02/01/06:
Cross your fingers
Check back later this afternoon. I am trying working out the final kinks in the redesign and getting ready to switch us over. (discuss) (Posted by George)
01/31/06:
Copyright
for Dummies
Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of Duke Law school
have created a
comic book that explains copyright to filmmakers.
Will
a spiky-haired, camera-toting super-heroine vanquish the monster
of copyright greed and restore decency and common sense to the
world of creative endeavor?
Yes.
Yes. Vanquish greed. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Google reaches out
Communication is good. Google placates fears in
India.
Digitising
books is the online era’s equivalent of library “indexing”,
responds Anand. This is not intellectual property theft. Moreover,
if you “opt out”, your book won’t be put into computer
memory. So there’s no coercion.
Yes.
Yes. Vanquish greed. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
UK authors weigh in on what the kids should be reading
Andrew Motion says Homer's Odyssey, Pullman says Sendak, Rowling
says Harry Potter. Think
of the children, JK. Actually, here's
the list in full. Would have been nice to see Astrid Lindgren
on the list, especially for Ronia,
The Robber's Daughter, and maybe some George MacDonald,
Sutcliff and D'Aulaire. Or
50 Cent.(discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
01/30/06:
Lisa Moore
Wins
Commonwealth Prize [nomination] for Alligator. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
NEWSFLASH! POETRY DYING!!
Poetry
to become as quaint and annoying as something called morris dancing.
Of course, all this only matters if, a) you know what morris dancing
is, and b) you came into the whole thing thinking anyone cared about
your poems in the first place. There's not only a respectable humility
in realizing where things lie, popularity-wise, but a freedom as
well. It's like being a nerd in high school. The only ones that
are fun to tease are the ones who don't want to be nerds. The rest
of us are perfectly happy in the horn-rims and floods, thank you.
(discuss)
(Posted by
George)
Coetzee on translation
A
really interesting first person perspective from my favourite author
Coetzee. He ruminates on the roles in translating a work of
literary fiction, the translator's, his own, and that of his bilingual
readers, from whom he receives the most telling information about
translations he can't read himself. (From Maud)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
The Frey Incident: Chapter 157
One would think the thermonuclear strike known as The Frey Incident
(a new Sidney Sheldon novel) should be winding down. But it seems
the shockwaves are just starting to be felt in some circles. I believe
this is called "impact"
and this is called a "blast
radius".
And this is called "fallout".
And this is called "containment".
And this is called "half-life".
And this is called "nuclear
winter". (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The playwright mayor
Could
Dario Fo be the next mayor of Milan? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Hamilton reporter fights the police
I mean, it's no cracked-out beatdown, but he's fighting
for his profession. They're a tough bunch in Hamilton. You know,
except for their football team.... (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Rumsfeld's war on the mind has acceptable civilian casualties
American
propaganda document says US government doesn't really care if
Americans receive misinformation intended for foreign audiences,
so long as it doesn't specifically target them.
Obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security
Archive at George Washington University and posted on the Web
today, the 74-page "Information
Operations Roadmap" admits that "information intended for
foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly
is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa," but argues
that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes
more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information
dissemination practices."
Sweet
bunch, they are. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/27/06:
Comedy
Central
Maybe, in general, we have to see America ironically. In fact,
maybe we should refer to America as "America."
A high school student is not allowed to return to his school because
he, wait for it, made fun of some of the teachers. I ask, perhaps
naively, isn't this the entire point of high school? It certainly
was for me.
"Carroll
(The Book)," a 14-page publication, was modeled after comedian
Jon Stewart's book "America (The Book)." The boy's version
includes diagrams, profanity, photos and a picture of school Principal
Deb Neumeyer on the cover.
I
can just see the administration spluttering, 'Insubordination. This
boy needs reprimanding. This could lead to terrorist activities
later in life. Or worse. He could put an eye out.' (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Elmo inciting suicidal thoughts in small children
What's new about that, you might ask. Well, shit. It's just
a defective
potty training book, is all:
If
you listen closely to the voice command of character Baby David,
it sounds an awful lot like "who wants to die?"
"Some people find it really funny. It is, kind of, like,
well, maybe for you it is, but you really need to take into consideration
what it is telling these kids."
There's
a thought. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Chaplin on Chaplin
Jane
Chaplin has researched the biography of Charlie, the father she
barely knew. I like the premise of writing a biography, as opposed
to a memoir, of one's own father. It's so fresh, and also, with
regard to Chaplin, interesting in light of the general silence (groan)
of other family members.
