr and John Paul Fiorentino can bring em round. (discuss)

Google Publishes Print Edition
"The 2,481-volume "A" set can be pre-ordered online now and will be in bookstores later this month. Google plans to release a new letter of the alphabet every two weeks." Very funny. (From Maud) (discuss)

03/22/04:

The Death of the Midlist Author?
This anonymous Salon piece makes me sad -- mainly because this author's life looks good to me. (Note: You'll have to watch an ad to read the article.)
"In the 10 years since I signed my first book contract, the publishing industry has changed in ways that are devastating -- emotionally, financially, professionally, spiritually, and creatively -- to midlist authors like me. You've read about it in your morning paper: once-genteel 'houses' gobbled up by slavering conglomerates; independent bookstores cannibalized by chain and online retailers; book sales sinking as the number of TV channels soars. What once was about literature is now about return on investment. What once was hand-sold one by one by well-read, book-loving booksellers now moves by the pallet-load at Wal-Mart and Borders -- or doesn't move at all." (discuss)

Joyce and Beckett Take on the Krauts!
A series of comics featuring everyone's favourite duo, Joyce and Beckett. (From Rake's Progress) (discuss)

"I honestly don't think (if I'm wrong I'll be corrected), but I don't think any writer in this country has had the critical success that I've had. Not Atwood, not Ondaatje, not Munro, nobody"
Weeehehehellll.... Let's not get ahead of ourselves, cowboy. But, indeed, Trevor Ferguson had done well - critically. ""The publishers believed in me," he says. "With each new novel, they felt, 'this is going to be the breakthrough, this is the one,' but the most I ever sold was 500 copies. The Fire Line (1995) sold 192 copies. And it just got worse and worse. You sell under 200 - I mean, your career is over. You're done." But things only really got going once he changed his name and started pumping out potboilers. "The windfall for a famously talented, but financially challenged colleague electrified Canada's writing community. Paperback readers all over the world were thrilled, too. City of Ice zoomed up the best-seller charts and was translated into 18 languages." Hm. Encouraging anecdote or cautionary tale? The money has allowed him to try his hand (rowr) at writing for the theatre... (From PFW) (discuss)

"Over the last 30 years, feminists have raised questions about all aspects of society - religion, education, psychology, health, literature. There are no sacred cows. We've been free to challenge everything except superheroes, which are treated as icons."
Feminists need superheroes, too. Especially now that Wolf is in the doghouse. People don't often mention or think of it, but some of the most interesting interdisciplinary work these days is being done by sex and gender theorists. (discuss) or (discuss)

"Is performance any way to judge a novel? Writers are not actors, yet a festival-rich literary culture which demands an increasing degree of interface between author and reader seems to require that they should be. Just because Dickens, or the late Timothy Findley, or Pat McCabe could turn readings of their books into captivating dramatic events doesn't mean that the two talents automatically co-exist."
It seems there's some scuffle around the judging of lit idol. And perhaps rightly so - if what this article implies is true: "There have already been suggestions that the voting was of a Florida election standard (one audience member admitted to voting four times in various empty seats). More significantly perhaps, the online vote, based on reading the posted extracts from the five shortlisted works, came up with a different winner: Tom Easton, a children's book publisher, and even the most cursory glance explains why." (Excuse me while I do some nerd trash talk: someone at the Guardian doesn't know how to close their HTML tags...) (discuss)

"The rest of us looked on in astonishment and envy at the lawsuit," recalled New York Observer columnist Joe Conason, author of "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth." "Everyone who wrote a book that fall wished they had been lucky enough to have Fox sue them."
Lawsuits as publishers' bread and butter. And MORE PRESS for "the scrappy Brooklyn-based publisher" (and longtime Ninja fav) Soft Skull. (discuss)

"We do need to address this because we have got a number of people coming out of jail who are intending to write books at this very moment."
More on the question of whether criminals should be allowed to profit (through book sales) from their crimes. Again, I offer the following answer: only if said criminal is me. (discuss)

