Hearsay Archive:

2003:

August September October November December

2004:

January February March April May June July August September October November December

2005:

January February March April May June July August September October November December

May 2005:

05/02/05:

The art of the blurb
Or how to decode praise.

Desperate copywriters use the "in the tradition of" device, piggybacking on another writer's fame. This says "if you liked that best seller, you'll automatically love this," a marketing idea Amazon seized upon. In fact, it signals "we're using this best-selling name without permission to attract your attention because that author would never stoop to blurb this."

(discuss) (Posted by Peter)

Does Don Quixote still matter?
And what happened to the novel?

That our own era mostly knows Quixote through a sentimental pop-culture digest of the story, in which the knight tilts at windmills and dreams the impossible dream, doesn't negate the fact that we can relate to a 400-year-old character. We'll even sing along with the Man of la Mancha, or at least hum the show tunes.

Joining the knight and his guide in their Broadway musical adventure may be the only journey most readers will be able to manage. The novel, it is true, is long and digressive. The writing is also ornate and tirelessly playful. But the more serious problem with Don Quixote is that it fails many of the critical and consumer tests of our literary culture, a culture in the grips of a narrow, bland definition of what constitutes a good book.

(discuss) (Posted by Peter)

A fate worse than remaindering
A used bookseller in Wigtown has decided to burn all the books no one wants to buy.

Today the spot overlooking the Solway Firth is marked by a simple stone memorial. Near here, a chimney of books is being built on a platform supported by four telegraph polls. This will be filled with straw and sploshed with diesel, then topped with a wire basket full of books. Readers (or perhaps non-readers) are invited to bring any books of their own they wish to get rid of. Literature’s loss will be art’s gain. To make it a properly festive occasion, there will also be a barbecue.

Sounds like a old school lynching. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Thought police
Two books, both edited by Georges St. Martin and featuring photographs of boys have been purloined from Michael Jackson's library and used against him in court. [comments deleted due to revision of information](discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Being a writer in Alberta sucks
I would revise that to: being alive in Alberta sucks. But, hey, that's just smart-mouthed talk from someone who has no interest in cows or their boys... (discuss) (Posted by George)

And now to insult the other side of the country...
A giant Montreal library aims to get people fired up about reading.

It's shaped like a shoebox and its colour is best described as hospital-gown green. To the passerby, Montreal's vaunted new megalibrary might not look like the shrine to literacy and culture that its boosters had promised.

You know, maybe if had been shaped like a fat-riddled sandwich and a pack of smokes things would be different... (discuss) (Posted by George)

And just to even things up...
Toronto finally finds confirmation that it is indeed the centre of the universe. (Much like the anus is the centre of the ass... Hey, I'm trying here...) Frenetic denizens would laugh and point finger at rest of country, but how can you make money doing that? (discuss) (Posted by George)

Holmes gets a new ride: a bandwagon
Everyone's doing Sherlock lately. That's gotta get sore after a while. (discuss) (Posted by George)

The writing wife
How did I miss this one? Hollywood wives, presumably bored and waiting for hubby to come home from the set, take up novel writing in place of mountains of cocaine and screwing the poolboy. I guess it's time to drop out of Poolboy U and get back into that certificate course on agenting... Will I never find a vocation? (discuss) (Posted by George)

Deal maker or breaker?
Is this "new" publishing idea good or bad for new writers?

The initiative is a departure for mainstream publishing. For this so-called Ryanair equivalent, Macmillan has developed what it calls a "streamlined, cost-effective model".

If it decides to accept a novel for the list, terms are unnegotiable; no advance will be paid, though writers will receive 20% of royalties from sales. Macmillan will copy edit books, but if manuscripts need more detailed work, it will suggest that writers employ freelance editors. According to notes sent to authors, such editors "will charge realistic fees and this will not in itself guarantee publication".

No advance?! What, are we poets or something? (Isn't this how McSweeney's is run?) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Harold Bloom on Hans Christian Andersen
To those of you who hate Bloom (and I do think he's a pompous ass, but...): check out the bio at the bottom. Go ahead, list your latest little book. He wins. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Physician, franchise thyself
From video games to internet to DVD to TV. (Good thing he isn't making "drugs" for kids anymore. Yeah.) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Molson Prize for Watery Fratboy Beer awarded
Canada Council awards prizes for arts and humanities----yawn...zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Kingdom of Heaven my living Hell
Author of Warriors of God says, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven ripped me off! Lawyers faint and pee themselves with delight. (discuss) (Posted by George)

May the Force be with you... cheaply...
Clive Thompson writes about the phenomenon of fan art, focusing on the incredibly awesome Star Wars: Revelations -- a 40 minute fan-made featurette that cost $20,000 to make and is better than the two latest movies put together. Sure the acting is shitty, but it's actually kind of addictive after a while. The fx are mind-blowing ($20G???) and the plot is actually interesting. And, perhaps most telling, no one is thinking ahead to a tie-in line of toy products. (If you're balking at the 250 meg download, you can get a BitTorrent client like the one I downloaded today. The movie just breezed in.) (discuss) (Posted by George)

05/03/05:

Mondolithic takes on the Martians
One of my favourite websites is Mondolithic, a visual-arts site run by a couple of Vancouver artists. If you read Wired or science magazines, you've seen their work. Their latest project is the cover for The War of the Worlds: Fresh Perspectives on the H.G. Wells Classic, an anthology of essays on the sci-fi, uh, classic. Looks good. Check out the galleries while you're on the site. Some fabulous stuff here, including one of my all-time favourites. (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

White Noise on White Noise
This could have been a great project if the links were randomly generated too. As it is, it's still kind of interesting. I'd like to see this done with more works.

White Noise on White Noise is a collection of 36 randomly selected fragments of text from Don DeLillo's novel White Noise.