Jane
Chaplin was 17 when she had her first proper conversation with
her aged father, the screen legend Charlie Chaplin, and now she
is writing a book about growing up with a man she hardly knew
but the world still recognizes as "The Little Tramp."
Entitled "Seventeen minutes with my father," it will
be the first book by any of the Chaplin children, she told Reuters
in a street cafe Cartagena on Colombia's Caribbean coast. She
has lived a life of leisure in the beautiful old port city for
three years since a brief affair with a Colombian.
(discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Oprah's apology and stir Frey
(Really, the big news here is that
Frey
is pronounced "fry"... How
droll.) Admit it, it feels good. She's admitting she
was wrong. And there's nothing wrong with feeling high-and-mighty
about it. So long as, you know, you don't discount the more basic
human urges as "undesirable".... So Oprah
has vivisected Frey on her show and exacted revenge on behalf
of the little people she lead into literature's Viet Iraq. Who do
you think her audience supports? The guy's not
even a recovering crackhead. He's a wanna be crackhead. That's
more Jerry Springer than it is Oprah. You know, the more I read
about it, the more I'm starting to feel the bastard was himself
duped by cash-hungry
publishing types eager to fit him in the genre-du-jour. I mean,
he DID try to sell it as fiction... Not excusing it, just pointing
it out. Another
opinion here. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Plagiarism: the other lying
Why, given the state of investigative journalism and the loss of
credibility involved, do
people continue to plagiarize? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Going out of print: as natural as death
And
as scary, I would think.
Consider,
then, the duration of copyrights. They've gone from 28 years renewable
to 56, then 28 renewable to 95, to life of the author plus 70.
Given the range of human lifespans and the extreme rarity of prepubescent
authors, you can pretty much figure that by the time a 95-year
copyright runs out, the author will be dead and gone, and any
offspring will have reached their majority. You can't exactly
draw a line, but somewhere in there, copyright stops being about
directly rewarding an author for his work. What's left is an intangible
time-travelling value: the hope of being read.
(From
BoingBoing) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Story Prize
Goes
to Patrick O'Keefe. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Awww...! Look at those
hangdog expressions! Let's buy them some presents!
Or rather, Oprah
hangs Jimmy out to dry (while not addressing any root issues
behind either the gaping maw that is her following or her role as
tosser of fish to these barking seals) in front of the same audience
for which she scrubbed him up and sent him out to dance. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/26/06:
Who's
poking the Canlit celebrities
Leah
McLaren went a-questing. Meet Dr Zhao, acupuncturist
to the stars:
Ms.
Sharpe believes Dr. Zhao, who has never advertised, has become
the acupuncturist to Toronto's literati by pure serendipity. "In
certain social circles people are just very open to talking about
their health," she says. "This is just something that's
happened to her. One person tells another person. It just so happens
the people are Michael Ondaatje telling Graeme Gibson telling
[the playwright] David Young."
This
article needed a photojournalist; pictures of our favourite Canadian
writers stuck full of pins. The mere idea is so...cool. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Encyclopaedia of Afghani
Jihad
Muslim
preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri has alot of explaining to do, and is
doing so in his trial.
Mr
Abu Hamza faces nine charges under the Offences Against the Person
Act 1861, which allege that he solicited others at public meetings
to murder Jews and other non-Muslims.
He faces four other charges under the Public Order Act 1986 of
"using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour
with the intention of stirring up racial hatred".
A further charge claims the defendant was in possession of video
and audio recordings which he intended to distribute to stir up
racial hatred.
Talk
about having the wrong book in your library. The weird thing is
that when I punched the title of the aggregious book into google,
I landed on a white supremicist website. Like attracts like, I guess.(discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
"The
secret life of a letter to the editor"
Apparently the
letter sold insurance and had three wives, one in Hoboken, one
in Portland, and one in St. Petersburg.
In
the current New Yorker is a letter to the editor from
Valerie Lawson, in response to Caitlin Flanagan’s December
19 article on Pamela Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins. Lawson
is the author of a biography of Travers, and her letter reads
like a relatively benign effort to make clear the decades-long
effort by Poppins scholars to tease out Travers’s elusive
life story. It did not begin that way, as this lengthy —
and not so benign — e-mail thread between Lawson and editors
at The New Yorker shows. The exchange offers a glimpse
at the sausage-factory aspect of how the magazine handles complaints,
and raises interesting questions about what journalists owe, in
terms of recognition, to their sources.