"The fictional leader-for-life, Felix, is impotent, lecherous and politically desperate. But he has a plan to squelch the opposition in his country, now in its 38th year of civil war. Felix will crucify the rebel leader whom peasants view as their messiah. And if he broadcasts the execution worldwide, the dictator will pocket $25 million from an American advertising agency eager to televise the big event."
More Arthur Miller. (discuss)

"I wish Dr Whitehead no harm: I have no idea what the pay is like up there at Keele University, but it could surely do with a boost from the proceeds of a self-help best-seller. The book itself sounds like fodder for at least 15 minutes of armchair entertainment, as women jovially attempt to shoehorn their men into unappealing categories such as "Trainspotter" and "Neanderthal", while men campaign to be seen as "Achilles", the flawed charmer, or the sexy-but-dangerous "Backpacker"."
"What worries me, however - all the more so since Dr Whitehead is a member of the rather grand-sounding Cabinet Office Forum on Gender Research - is the idea that anyone might actually take this pop-anthropology seriously, and seek to apply its dictates to real men. Sadly, there is no more fertile territory for the proliferation of lucrative nonsense than the muddy ground between the sexes." (discuss)

"The tough-guy image for which Palance is famous falls by the wayside when he speaks about his poetry and new book, The Forest of Love. He said he draws from his life for his poems but stops short of calling himself a poet."
""As you write poetry, it gets easier," he said." Believe it, or not he's a poet as well as a professional cowboy impersonator. Ah, Curly, wilst thouest be minest? (discuss)

03/23/04:

The Walrus Takes a Stand on Commas
OK, they're a bit behind on the Lynne Truss book. But still, I applaud them!
"It's not hard to understand that a tiny electrical short-circuit can cause a jumbo jet to plunge into the ocean. It's less obvious, though probably no less true, that inattention to the proper use of puncutation can inconspicuously help to undermine a civilization, because it weakens the mortar -- language -- that holds our civilization together." (discuss)

And the Latest Maxim Cover Girl Is... Marge Simpson. Oh Yeah, and Paris Somebody-or-Other
I've never actually read this mag, but I find its split cover amusing. (From Ryan Bigge) (discuss)

Having Trouble Making Ends Meet as a Writer?
This article about Nathaniel Hawthorne won't make you feel any better. This article about romance writer Melanie Craft, however, will probably make you weep. (discuss)

It's Not Every Day Canadian Stage Gets Play on CNN
Stratford's stellar Lear has stormed Broadway and people are fools for it. (discuss)

UK's Poet Laureate Fights War with Words
Whereas our Laureate... Um ... Whereis our laureate? (discuss)

One Story
It's funny, I was just talking with my local bookdude, Dan, about this yesterday. One Story magazine* gives you, you guessed it, one story every three weeks. There may be 2400 subscribers (about to be a whole helluvalot more), but don't let it and the NYT coverage fool you -- this is a zine. And a very cool one. (discuss)

And the Moral of the Story Is: Give Me Money
Pre-Potter, struggling single mum Rowling was saved by a "£4,000 loan from a friend" and able to complete her bemuggled opus. (In related news: Rowling will apparently be starring with Suzanne Somers in an upcoming twins-separated-at-birth flick, "Two for the Show: The Thighmaster Trilogy".) (From PFW) (discuss)

Hoochie-Coochie Covers
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that authors in need of perking up their plots turn to matters carnal because sex sells." Redesigns of famous books might raise a few eyebrows, but from the relatively tame gallery (at the bottom) I can't imagine that those eyebrows would have been on the planet for any less than 80 years. Though the fig one makes me hungry. (discuss)

Camus and Sartre
Our day has an "anti-Sartrean sentiment"? Why wasn't I informed? (From ALDaily) (discuss)

Ah, Ignorance and Bigotry - Thy Name is the American South
Mother cries when daughter reads a kiddie book called King and King - citing "God made Adam and Eve -- not two men." Bush rubs hands, twists mustache. The South marches on. (discuss)