(From Bookslut) (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

Canadian Identity explored
Noah Richler takes a stab at what makes us us in a 10 part series airing on CBC radio's Ideas. McClelland and Stewart will follow it up with a book based on the series as well as a DVD for school purposes and Hasbro will be creating a line of pull string dolls that say erudite things like, "I thought it lacked texture, didn't you, Muffy?" and "I wish all our literature had less bush and more wacked." The Globe reports. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

My life as a glamorous grocery store writer
MobyLives prints an all-too-true tale of woe and redemption in aisle three. A writer goes from six figure advances to the curb, but claws his way back up through handselling at the grocery store. It hurts to read it. (discuss) (Posted by George)

BookScan Canada: turning reality into numbers
Canada is getting its own version of Neilson BookScan. This means we can be depressed by accurate data instead of mere appearances.

BookNet Canada, a not-for-profit organization, hopes to launch its BNC Sales Data service in June, in time for the annual publishing industry fair, Book Expo Canada. The new system will collect sales information from retailers across the country and produce weekly reports -- the ultimate bestseller list.

Tracking sales data for books is not a new idea -- Nielsen BookScan has operated in Britain since 1995 and in the United States since 2001. But despite having more book titles for sale than any other English-language market -- the result of being the confluence of books from Britain, the United States and the country's own healthy domestic market -- Canada is the only major English-language market that does not have a nationwide sales-tracking system for its books.

(discuss) (Posted by George)

The state of the chapbook
Very interesting piece on the importance of chapbooks. Lady Ninja has the only other interesting essay on this subject that I've ever read. When it's finally published in some musty sociology journal, I'll see if she'll let me reprint it here. Let me rephrase that: I'll beg her to let me reprint it here. (From Moby) (discuss)

RIP: Bob Hunter
A face you grew up with in Toronto has passed. Environmental activist, columnist and broadcaster, dead at 63. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Canada: the media franchise
Noah Richler's radio series on the scope and history of CanLit is being spun off into books, DVDs, and a line of toys that includes posable action figures of Susanna Moody, AM Klein and bill bisset (maracas not included).

But the radio series, based on Richler's interviews with more than 100 novelists, poets and thinkers, is only Part One of the project. McClelland and Stewart will issue his companion book next January, and an enhanced, school-friendly DVD version will follow from the CBC next fall, with material the radio hour could not accommodate.

(discuss) (Posted by George)

Sad, sad news
The Double Hook Bookshop in Montreal is closing. (This is a subscriber-only link on Q&Q, so you can't read the whole story -- but the news isn't announced anywhere else online, that I can find. I'd buy a membership to the site -- which has been just fantastic since its inception -- but it's too expensive. Hint hint, guys.) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Canadian comic book awards
The Schusters were handed out this weekend. Seth makes some points about popularity versus elitism. (discuss) (Posted by George)

05/04/05:

Americans are staying away from school in droves
Fundamentals of Homeschooling hits small press bestseller list. Maybe the reason literacy rates are so low in the US and Canada is that they are only measuring the children who go to public schools. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Wordstock
Where hippies meet intellectuals and they all smoke pot and sign whatever anyone wants signed.

Krassner, a man who once wrote of a sexual encounter between President Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy's corpse, said he feels a sense of personal continuity being at a book festival that borrows its name in part from the revolutionary late '60s music festival. "It's taking an attitude of an optimistic time and putting [it] in another context," Krassner noted, adding, "It's a little less muddy ... unless some of the text is muddy." As he spoke, people approached with books, which he offered to sign, even if they weren't his own.

I truly wish I'd been there. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Obsolete or antique?
Turns out all those old computers are worth a fortune!

Erik Klein has filled his guest bedroom and half his garage with computer books and machines. His wife calls it junk, but he calls it history.

(discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Canadian magazines gang up on drunk
Put the boots to him! Put the boots to him, my droogs!

Magazine publishers are calling for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario to get out of the publishing industry. The Canadian Magazine Publishers Association submitted a document to the Ontario Beverage Alcohol System Review in March saying the LCBO's Food & Drink magazine unfairly competes with private publishers.

(discuss) (Posted by George)

National Magazine Awards shortlist announced
Here's the story and here's the list. Some unexpected entries in the poetry category, not least of which is everyone's favourite badboy Shane Neilson. His long poem, "Seized", that appeared in the Fiddlehead's poetry issue is brilliant though, and if it doesn't win I'll be crying foul. (Hell, I cry foul about six times a day, so whether anyone will be listening is another matter entirely...) (discuss) (Posted by George)

CroneLit?
A line of fiction for women over 45 (because, you know, they're all the same once they reach 45), Transita, is setting off some hot flashes across the pond.

Read points out that, despite the fact that 40% of the UK's female population is over the age of 45, there isn't an identifiable body of fiction that mirrors the experiences of this group. "Life for the 45-plus woman is very different now than it used to be," she says. "We are redefining our whole attitude towards mid-life, and women want recognition of that in the books they read. They want exciting, inspiration heroines they can relate to".

But Read appears to have opened up a veritable Pandora's box, with critics of the imprint claiming that it is patronising to define women readers in this way.

Embrace your cronehood! Conform! Conform! Does the call to conform ever stop? (discuss) (Posted by George)

Meettheauthor
Ew. He's so much pastier than I expected... And his handshake is like a dead fish. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Judging books by their covers
The classics edition. (discuss) (Posted by George)

05/05/05:

Mired in realism, I tell you
Michael Bryson of the Danforth Review looks at the 2005 ReLit Award short-fiction long list in order to investigate the state of the Canadian short story. It's a thoughtful piece in which he addresses many writers' critiques, including mine:

I think maybe we're so caught up in cultural/ethnic identity politics -- it does overwrite so much of our lives -- that we tend to ignore other subjects. It's rare, for instance, to see a Canadian writer grapple with scientific theories or economic mutations. It's rare for these things to even be in the background of most Canadian writers' works. I think our fictional landscape has changed little in the last fifty or sixty years -- we're so sealed off from change that we could be some sort of Disney attraction.