(From
Maud) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Biography news
An unusual glut. The ‡ winner
speaks out on what
it's like to write biography. Kate
Moss signs a deal to have hers penned (no word yet whether it
will contain details of the coked-out beating she laid down on seven
strapping NYPD officers on the streets of Bed Stuy). Donald Trump
gets his silk knickers
in a twist over one. And in the US, where they sue when the
whether is bad, two
people are suing James "Ol' Crackhead Jimmy" Frey
for "lost
time". I swear to God, the whole genre has gone
to the dogs. (One link in there from Bookslut)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
No more García Márquez
Gabriel
has laid down his pen. Presumably in favour of underage prostitutes.
(For fuck's sake, Guardian! Get a different file picture! I can
never tell if it's an article about Márquez
or Saddam Hussein.) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Canadian bad girl Eden Robinson
Interviewed
at the Ceeb. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Umlauts make you grumpy
Tell that to Mötley Crüe, muthafukkahs! WwaaaAAAaaaAAAaaaa!
They're the ones we called Dr. Feelgood! They're the ones that make
us feel all riiiiiiIIIIIght! (Germans
are a scowly lot because their language makes them that way.)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Nerfty!
Thumb
thing helps you read books one-handed. Perfect for those bothersome
tomes by "Anonymous"! (From BoingBoing)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/25/06:
Inside-outside
Why are we so obsessed? We've been freyed (I want credit for
that if it flies, George; keep your stinking paws off my coinage)
by a man who so wishes he were inside he lies about being outside,
damaging the reputation of both fiction and non-fiction; now, his
publisher has rounded up his old
hoodlum friends to testify that he's a bad-ass. Please. And
here's Alexandra
Gill tilting at George Fetherling, who calls himself an outsider
as if it's some badge of courage. And just as senselessly, she wants
to take it away, as if it really is a badge of courage. Can thinking
in this way ever evolve the human race? Get to work people. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
We are not amused
Prince Charles has publicly stated that his
secretary is lying in her new book, lying about the way he dips
his crumpet in his Earl Grey and then squeezes it out, lying about
the way he twines the hair on the crown of his head in anxious moments,
lying about his affection for organic bird millet; that everything
she's said, is, in fact, a lie. Oprah is investigating. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Happy birthday,
Lady Ninja!
One of the perks of having your own blog is that you get to
abuse it for personal reasons. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The new culture minister?
"Culture"
minister? I have my eyes tightly closed and am peeking through
my fingers, horror film-style. Canada is the bimbo teen who just
heard a noise down in the basement and decided to go investigate
armed with a faulty flashlight and a wooden spoon, bare
knees bent in and shaking. "Hello..? Who's down there..?"
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
America's future not completely in jeopardy
US law students (!) lead a very simple, very
effective protest against the decline of American civil liberties.
Bravo. (Lawyers are so cute when they still care.) (From BoingBoing)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Matisse bio wins ‡ Award
Over
stellar poet Christopher Logue's Cold Calls, the fifth volume
in his reworking of the Iliad. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Gold barf
The fact that they stand to make $300G off this
lump of puke is enough to make me throw up with jealousy. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The end of Canadian publishing?
Stephen
Henighan wonders if bookstores are to blame. Can't say I buy
his argument, but it's entertaining enough.
If the agent is right, we are
currently living through the dismantlement of Canadian publishing.
Evidence supporting this view is not in short supply. Publishers,
to survive, need bookstores. The 2004 statement of Heather Reisman,
whose Chapters–Indigo chain controls 70 percent of the Canadian
bookselling market, that “our goal has always been to get
as close to the Wal-Mart level of excellence as we could,”
suffices to tell us where our bookstores are going. The dominance
of Chapters–Indigo forces independents and smaller chains
to reproduce the “Wal-Mart level of excellence” in
order to compete. During three quick trips to Alberta, Saskatchewan
and Manitoba in 2004 and 2005, I observed that the selection of
books for sale in the once well-stocked and engaging stores of
the McNally Robinson group was growing thinner and thinner, just
like the selection in Chapters.
(From Maud)
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Annie Proulx on Brokeback
Mountain
Read
the headline. Now read the third paragraph. Now read this
New Yorker cartoon. Now read this
one. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
How William Gibson discovered
science fiction
Beautiful
ending, as always.