I Guess This Would Bust a Blood Vessel in MommyAmerica's Eye Then...
It's a little known fact that gay people aren't necessarily smarter and better read than everyone else. (discuss)

Marginalia: the Great Satan
A gallery of library book damage. (From Incoming Signals) (discuss)

Naked Came the Stranger
In 1969, a bunch of Newsday reporters banged out a purposefully crappy novel and got it published. "They marketed the book as a finger in the eye of a publishing world that was pumping out garbage and reaping millions for mediocre writers." Good thing times have changed. (discuss)

Punk'd
Was it Mark Perry who said that punk died the day the the Clash signed with CBS? Nuh-uh. It's just been in a coma. It actually died today.* Not bookish, but I couldn't resist... (discuss)

"I'm a novelist and I expect to be treated as such."
Which famous author uttered these words? (discuss)

03/24/04:

Whiner!
Readers respond to the "Confessions of a Midlist Author" piece on Salon. Not a lot of sympathy for Jane Austen, especially from Neal Pollack:
"Cry me a river, Endangered Midlist Author without the guts to reveal your name. Boohoo. You only got $80,000 for a book it took you two whole years to write. Do you know that, according to the National Writers' Union, the average writer in America makes $4,000 a year from their writing? And that's when you figure Stephen King and Nora Roberts into the equation." (From Maud) (discuss)

"A lot of comic books are very literate -- unlike most films."
Alan Moore has decided to take a stand on film adaptations of his comics.
"If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong." (discuss)

Our stats tell us our hits have gone up significantly in the last couple days (likely due to Pete's Bill C-12 piece getting mentioned on Neil Gaiman's blog). If you're new to Bookninja, welcome. A big part of our community is the discussion taking place on our boards. Each item has a link to its own board and a complete index of topics is always available by clicking on the "Discuss" link in the top left corner of this page. Please drop us a line to let us know you've been here and what you think.

Mistry Up for IMPAC
Rohinton shortlisted for prestigious loot-fest. Go Rohi! Go Rohi! Go! Go! Go Rohi! (Nice to see Cisneros on there.) (discuss)

The Onion Wins a Pulitzer?
Could have been. They were in the running for their first issue back after 9/11. "As it went around the table, you could see that people were blown away by this work, but it was a little too different, a little too risky. I voted to make it a finalist, but nobody else did." (From Maud) (discuss)

Faith Begins Article on Self-Publishing
I suppse that's somewhat fitting. POD is changing the way we read crappy books. Get used to it. It'd be interesting to see some big name authors try this for a book or two, just to see what their verdict would be (extra work vs. control/profit). (From PFW) (discuss)

Anne-Marie Kicks Kilted Arse
"IF YOU had tried to assess the reaction to Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michael’s reading at the Byre Theatre in terms of applause alone, you would have had to conclude that it had been a disaster. But that wouldn’t have been fair - the colossal intensity of her poetry built a silence whose surface tension it would have been sacrilege to break." I almost didn't include the second sentence to leave you hanging... (discuss)

Like Kipling?
There's a new 6000 word short story coming down the pike. (discuss)

This Is Horrifying
A children's author from the 60's accused of grooming young girls for sexual assault. (discuss)

Vancouver Gay Bookstore Battles Canada Customs
The feds are still at it, legislating taste. And things can only get worse if Bill C-12 goes through. Kudos to Little Sister for having the balls to fight. Now send them some money. (discuss)

I Can't Vouch for the Books in Advance
But buying The Very Best of Elvis Costello was one of my better mid-30s music decisions. (discuss)

Battle! BATTLE! BAAATTTLLLE!
Of the encyclopedias! Pedias! PEDIAAAS! Wikipedia vs. Britannica in the mismatch of the century! (But I still like da Wik better.) (discuss)