I should point out I'm found "guilty of conflated rhetoric." (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

New Yorker caption contest goes weekly
The New Yorker has blatantly ripped off Bookninja's Litterati caption contest with its cartoon caption contest. We are scowling beneath our smiles. Oh yes, and submitting suing. (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

Torstar gets all romantic
Get ready to pull all your unpublishable bodice-rippers from those bottom drawers (get it?); Torstar is pumping for some vertical growth in the romance sector.

Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes said during a presentation to investors after the Torstar annual meeting that the company will return to growth through a number of initiatives. It plans new series that will be supported with better packaging and promotion, it is launching a new line of non-romance fiction in a tall book format that "feels more upscale," and is moving into new markets, she said. Harlequin recently launched a joint venture in Brazil, and is exploring markets in China, Taiwan and South Korea.

Harlequin is also going to expand its audio book and electronic book ventures, and will enter the market for "Manga" illustrated novels in Japan, Ms. Hayes said.

(discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Spreading the Good News faster
Three pastors blogging; this either means book blogging is so out it's outa sight or these men of the cloth are so hip it hurts.

Several years ago I was met by Jazz...it found me in the blues of solitude- a lonely, tired and overwhelmed new seminarian, living in Kansas City (not too far from the ever popular 18th & Vine).

I heard its first notes from a trumpet and then a trombone. Obviously, the music had crossed my ears before, but never touching my soul as it did this night. It was a Saturday night, and oh, what a concert it was!

I wonder if there is a nuns's blog for books?(discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Pop culture is making us smarter? Ay caramba!
Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You raises some interesting points. Plus, I just like the sentiment. Give me glass a scotch and hand me that PS2 controller... I have work to do.

I had been batting around an idea for a book of collected essays. I knew I wanted the opening to be about video games because I had this sense people were not understanding, on some basic level, how hard they are. A lot of people still think video games are like Pac-Man. And I was going to do a bunch of other contrarian pieces. I thought, well, I’ll do something about television, because television has become so much better and nobody talks about that. In fact, in the States there’s been this huge debate about television. It’s between two sides: one side thinks television, and pop culture in general, is so bad the Feds need to intervene; the other side just thinks pop culture is bad. When I started refuting [those positions], what was supposed to be a collection of disjointed essays actually turned into the most linear of my books.

(Best opening line ever: "Although he wears a turtleneck sweater under a blazer in his author photo, Steven Johnson is actually a pretty smart guy.") (discuss) (Posted by George)

Run, Jane, Run
That poor woman who ran away (someone dig into her life - there's a story there) from her fiance and is being vilified by the US media (how dare she violate the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of her fiance's imminent ownership of her??) is compared to Jane Eyre in an attempt to understand the public interest in her situation. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Arrrrgh!
Get yer tackle out and give it a shake. Top ten books on the sea, mateys... (From PFW) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Then... DON'T come see my movie... I know you won't anyway...
George practices reverse-psychology as marketing plan... Um, if people don't come to your movie, G, it's because the last two sucked like Sucky McSucklestein sucks a suckie suck. You hear me? ... ... ... ... ... Okay, I'll go. NeeeEEEErrrrrrd! (discuss) (Posted by George)

Adopt-a-poet
Does this means you'll be able to host parties at which your guests can use long pointy sticks to pick up trash for a mile around said poet? Help improve the American Academy of Poets website by adopting an American poet today. If I adopt Geoffrey Hill, can I get him to edit my new book? (I was seriously thinking of adopting Matthew Rohrer on behalf of Bookninja.com... anyone?) (From Bookslut) (discuss) (Posted by George)

05/06/05:

Men in safari jackets sighted at Google board meeting
Anglophone cyber-colonialists are raping and pillaging and, guess what? The Parisians are smoking-mad (and I mean Gauloises).

Moves by the US corporation to create a digital library scanning millions of books and putting them online have prompted fears in Paris about American domination of cyberspace. Jean-Noël Jeanneney, president of the French National Library which houses 13 million books, this week published a book presenting a nightmare vision of Google being in a position to hijack "the thought of the world".

I call for a separatist search engine, immédiatement! (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Kerouac makes it to the Baseball Hall of Fame...
...as a parody of Kerouac. I guess it's nice to be honoured even if you are being honoured in sarcasm, or effigy, or bobblehead. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Swap shop in the air
Paradies airport-based shops start a grass roots buy-back program and it works. This reminds me of a little café bookshop in Thailand where farangs could trade in two for one. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Engaging the word
James O'Hearn has posted an archive of radio interviews he did for CHRY 105.5FM in Toronto. Some interesting names, and then, well, mine. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Booker Prize III: This Time It's Incomprehensible
In an effort to capitalize on untapped niche markets and mine new revenue streams, the Booker continues to diversify its portfolio. Note: as the awards get more numerous, the jackpot gets smaller... (discuss) (Posted by George)

How will our children ever learn about spit balls and paperclip football??
Our schools' libraries are underfunded.

Saskatchewan and Alberta led the provinces in median per-school library spending, at $3,600 and $3,000 respectively. Spending in British Columbia and Manitoba was also above the national average, while expenditures in Quebec ($1,680) and Nova Scotia ($1,400) fell below. Ontario hit the $2,000 median mark, while Newfoundland and Labrador dedicated $1,000 per school.

Go Saskatchewan and Alberta! Did I just write that? (From PFW) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Statistically improbable lit
Maud points us to some interesting tidbits Wired covers on some of Amazon's new features, including Concordance and Text Stats features. (discuss) (Posted by George)

OAD
Does it include "Wubblewoo"? Then I won't recognize it. Fie! (discuss) (Posted by George)

Not exactly sure...
...what this chick-lit article is about, but there's lots of TO newspaper gossip involved. I suspect much of it out of date. However, that said, forget the six-pack and the biceps for a minute... How does anyone have a crush on a conservative? Doesn't the anti-sex field they're all required to fake nullify any longing? (discuss) (Posted by George)

Set phasers to "cancel"
Star Trek is over and that fucking bigoted idiot Orson Scott Card couldn't be happier.