The Noive of Some People
"Did you not receive my phone message of 1:43 a.m. Tuesday last? Oh, you received it. Then, as you well know, you are no longer welcome in the Homer reading group." This is sad because it rings so true. And then there's this:

"New York Times Seeks Court Order To Remove Tuesdays With Morrie From Bestseller List
NEW YORK—The New York Times announced Monday that it will seek a court order to have Mitch Albom's book of discussions between himself and his dying mentor, Tuesdays With Morrie, forcibly removed from the paperback non-fiction bestseller list. "We've tolerated the old dead guy's ramblings for the past 66 weeks," Times Sunday books-section editor Mel Constantine said. "But now it's simply gotta go. I want Morrie out of my list—permanently." Should the order be successful, the book's slot on the list will be replaced by a line urging readers to donate to the Fresh Air Fund." From The Onion. (discuss)

03/25/04:

Is Peanuts Cutting Edge?
Comic artist Seth thinks so. Among other things, he's the designer of the 25-volume Complete Peanuts, the first instalment of which is set to hit stores in May.
"I guess I've always been a little disappointed with how Schulz has been presented. In the '60s, his work was considered sophisticated adult humour. But with all the TV specials and merchandising, I think in the public's mind it has been reduced to a children's product. I wanted the book to be something that could lead the reader into Schulz's work and let them judge it for themselves, hopefully removing some of the pop-culture associations." (discuss)

Brokeback Mountain
One of my favourite stories, Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" (from the simply unbelievable collection Close Range), is being made into a film by Ang Lee. When I first heard the news I wondered if "Brokeback Mountain" was actually filmable, as so much of its strength is its language. But I think Lee is a good choice, given the way he turned Ride With the Devil into a clever film about sexual politics (it's a queer film, if you ask me). If you don't know "Brokeback Mountain" you're in for a treat. (discuss)

Wanted: Poet Laureate
George Bowering's term is up this fall, and the search is on for his replacement.
"Bowering used the modest power of office to help nudge Canadian poetry towards the centre of cultural life in the country. While the Government of Canada's poet laureate Web site puts no performance quota on the office holder -- 'Creativity cannot be quantified,' it states -- Bowering has set the bar high. Poetry readings, interviews, appearances and the launch of a Web site featuring a new Canadian poem every week were among his initiatives." (discuss)

"The perfect crime is the murder of reality"
Ah, Baudrillard.
"It will never again be given to us to return to the idea of an ambiguous, undecipherable world; it will be totally deciphered. This is integral reality, which, as I see it, is entirely unbearable. At some point, there will surely be a massive counter-transference against this total integrism of reality, which isn't even objective any more, since there's no longer any object! " (discuss)

The New "Literary Business"
The New Republic has a charming piece about book publishing in the 1920s. Oh, how times have changed.
"Some of the newer firms are inclined to regard publishing as one of the luxury trades. They seek their customers in the 'milady' class, among the people that like exclusive products, French soaps, modern furniture, Viennese chocolates, and also among people not quite sophisticated enough to protest against being called sophisticated. To please this type of buyers, who may or may not be readers, they sometimes transform their books into bibelots, into bright packages like candy-boxes or cartons of perfumed soap. They publish testimonials from society women. They specialize in limited editions, numbered and autographed. And they follow the business policy of the luxury trades, which depend on high prices to compensate for a lower volume of sales." (From Maud) (discuss)

Do Amazon Reader Reviews Matter?
Publishers seem to think so.
"Amazon readers provide early and almost instant signs of breakout success; writers tend to obsessively check up on their reviews and ranking. Publishers also can be swayed to change their books based on the reviews, an Amazon spokeswoman said. For instance, a computer book publisher might decide to add a chapter on a particular feature of a software in a book's revised edition based on the feedback. Quirky small-press books, ones that rarely get any media attention, have a chance on Amazon, where readers love to hunt for and pluck out overlooked page-turners. In 1999, writer M.J. Rose landed a contract with Pocket Books after the publishing industry noticed the reader buzz on her self-published novel, Lip Service." (From Arts Journal) (discuss)

03/26/04:

Comic Jamming
Artist Antonia Lancaster owns offthemap. She says running a public comic jam at an art gallery is not just a barrel of laffs -- it's also a challenge to established concepts of art, artist and audience.
"'There are not many galleries where the viewer can take the art off the wall and complete the idea,' she explains. 'It presses the edges a bit; toys with the preciousness of art.'" (discuss)

Midlist Blues
Maud points us to an earlier piece about the crises of the midlist author, which proposes some fixes to the problem before books go the way of Hollywood, or even worse, radio.
"Commercial book publishing has never been an egalitarian business. Those authors who sell a lot of books get a lot of respect from their publishers (even if not from reviewers). Yet there was a time when writers of serious books not destined to become bestsellers could expect to get contracts from publishers that included decent terms and large enough advances to survive until the next book. They could also expect that the publisher would make a reasonable effort to publicize and promote the book. Today such expectations are rarely met." (discuss)

Typewriter Redux
Like the benefits of a computer but miss the old-style typewriters? Now you can have both with this mod! (From Boing Boing) (discuss)

"It was not even the first story that had somebody slicing off someone's nipples."
A student at a San Francisco school is expelled for writing a violent, sadistic story about a serial killer. Then the teacher is fired. And then Homicide is called in. But apparently everything would have been all right if the student had just written his tale of murder and sexual torture in a more aesthetically pleasing manner, such as in The Lovely Bones. (From Maud) (discuss)

Does Scotland Need Its Own Amazon?
The Scottish Arts Council thinks so.
"With locally controlled stores such as James Thin and John Smith gone from the high street, Scottish publishers find themselves driven into the arms of aggressive international competitors, and part of an increasingly tough battle to get space on the shelves and window displays. They find that dominant bookstores, such as Waterstone's, Borders, Ottakar's and WH Smith often demand large discounts before they are willing to stock Scottish titles. There is also criticism that too many public libraries source their books centrally and pay insufficient attention to Scottish and local interests." (From Moorish Girl) (discuss)

The Great Masturbation Crisis.
Go on, click it. You know you want to. (discuss)

Remember the Days When the Media Mattered?
So does Your Media.
"Your Media is a gathering place and a rallying point for those who cherish Freedom of Expression. Acting individually or together, we can expose unethical media owners who use their considerable powers to further their personal or corporate interests. Utilizing the world's only remaining (for now...) free medium, we will support, encourage and embolden the elected, the appointed and the decision-makers to act in the public interest." (From Press Gallery) (discuss)

Who's Afraid of Doctor Strange?
Well, I am a little. But Jonathen Lethem thinks there's nothing to worry about. He's a Marvel hero, after all. (Doctor Strange, I mean, not Lethem. Although...)
"Marvel was an allegiance, a credential. And it seems to me now that Marvel's extra coolness curdled, in grown remembrance, into something extra embarrassing. Among writers more or less my age, the credential is practically never brandished." (From Rake's Progress) (discuss)

Weekend Edition:

Paul Auster Is Granted the Blue Metropolis Grand Prize
And the title of most French American author. (From Maud) (discuss)

Can't She Just Start a Multimillion-Dollar Clothing Line Like Everyone Else?
Alicia Keys wants to write mystery novels. And poetry. And literary fiction.
"Could Alicia Keys be the next Nancy Drew? As if writing one book weren't an ambitious enough plan, the singer has expanded upon her earlier vision: According to a written proposal, Keys now plans to release a volume of poetry and a series of young-adult mystery novels in which she will be a teen detective character, in addition to a book based on her diaries."
If that doesn't upset you, consider this: she's already been offered $1.5 million -- for the diary alone." (From Literary Saloon) (discuss)