As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s — a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas. It was sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

Which was a shame, because science fiction writing was incredibly fertile at the time, with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

Little of this seeped into the original "Star Trek." The later spinoffs were much better performed, but the content continued to be stuck in Roddenberry's rut. So why did the Trekkies throw themselves into this poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted television series with such commitment and dedication? Why did it last so long?

Here's what I think: Most people weren't reading all that brilliant science fiction. Most people weren't reading at all. So when they saw "Star Trek," primitive as it was, it was their first glimpse of science fiction. It was grade school for those who had let the whole science fiction revolution pass them by.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with him. It's just that, given his non-Star Trek commentary, I think he's a piece of shit. (From Bookslut) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Weekend Edition:

Chuck Palahniuk has had a hard life
But he's doing OK now.

After Chuck has racked up a couple of hundred dollars on his credit card on novelty items, we drive a few blocks to Wal-Mart, where he buys 20 small cuddly creatures, kittens and puppies mainly, and a few rabbits and rodents. ... this is Chuck's way of saying thanks to his fan base. One of each will end up in an individually packaged gift box, alongside an individually penned letter from Chuck to each and every one of the faithful who have written to him. 'I've lost count of the times people have come up to me after an event and said, "Thanks for the fluffy toy, Chuck, my daughter loves it so much." People treasure the fluffy toys.'

Back in the pick-up, he tells me that each gift box is worth about $25. I do the math: a thousand boxes adds up to twenty five grand, not counting postage. That's a lot of money. 'It is,' he says, still smiling. 'But you know what? I have a lot of money.'

(discuss) (Posted by Peter)

"What can we Germans be proud of?"
Just last night I watched a CBC documentary about the problems with Germany's reunification. Now I read Gunter Grass's piece on the same subject. Both lay the blame largely on one thing: global capitalism.

In the Federal Republic of Germany the classless society, regarded by all as highly desirable, is changing into a class-based society that was long thought to be outdated. No longer a possibility but a hard fact: what is paraded as neo-liberal proves to be on close scrutiny a return to disparaging practices of early capitalism. And the social market economy - formerly a successful model of economic and cohesive action - has degenerated into the free market economy for which the constitutional obligation of employers to contribute to workers' pensions is an irritation and the striving for profit is sacrosanct.

(discuss) (Posted by Peter)

05/09/05:

The Encylopedia Saskatchewanica
Who says the ninjas don't love Saskatchewan? It's one of my favourite provinces to drive through.

One hundred years of history will cover more than 1,000 pages and 2,300 entries when the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan is released this fall in time for the province's centennial. The Canadian Plains Research Centre has been putting together the contributions of more than 800 writers for the last nine years with a goal of releasing the final product on Saskatchewan's centennial birthday Sept. 4.

(discuss) (Posted by Peter)

What's black & white and not read all over?
The New York Times seeks readers. Well, what do you expect after what that naughty Jayson Blair did to them? I love it that part of their solution is to write more articles on religion. The religious will fall for anything, right? (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Religious post-modernism
I love the Mormons especially. Martha Nibley Beck writes a book condemning her father for making up all his footnotes to Mormon history and it turns out a stranger in tweed told her this in her local grocery store, so it must be true. Think of it: twelve and a half million people on the planet are personal conduits for God's word. This is another reason why The Times needs more religion articles. Can you say demographic? Can you say handbasket? (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

The Jeanne D'arc of Islamic reform
Irshad Manji's call to arms; blatant self promoter or God's messenger? Notice none of these articles come from The Times? Hurry up, people...(discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Face against the window
An older author highlights the lure of Macmillan's "Not-Self-Publishing" publishing program, citing ageism, sexism, and bad fictionism as impediments to getting published. Against the window, against the pillow... it's your choice really.

Hari Kunzru (who received a £1.25m advance for his first novel) has described the Macmillan list as "the Ryanair of publishing - it's like having to pay for your own uniforms". He advises: "I'd publish on the net or think about a writer-led cooperative before going down this road."

As someone who has had his nose against the window pane for a long time, I disagree.
...
so we renewed our efforts to woo an agent. Again, we were rejected. One however, did take the trouble to write back at length. The gist of the response was: "For a first attempt it is impressive, but it is okay rather than exceptional. Frankly you are a bit old [so much for Mary Wesley]. Publishers will only put money into a book if you are young, preferably female, write about magicians, and have five or six other books in front of you".

(discuss) (Posted by George)

If you can make it out, you can make it
Actor-turned-playwright, Susan Coyne, profiled. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Advice to young poets
Walt Whitman says, learn printing. Shaw says, you suck. I guess that about covers it. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Makes for a lousy pickup line...
Baby, I've been convicted of being dangerous... Cuban librarians convicted of being "dangerous"... But pickup prospects seriously in doubt. (discuss) (Posted by George)

It was Freud, dude
Freud is responsible for so much, including my fear of lit cigars near my tender bits. But to ruin literature!? As my friend Dom would say, "Bastard!"

In one important sense, Freud's ideas have had an undeniable impact. They've spelled the death of psychology in art. Freud's abstract, impersonal concepts have worn away the specificity of fictional character. By the 1950's, here and in Western Europe, it was making less and less sense to fashion the idiosyncratic, original inner and outer lives of a character in a novel. His or her behavior was already accounted for by the universal realities of id, ego, superego, not to mention the forces of repression, displacement and neurosis.
...
But if we have Freud to blame for the long-drawn-out extinction of literary character, we also have Freud to thank for the prestige of film. The depiction of fictional people's inner lives is not the strength of the silver screen. Character gets revealed to us by plot turns, camera angles, musical scores -- by abstract, impersonal forces, much like Freud's concepts. In a novel, character is shaped from the inside out; in a film, it's molded from the outside and stays outside.

(discuss) (Posted by George)

More on how Google is killing Europe
When Google Challenges Europe. Google's plan to digitize the (English-speaking) world is forcing the (not-English-speaking) world to counter-digitize. I somehow doubt Google even noticed Europe. This is like the ant writing a book about it's battle against the shoe. (discuss) (Posted by George)

"The merchants of doom"
Something tells me this whole thing is going to get under Cory Doctorow's (BoingBoing's point-person on copyright obsession) bonnet like a nano-somethingorother with macro-spikes.

Publishing is certainly in the throes of the biggest print revolution since Gutenberg. But that's not to say that the book as we know it is doomed to extinction. Indeed, there is a line of argument, from historical principles, that says copyright is inalienable.

Let's not forget that publishers and writers, as content creators, retain contractual control of their material. The written word is a precious resource but a resilient one, whose well-being is comparatively easy to police, at least in the marketplace, if not in the political arena.

The international copyright convention may have been drafted in the days of hot metal but if the publishers have the willpower and the savoir faire, copyright legislation can be redrafted to take account of the 'Napsterisation' threat.

(discuss) (Posted by George)

Curious Atwood
London review of, and extract from, Margaret Atwood's Curious Pursuits. A book I can't even find listed here. Is it a Brit version of Moving Targets? (discuss) (Posted by George)

Do the arts matter?
Only if they continue to produce paintings on black velvet. There, I said it.

Next month, John Carey, emeritus professor of English Literature at Oxford university, publishes What Good Are the Arts? It's the queen bee of questions. And it leads to a swarm of others: What is art? Who decides? Are there absolute standards? Can art make us better people? To answer these, Carey gathers a crowd of philosophers, poets, artists, writers and ordinary people, with provoking results.

Included here are Kunzru, Winterson, and Rankin. But alas, not one painter of black velvet. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Stephen King tells commencing students to stay in Maine
He then deploys several thousand hounds of Hell to make sure they do, prompting at least one observant graduate to comment as flames encircled the state, "I knew it." (discuss) (Posted by George)

And because every now and then I fear you're forgotten...
Strindberg and Helium... Oooozinnng!! God, I wish they'd do new ones of these. (discuss) (Posted by George)

05/10/05:

Watch out -- don't step in the plasticine?
Roddy Doyle, whose work I adore, is turning The Giggler Treatment into an animated movie with the creators of Wallace and Gromit.

The author has already started work on the screenplay for the TV programme, in which the Gigglers ensure that all adults who are mean to children - whether by lying to them, sending them to bed or making them wear clothes they hate - receive their comeuppance by stepping in dog poo.

(discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Evan Solomon plays The Friendly Giant
Renaissaance man, Evan Solomon:

"My mother used to tell us kid stories herself. When we used to drive, my brother and sister and I - on any long drive my mother actually used to tell us a story about this character named Pete who she invented, and Pete had a lot of adventures. These stories went on for years. The chorus in our family was always, 'mom, tell us a Pete."'

Bigbeard's Hook is out with Penguin Books. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Rewriting the revisionist World War II history
How perspective alters everything except the fact that millions of people ended up dead and their families traumatised for generations.

It was this ideological contest over the meaning of the Second World War that generated both a greater interest in patriotic war stories, but also a greater appetite for more critical versions...In 1980, Nicholas Harman published Dunkirk, the Necessary Myth, after researching a television history. Harman was disappointed to discover that the famous civilian flotilla of tiny ships never did cross the channel to rescue the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), and more so that the BEF concealed its retreat from its French and Belgian allies, to their great cost. Harman was less willing to believe Liddell Hart's argument that Hitler had let the BEF escape, telling his staff that he wanted a 'reasonable peace agreement' with Britain immediately so that he would be 'finally free' for his 'great and real task: the confrontation with Bolshevism'

(discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Advocating violence
While, traditionally, ninjas are indeed associated with swords, the dead people on the ends of them, and other adolescent forms of coolness, the Common North American Bookninja (both the speckled and the red-breasted) is largely a different breed. Normally our pen is considered mightier. We are the cuddly, smart version of the deadly human guillotine. (You know, the guys you hated in high school but can't get enough of now, because, to the surprise of everyone, nerds are in and your jock lover from grade 11 is tending bar at a Keg in Newmarket?) We're those fellas you knew who wouldn't hurt a flea. Today that changes. I am calling for violence against the people who did this.

Carol Wilson sat on the park bench. She breathed a c'est la vie sigh. She'd just come from Barrie on the bus. She said, "I'd heard the sign was broken." We were sitting in the little downtown park named for her sister, Gwendolyn MacEwen.

At the moment, you'd never know the park had anything to do with the poet because the city sign is not just broken, it's been smashed; all that remains are two wooden posts.

If you have any information about this crime and would like to participate in a sack beating of the individual(s) involved, please contact me. It's about time I bonded with my readers. (discuss) (Posted by George)

In the name of art
Hell, why do we need to justify this in the name of art?* Putting novelists in boxes is always a good idea. Just make sure to punch holes in the lid, or not, as your plans may be.

On Saturday night, in front of 200 onlookers, Ms. Stone and two other novelists, ensconced in neighboring pods, embarked on a variation of the spectator sports made familiar by reality television. Ms. Stone, Ranbir Sidhu and Grant Bailie are the participants in "Novel: A Living Installation" at the Flux Factory, an artists' collective in Long Island City. The goal is for each to complete a novel by June 4. The purpose is to consider the private and public aspects of writing.