"You're Not Fighting a Woman Now!"
Haven't read Action Comics #1, where a rough-and-tumble Superman is introduced to the world? Now some kind soul has put the $75,000 comic online for your reading pleasure. (From Memepool) (discuss)

"I'm coming to grips with the cold; I had not been told it would go on for so long."
The Star has a short profile of David Davidar, the new head of Penguin Canada.
"There were more than a few raised eyebrows in the book world when Penguin Books Canada announced it was bringing in a new publisher from New Delhi. What would a person from so far away know about Canadian literature or the challenges of Canadian publishing?
Quite a lot, it turns out." (discuss)

The Poet of Heartbreak
The NY Times thinks that Anne Carson is the perfect translator of Greek for modern audiences.
"In The Autobiography of Red Ms. Carson transformed the Greek poet Stesichoros' account into a modern tale of a red-winged schoolboy called Geryon who is bullied by classmates because he is different. 'This would be hard/for you if you were weak,' his mother says, sending him off to school, 'but you're not weak, she said and neatened his little red wings and pushed him/out the door.'"
But what about this guy? (discuss)

Yeah, But He Likes Everything
Bert Archer, who is, um, tough to please, sings the praises of Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's debut collection, Way Up, in the Toronto Star.
"Kuitenbrouwer's phrasing is unassuming, her vocabulary uniformly quotidian and her syntax is so uncomplicatedly, conversationally and apparently artlessly varied (though she could do with fewer subordinate clauses here and there), that when you hear one of her narrators describe her lover's erect penis as an exclamation mark (an image that's at once so obvious and so original) it takes you aback." (discuss)

More Comic Journalism
Peter Bagge is a nice alternative to the hard-hitting but often horrifying works of Joe Sacco. And who else is doing informative, opinionated comics about swingers and Christian rock? (From Boing Boing) (discuss)

Looking for Independent Booksellers in the U.S.?
Booksense can help. (discuss)

The Believer Mob
The Guardian wonders if the McSweeneyites are a cozy little club or a creative hub.
"To point out these connections, as well as noting in passing some of the multifarious examples of in-breeding and insouciant log-rolling (Heidi Julavits, Vendela Vida's co-editor at the Believer, is married to Ben Marcus; Ben Marcus interviews George Saunders in the current issue; George Saunders nominates Ben Marcus as one of his favourite writers in a recent interview and puffs a new Julavits book--'a terrific and important addition to our literature'; Hornby puffs a new collection of stories by Vendela Vida's good friend and recently -anointed true Believer, Julie Orringer, as well as talking up the latest novel by friend-of-the-magazine, Jonathan Lethem ...) is to risk being branded a 'snark'." (discuss)

Mamma Mia!
The title of an ECW anthology about Italian-Canadian women's writing prompts protests about ethnic stereotypes.
"'When your sales reps tell you that they could sell 1,000 copies of one title and 5,000 of another you'd be a fool to ignore their advice,' says Gugeler. 'This is a trade book. We are not in the business of just selling books to the authors' relatives.' After the parties reached a stalemate, Valle says she received a letter from ECW Press that her services as editor were no longer wanted. Eleven contributors withdrew their essays, leaving the publisher scrambling to find replacements. Gugeler and David began to receive scores of messages from Valle's supporters accusing them of insensitivity and racism." (discuss)

"Snark is, I believe, prompted by the terrible vacuum feeling of not mattering"
Sven Birkets, the target of Dale Peck's last negative review (coming soon from Maisonneuve), speaks out about negative reviewing and the sorry state of contemporary literature.
"And this is more or less where we find ourselves now. Psychologically it is a landscape subtly demoralized by the slash-and-burn of bottom-line economics; the modernist/humanist assumption of art and social criticism marching forward, leading the way, has not recovered from the wholesale flight of academia into theory; the publishing world remains tyrannized in acquisition, marketing, and sales by the mentality of the blockbuster; the confident authority of print journalism has been challenged by the proliferation of online alternatives." (From Maud) (discuss)