No need to go to Queens (Ech. Queens. Home of "The Boulevard of Death"...) Just go by the Second Cup and leer at us suckers on our lunch break. (discuss) (Posted by George)

John Donne, pop artist
Oh-ho-ho! I wonder what the 17thC equivalent of Fear Factor was... Oh, yeah. Life. All those guys in wigs eating sheep's eyes and climbing radio towers. Or... um... scribe... towers. (discuss) (Posted by George)

PEN Awards handed out
PEN Awards handed out. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Speaking of violence
When we're done with the shitbag who broke Gwen, anyone want to head down south and lock steel toes with a few of these assholes? (discuss) (Posted by George)


This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!
Because I can't resist anything he does: the photography of David Byrne. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Go ahead, there's no shame in watching the trailer...
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Trailer for The Movie. But I imagine there will be some shame in plunking down your ten bones for it, come December. Disney keeps scooping up things I love and ruining them. Whyfor, Tinkerbell? You can end this with your little wand and stiletto heels. I clapped for you. Now look how you repay me. (discuss) (Posted by George)

05/11/05:

State of the Site: Bookninja survey
Hi, guys. Can you please take a few minutes (our timing is seven minutes) to fill out this Bookninja survey? It's designed to provide us with a snapshot of our reader-base so we can better plan future changes, advertising, and events. It's the kind of thing we need to have on hand now that this site, which started as a thing between a few friends, is snowballing into a full-grown business. Like I said, it's only a few minutes and we would greatly appreciate hearing from you. Rest assured, it's all anonymous. Thanks in advance. (discuss) (Posted by George)

US Officials have to wipe the crap off their faces
Protests turned violent in Jalalabad after reports of Guantanamo Bay interrogators flushing a copy of the Holy Koran down the toilet.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said U.S. officials are looking into the matter.

I just hope they look deep enough. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

If only they'd listened to Miss Manners
It's not nice or even smart to desecrate the Holy Book of one's enemy; well, she doesn't say this because no one asks her the really important questions. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Pippi Longstocking gets a tutu
The Swedes just made my day. Pippi will dance, I tell you, and on pointe shoes. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Om Shanti Ka-ching Ka-ching Om
Zen priest Marc Lesser has written Zen of Business Administration or how to get rich the Buddha way. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

French to French award snub
Quebec-based playwright Wajdi Mouawad turns down a Molière theatre prize. Bravery and stupidity are first cousins who could pass for twins. (discuss) (Posted by George)

In a North Bay state of mind...
A gritty gumshoe New York writer can't get rid of his native North Bay, Ontario. It's kind of like herpes, in that regard. I had a similar reaction to living in New York, and began work while there on a novel set against the backdrop of Bradford, Ontario: Harley Davidson painters caps, slack-jawed yuppies-cum-yokels in SUVs, bottle toke bottles strewn in the highschool parking lot, 40-something dye-blonde divorcees at the Village Inn, the occasional carrot festival, and acid wash denim as far as the eye can see. Then I moved home and the spell was broken. The pages have been burnt, rest assured. (From PFW) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Quote of the day: "counter-hegemonic discourse"
Quit yer intellectual bellyachin' and get your brainiac ass out there.

Is he suggesting, then, that scholars should remain cloistered in academia, holding conversations only with each other? "No," he insists. "I'm a great believer in reaching out. We should be challenging ourselves, our students and the wider world. Instead we're giving out more and more degrees while flattering the public, as if they were children, instead of drawing them into challenging dialogues."
...
"It is the burden of an intellectual to make his or her ideas matter. He or she should be out there in the public domain, fighting their corner and rebutting argument. That's the stuff of intellectual life. You're not throwing it out like a message in a bottle."

(discuss) (Posted by George)

File under: there's still a chance for humanity
Now this is great to see! Two 13-year-olds win award for a website designed for young fiction readers. Mini-ninjas! Kids, you're welcome here any day. (discuss) (Posted by George)

"Encyclopedia entries are among the lowest form of secondary literature"
Among?

At one level, the disdain is justified. Many such works are sloppily written, superficial, and/or hopelessly unreliable. The editors of some of them display all the conscientiousness regarding plagiarism one would expect of a failing sophomore. (They grasp the concept, but do not think about it so much as to become an inconvenience.)

But my hunch is that social pressure plays a larger role in it. Real scholars read monographs! The nature of an encyclopedia is that it is, at least in principle, a work of popularization. Probably less so for The Encyclopedia of Algebraic Topology, assuming there is one. But still, there is an aura of anti-specialization and plebian accessibility that seems implicit in the very idea. And there is something almost Jacobin about organizing things in alphabetical order.

(discuss) (Posted by George)

Here's a sad story
Saul Bellow's last signed book to his son gets "lost" in the mail, only opened the envelope arriving. Hey, Postie, if you've got the book, just do the heaven-bent thing and send it along anonymously. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Do you feel sorry for the sociopathic drunk or laugh at him?
Can't we do both? That's how we do things in my family. Ladies and gentlemen: Franz Wright, literary nutbar. (From Bookslut) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Now you too can ride the rails without shame
The dictionary of hobo slang. (From Incoming Signals) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Scientology losing ground to New Fictionology
Anything that makes fun of those cultist psychos is great in my book. Damn fictionologists. (discuss) (Posted by George)

05/12/05:

State of the site survey, Day 2
Thanks to all those who filled out the state of the site survey we posted yesterday. If you haven't had a go at it yet, please fill it out here. We'll leave it up the rest of the week in this top spot and perhaps post some of the results next week. It's been interesting so far, and your comments have been very generous. Thanks. (discuss) (Posted by George)

On Bullshit
Old guy gets famous for his shitty little book. Yale philosopher, Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit is a 67 page essay turned into a book, now in its tenth printing.

Frankfurt is obliging and self-effacing like that. I can't count the number of times he said: "I don't know," "You might be right," or "I've never thought of it like that." Chatty and congenial? I thought so until I got to the last line of his book.

"Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial - notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."

(discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Gilgamesh's best friend was the first Viagra tester
But the drug was called Shamhat back then: "She did for the man the work of the woman, his passion carressed and embraced her. For six days and seven nights Enkidu was erect, as he coupled with Shamhat." Anyway, don't read the book, wait for the movie -- Michael Moore style. And definitely read The Epic of Gilgamesh. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

The Stanley Kunitz top 100
Years, that is. Bravo. It's about time one of the good poets got to stick around. If you don't have his Collected Poems, I highly recommend it. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Oklahomaphobic
One kind American respondent to the Bookninja survey wrote as a suggestion (something to the effect of) "I understand the impulse, but maybe not always so hard on us Americans..." I'll try, I swear... But, dude, how can I help it?

Oklahoma lawmakers are fine with a fairy tale in which two princes live together happily ever after, as long as they shack up on the adult stacks of the state's public libraries.

The state's House of Representatives on Monday passed a nonbinding resolution calling for gay-themed children's books and "other age-inappropriate material" to be moved to the adult section of public libraries.

(From Moby) (discuss) (Posted by George)


100 monkeys at 100 paintbrushes
I'd buy this. No really, I think it's beautiful and raw and inspiring. And by, "I'd buy this", I mean, I'd buy this if I had money to spare. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Hand gestures help tell the story...
No shit. But wait, there's more! They actually help you find the right words and access parts of the brain needed to remember the story. And here I thought you were telling me to fuck off. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Morse code still beats SMS
Clive points us to an interesting it-ain't-over-yet article about a 93-year-old telegraph operator pitted against a 13-year-old rival (named Brittany, no less) with a cell phone and an arsenal of text message shorthand. Stop. Guess who wins. Stop. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Boo!
A history of pop-up and movable books. There's just nothing like pop-up books for little kids. Their faces when something rises from the pages, are just priceless. Baby Ninja gets such a twinkle in his eye. He's like an elf. The little schnoogums. (Note to self: never write "little schnoogums" again or I will be forced to kill you. Sincerely, your public personality.) (From BoingBoing) (discuss) (Posted by George)

05/13/05:

One day more
Last chance to fill out the Bookninja survey today. Thanks to those who already have. A few things already become apparent and don't need further analysis to act on. Look for a larger font next week, if we can do it and maintain the integrity of the design. I love even my myopic readers, you old coots. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Do you like Kipling?
I don't know I've never kippled. LATimes reporter waxes eloquent on his stint as Mowgli and others at Disneyland in the 1960s.

Doc, the boss dwarf, would yell, "Crowd control!" We'd form a tight circle around the offender, hiding him from view, and start twirling in place. "Look, they're dancing!" someone in the crowd would inevitably exclaim. As we spun, the fake arms attached to the costume would rise from centrifugal force, repeatedly belting our trapped troublemaker, who'd think twice before messing with the dwarfs again.

(discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Hail! Hail! The witch is dead; she's really most sincerely dead
One of the little people, Meinhardt Raabe, now 89, has written his account of being the Munchkin coroner in The Wizard of Oz; Memories of a Munchkin. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Walmart co-opts Nazi Germany?
Gee that's so dumb it just might work. In an incredibly stupid ad campaign to win support for issues of corporate freedom, Walmart decides to use a Nazi-era book burning photograph to underpin its point. Apparently, the idea is working! (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Beloved Brick goes eBay
Start saving your money; Brick is taking manuscript pages to auction in a Canlit fundraiser. (discuss) (Posrted by Kathryn)

End of the written word?? <gasp!>
A professor predicts the end of writing and reading by 2050. Does this mean we'll just be left with spoken word? Eeep!

He points to the phonograph, telephone, television, video, movies, and instant and text messaging lingo as proof of our culture's unconscious rebellion against text.

He cites statistics that show that IQ scores worldwide are getting higher as literacy rates are plummeting. Children especially just don't want to learn to read and write, and this is not just for the socioeconomic reasons people tend to ascribe to it, he contends.

The end of reading and writing?! Over my dead body! Oh, wait... (From Q&Q) (discuss) (Posted by George)

Fifty, just make it to fifty...
Apparently, fifty is the magic age at which to publish a novel, if you're looking to go bestseller. (Which I know you're not. You care more about the art and the individual reader than fame and fortune, right? Um, fifty, you say, eh?) I wonder how these stats would look if they examined all writers rather than just the bestseller lists. I know plenty of fifty-year-old midlist novelists. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Penguin remixed
Get your hot marketing here! (discuss) (Posted by George)

The American government: keeping on truckin
The emboldened right in America is scary, sure, but what's more scary to me is the numbed left. The shock and awe of the last five years has left them catatonic, it seems, so things like this seem insignificant by comparison and pass without the howling shitstorm of controversy that should be stirred up.

What if Congress resurrected one of the most ill-conceived laws of the McCarthy era and nobody noticed? In 1952, the House and Senate passed the McCarran-Walter Act, which created an ideological litmus test for entry to the United States by barring foreigners with disfavored ideas or affiliations. The law denied admission to communists and anarchists, among others. For four decades, it was invoked to keep out hundreds of people, including writers (Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez), scholars (Belgian economist Ernst Mandel), politicians (Ireland's Gerry Adams, Nicaragua's Tomas Borge), and even a former NATO general (Italy's Nino Pasti). Congress repealed the McCarran-Walter Act in 1990 with great fanfare about eliminating thought-control at the border.

But an attachment to a bill that supplements funds for Iraq, passed by Congress and now on the president's desk, would allow the United States once again to keep out and to deport foreign nationals not for their conduct, but for their politics—their ideas, their speech, and the groups with which they associate.

(discuss) (Posted by George)

Adaptation
From the page to the stage is all the rage. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Nifty zine show
BoingBoing points us to a zine show in an art gallery. The hanging room is hot. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Speed reading with Bush
Bookslut points to a funny bit on Wonkette about Wubblewoo. Apparently he's STILL reading Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. Sound it out, Georgie. Mouthbreather. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Weekend Edition:

Haiku Night in Canada
For those of you still missing hockey -- if you even remember it -- Geist offers up a selection of hockey poems. (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

Sci-fi pirates
Sci-fi writer John Scalzi says stop worrying about online piracy already. Scalzi has made money in the past by selling his books as shareware, so it's an interesting take on things. He's also got some Jesus bumper stickers for you that are kind of fun. (From Boing Boing) (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

Max Ernst roundup
Max Ernst is one of my favourite artists, but I don't know much about his life. Thankfully John Updike is around to tell me about his menage a trois. Ah, artists. (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

Dracula -- the blog
It's too bad the site mentions everything's taken from the novel. If it wasn't for that, someone, somewhere out there may have thought this was real.