Invisible Monsters -- the Comic!
Yep, now there's a comic adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel. Check out the Gap parody ad too. (discuss)

Please Tell Me He Didn't Really Write As I Lay Dying in Six Weeks
Faulkner had an interesting work ethic.
"His father had got him the position at the power station after he was dismissed from his previous job as post office clerk at the University of Mississippi. Apparently one of the lecturers there, quite reasonably, complained: the only way he could get his mail was by rummaging around in the rubbish bin at the back door, where the unopened bags of post all too often ended up. Faulkner did not like having his reading interrupted, and the sale of stamps fell alarmingly; by way of explanation, Faulkner told his family that he was not prepared to keep getting up to wait on people at the window and having to be beholden to any son-of-a-bitch who had the two cents to buy a stamp." (discuss)

Is Disney Killing Children's Lit?
Well, certainly nothing good has come out of Disney since Walt climbed into his cryogenic tank to await the apocalypse. But does the Evil Empire have to destroy the pre-Disney classics? (Note: It's Salon, so you'll have to watch a brief ad.)
"But the Disneyfication of The Wind in the Willows is more insidious. Because, as Evil Clones are wont to do, Disney's Toad has gone back to wipe out the original, replace it with himself and cover his tracks. Only those who know to poke around will discern the plunder, and by that time the real treasure may be long gone. When our library's vintage copies of The Wind in the Willows finally wear out, the Great Illustrated Classic, with its sturdy library binding will be all that's left. And the only hint of the desecration will be the ambiguous but friendly 'adapted by' bit on the title page. We'll find Mole sick of cleaning. Toad flinging horrid little wagons. Mole sitting in his chair with a bubble of Badger over his head. Cleansed of 'divine discontent and longing,' bereft of 'poetry of motion,' with Mole never taking time out to smell Home, Little Portly neither lost nor found, and no Pan pipes to be forgotten by Rat or reader. Greatly diluted and poorly illustrated 'classics' will be the literary legacy left to our children." (discuss)

Toronto Festival of Storytelling
I've been to a couple of these events, but I had no idea that storytelling was so popular.
"The longest-running city festival after the Toronto Film Festival now attracts up to 6,000 during its 10-day run. The majority of performers, most of them professionals, are local citizens, with about seven or eight coming in from the U.S. and other parts of Canada.
'It's certainly one of the largest urban festivals of its kind in the world, of the highest quality, and certainly the most diverse -- Toronto is the crossroads city of the modern world,' says Yashinsky, who grew up in Detroit, a self-admitted 'first-generation child of the television age,' and fell in love in his youth with the romantic notion of the traveling bard." (discuss)

The Line Between Writers and Rock Stars Just Got a Little Thinner
New York Metro has a sampling of lyrics written by lit celebs for One Ring Zero's new album.
"You find us in the bathroom / You find us in the sink / You find us in the toilet, having ourselves a drink." -- Jonathan Lethem "When I was a little boy, I was very troubled / I had a bad back and an elevated testicle." -- Jonathan Ames
"I'm nine feet tall and my skin is gray / All the girls scream when I come out to play." -- Margaret Atwood (From Maud) (discuss)

Lost in Translation
When you say "altar," do you mean marriage or sacrifice?
"Both equally invested, the rapport between writers and their translators is doubtless one of the most passionate working relationships: a potential clash of artistic sensibilities, talent, cultures and viewpoints -- made all the more curious by the fact that, most often, they never meet."
The article contains an interesting link to a discussion between Ondaatje and his translators. (discuss)

Free Stuff
Telltale Weekly is the latest site dedicated to providing literature to the masses for free or on the cheap (in this case the niche is audio texts).
"Telltale Weekly seeks to record, produce, and sell performances of at least 50 public domain texts a year, with the intention of releasing them under the Creative Commons Attribution License five years or a hundred thousand sales after their first appearance here, whichever comes first." (discuss)