This blog will publish Bram Stoker's Dracula for the next six months. Individual pieces of the novel will appear on the calendar dates indicated in the text, starting with Jonathan Harker's May 3rd Bistriz journal entry, and finishing up with November 6 and the final Note.

(From Boing Boing) (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

Introducing the opera comic
Yes, that'll put bums in seats.

Despite having worked on his share of superhero comics, Kindzierski was eager to enter the world of opera, when prominent U.S. cartoonist and opera fan P. Craig Russell approached him for help creating comic book adaptations of famous operas. Russell has worked on a variety of projects, from Batman and Dr. Strange to fantasy titles like Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

Why not just do operas about comic books?

Kindzierski has already helped Russell create a comic book version of Richard Wagner's epic Ring Cycle for Dark Horse Comics. Looking to turn the tables around, he is also in talks with a composer about developing an opera featuring superheroes.

OK, I'd probably go to an opera about Dr. Strange. (discuss) (Posted by Peter)

A stylish, seductive Penguin
Whether or not you like the steps Penguin has taken recently, it still remains a strong cultural force.

Yet, for all its troubles at the top, the publisher can still boast a catalogue that does more than a dozen universities to widen our literary culture. After a wobble in the 1980s, when Penguin seemed to spurn its glorious past, the Classics and Modern Classics lists now look as stylish and seductive as ever. Kate Gibb's screenprint covers for H G Wells have just hauled a clutch of sci-fi masterpieces into the visual era of Spielberg rather than Korda. Meanwhile, two collections of short fiction by Donald Barthelme (Forty Stories and Sixty Stories) have done for this ex-teenage bookworm exactly what the Modern Classics list always used to accomplish.

(discuss) (Posted by Peter)

05/16/05:

Survey results...
Okay, the results are in and: you like us! You really like us! Give me a bit to run some stats on what we got (hundreds of responses, thank you). But one semi-common suggestion for improvement was to make the font bigger. (It's a matter of your screen resolution, people. Likely, those of you working on newer computers have a higher screen resolution and therefore things appear smaller to you. You probably also get a whole bunch of white space to the right of the skyscraper ad. If you had a lower screen resolution, you'd find things looked bigger and you'd likely have less white space. It's a please some of the people some of the time thing, but I thought I'd try it out.) I'm going to try this size for a few days. If you have an opinion on it one way or t'other, please feel free to post it here: (discuss). I personally think it looks like shiznit, so if after a bit my inner designer still hates it, I reserve the right to reverse the changes and force you old-fogies back to squinting. (Posted by George)

Where the hell do you get off?
That's my favourite transit joke. Sean Lerner will tell you for real though. He's written the guide book on where to stand to be most efficient on Toronto transit systems and here's his website for an insight into one man's adorable little obsessive compulsive disorder. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Literacy Idol
Ten almost good-looking wordies vote each other off the island, or, out of the Reference Library, Special Collections Reading Room based on who can get along best with whom using the most erudite vocabulary. Well, not exactly -- Canada Post has an initiative worth knowing about. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Poets -- aren't they all liars?
Fugitive poet, Norman Porter, Jr. wants to take a lie detector test to prove his innocence; victim's fiancee says she wants him to tell it to her face.

"I want him to be able to look me in the eye and say 'I swear I didn't do it,"' Wilcox said. "My eyes have brought up four kids. I can tell when you're lying."

No doubt Porter (uh, Junior) will get a manuscript out of this while he rots in prison. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

God speaks in mysterious ways
Thief pays his dues after reading Bible. (discuss) (Posted by Kathryn)

Teen Fictions
You mean like lying about your sex life? No, the invention of a teen author!

Shortly after a foreign publishing house bought the rights to my teen novel, I traveled from my home in Brooklyn to visit with them. I walked into the publisher’s office to find a kind-looking woman with boxy shoulders and spider limbs. She had me sit down across her desk and offered me a cup of water. After some forced chit-chat about my flight and hotel, she squinted in that discomfiting way that people preparing to speak their minds do. I braced myself for an awkward editorial suggestion — maybe she wanted me to include more kissy scenes or tone down all the drinking that takes place before lunch period.

“The thing I don’t understand,” she said instead, her voice more hesitant and quiet than before: “Why don’t you just write novels for adults?” I wanted to remind her that the sum her company paid for my book would have purchased four pages of an average adult novel, but I was too busy feeling dejected to respond. I mumbled some unintelligible half-apology and took the elevator down to the lobby.

Lady, the ninjas are going to have to give you some lessons on how "assert" yourself when people are so rude to you. It involves a lot of screaming, jumping in the air and kicking things! Waaaa! (discuss) (Posted by George)

Where's the novel headed?
Into the head. Moby's guest columnist looks at the future of the novel. (discuss) (Posted by George)

The bookless library
There's a great story about Robart's Library at U of T, and I was hoping someone could either confirm or debunk it for me. It seems that when it was being built, the engineers forgot to factor in the weight of the books and the university was forced to keep several floors book free. Urban legend? Confirm or deny? CONFIRM OR DENY? Let me know. Oh yes, and the U of Texas is getting rid of books from its library.* Yippiekiyay, muthafuckah! (discuss) (Posted by George)

Read this!
The Lit-blog Co-opers have selected their first Read This! title. Kate Atkinson's Case Histories (fabulous book) gets the nod over my selection from before I left the group, Michael Turner's The Pornographer's Poem. Fair enough. Case Histories is a great book by an extremely talented writer. Put enough books of that caliber in front of one jury and any winner is a good one. (discuss) (Posted by George)

Fight over New Writing
Remember the New Writing scam from Macmillan? Some sensible words from Old Man McCrum:

From a distance, this initiative might have been mistaken for a blue chip publisher's courageous act of patronage, part of the noble quest for new authors etc.

On closer inspection, the New Writing scheme suggested that the days of taste and literary discrimination at Macmillan are over. Worse, this wheeze appears to have emanated not from the deepest counsels of the editorial department, but from marketing and distribution. Old Daniel Macmillan must be spinning like a top.

The caption should read, "Somebody inform my mother!" (discuss) (Posted by George)

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