PowerPoint Protest
An artist uses PowerPoint to chart his malaise. I so want this book.
"'Every single one of these images is a protest against the brute fact that I have to work for a living,' explains Michael Lewy, a Jamaica Plain-based artist who spends his days as an administrative assistant at MIT's Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems." (From Cup of Chica) (discuss)

Is It True Short Stories Don't Sell?
Or is just that publishers don't sell short stories? Either way, apparently things are worse for short story writers in Britain than in Canada.
"In Canada, there is a high level of national and provincial government support for short stories as a way of developing the country's writers of the future. Collections have been a standard route for making a publishing debut for writers before they go on to novels -- the reverse of the situation in Britain." (discuss)

03/30/04:

Of Fathers and Fan Salesmen
Comic artist Seth launches two books, Clyde Fans and Bannock, Beans and Black Tea, the latter a book inspired by his father. Oh yes, the article also reveals Seth's secret identity.
"As a child, the artist had enjoyed hearing the stories over and over, but as an adult, he perceived the pain and neglect submerged within his father's spirited retelling. These were tales of a life of extreme poverty lived in P.E.I.'s harsh climes. For years, Seth thought about preserving the stories in some kind of book, going so far as attempting to record them, before finally asking his father to simply write them down. To his surprise, he did." (discuss)

Solace? Or Schadenfreude?
Lynn Coady notes the popularity of Salon's "Confessions of a Semi-Successful Author" piece and wonders why writers are drawn to such depressing stories. Featuring guest comments by not one but both bookninjas!
"I read the piece, nodded resignedly, and promptly sent it out to other writer friends. Then I sat back, puzzling over what I had just done. Hi there! Isn't this depressing? Enjoy!
But I wasn't the only one. The piece was burning across the ether like the most efficient of viruses, plopping into the inboxes of everyone I knew. It got me thinking what twisted creatures writers can be, so eager to disseminate gloom amongst themselves." (discuss)

Are Dr. Seuss's Books a "Masculine Attempt to Overcome Womb Envy"?
Or a secret Kabbalistic text? Or, even worse, learning?
"In his essay 'The Secret Alchemy of Dr Seuss,' Fenkl warns that there is 'far more going on in the book than meets the casually analytic eye.' Suspend disbelief again. The names in the book all apparently 'resonate with ... Alchemical and Kabbalistic logic.' To show how much we are expected to read into the untidy anagrams that could be made from each name, I quote Fenkl: 'Finally, the Brown Bar-ba-loots are also linked with the anti-logging rhetoric, by anagramming into the phrase, "Ban blows to arbor," and to the crucifixion narrative: "Barab's loot." ... The prefix "barba" also means "bearded," linking The Lorax and Christ through their appearance, not only their ascension, and "barb" suggests the crown of thorns.'" (discuss)

Class Dismissed
Invisible Adjunct, a great site for wannabe and/or recovering academics, is shutting down.
"A few months ago, I made a vow to myself that this would be my last semester as an invisible adjunct. Since I've failed to secure a full-time position in my final attempt at the academic job market, what this means, of course, is that I made a vow to leave the academy. Six more weeks of teaching, and I head for the nearest exit."
I'm going to miss this site, as it had great discussions not only on jobs in the humanities, but also on the way the discipline is taught and run. It was a great discussion forum, and in that respect it was probably better in some ways than the subject it covered. (discuss)

Will You Miss the Hatchet Man?
Kirkus will.
"Twelve essays by the bad boy of contemporary book reviewing reveal a passionate, committed commentator who definitely has an axe to grind. So what? Like any truly interesting critic, Peck has a coherent, openly stated aesthetic position that informs everything he writes, including his novels." (From Rake's Progress) (discuss)

"I must be cruel only to be kind"
Looking for an oxymoronic or paradoxical quotation by a famous writer? Oxymoronica may be the site for you.
"Any compilation of phrases or quotations that initially appear illogical or nonsensical, but upon reflection, make a good deal of sense and are often profoundly true." (discuss)

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