What I wanted was to attain the
world of The Time Machine, the Morlocks' garden. Wells's Victorian
future nightmare had become a favorite fantasyland, for me. Because
it existed so far up the timeline as to be beyond history, and
history, once acknowledged, had quickly become a sort of nightmare,
one from which there seemed to be no escape.
History, I was learning, there at the start of the nineteen-sixties,
never stops happening.
(From Boing
Boing) (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
01/24/06:
Hey,
Alberta! You suck!
Sorry, just had to get that out of my system before moving on.
They say the arts flourish under conservative/totalitarian
regimes, but how anything can flourish in that bloody
desert of the mind, I'll never know. Dear American liberal friends:
I'll can the high-and-mighty superiority complex now. I'm sorry,
we let you down. (From Bookslut)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
In related news: Hey, Ontario! You suck too!
You know, I've always been ashamed that we inherit US
policy the way we do. Partly because US policy sucks, and partly
because we're so slow on the draw. Six years after Wubblewoo
was appointed president, we get his kid brother. So sad. And I blame
it all on World War II. You fucking baby boomers. Yes, I'm railing
against my parents. This means you, Dad. I'm so gonna stony-silence
you when I see you next. Crossed arms and heavy sighing. You just
wait. It'll be 16 all over again. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Awards news
Commonwealth shortlist announced: Moore, Ravel, Urquhart, and GEC
nominated,
among others. And in kids awards, the
Newbery and Caldecott announced. And speaking of awards...
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Oi! Wots all vis wif ve 'oity-toity reeeeding, ven?
12
million British workers can barely read. Hey, what's the population
of Alberta, again? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Now that's poetry... on the way!
Buses
in Pittsburgh get poetry. All over them. Much like the vomit
in New York. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
A million little angles
How
can they come at Frey next? That's how you know you've written
a good book. It can be dissected on a number of levels. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Cannes opener
Further proof that the modern film festival has lost all relevance:
Da
Vinci Cash to open Cannes. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Lawsuit against erroneous dictionary
And
Peter's not involved. (From Maud)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/23/06:
Librarian
lines
Carrie Tiffany, author of Everyman's
Rules for Scientific Living, writes
on 'seems' and 'is' in the Aussie desert.
Books
were scarce in the desert. The national park I worked on was serviced
by a tourist resort that sold flyspray and wafer-thin boomerangs
made in China. It did not sell books. The nearest books were in
a library 400 kilometres away. I rang the library and joined up
as a remote reader. Books would be sent out to me every month
on one of the tourist buses. I couldn't access the catalogue so
a librarian would choose the books on my behalf. My librarian
was called Merv. I wrote him a note with a summary of my tastes.
But I was 20 - it was the summary of a taste for something I had
never eaten.
Maybe
we don't all need therapists; maybe we need librarian mentors. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
What separates me from you?
If every government in the world becomes extremely conservative
in its world view, what does separate me from you? This is terrifying
news, here. An
Osama bin Laden backed book has become a bestseller. What can
I say? Watch out Oprah? By the way, the author of the book, William
Blum, is still having trouble getting to Cuba. Here's
an interview with him on the topic of bin Laden's new talk show.
(discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Turkish government set to be more progressive than Canadian
Pamuk's
out of hot water. Turkey
enters the 20th C. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The pleasures of texting
Illustrated, of course, with a photo of women who would never text
you. Text
porn. Great. Just great. On the eve of the selling of our national
soul to an inbred bigot, we now have to deal with text porn. If
anyone needs me, I'll be out on the firing range dodging the bullet-free
spaces. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Fightened of the Ninjas, Jimmy-boy?
Frey
cancels Toronto appearance. He's
running scared. From the thought of a Conservative
government. Liars
can't stand each others' company. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
NYT looks at Bush's ballast
What books has Wubblewoo been carrying this year? And what
message do they send to the world? They say, Georgie-boy has
arms strong enough to carry this book around. They say, this is
what Uncle Dick's people say he should show around. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Irving's London obit
In
the Guardian. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Christopher Logue
Profiled.
Awesome, awesome poet. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Weekend
Edition:
HarperCollins blogs
The Literary Saloon points to some new
blogs from HC, which look pretty interesting. They already led
me to this site on book covers
and this
site on book binding. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
The state of Aussie fiction
All is not well down under. Then again, maybe it's in great shape.
Depends
on your tastes, it seems.
Over the past few years we've
been told it's mediocre and there's too much of it being published;
it's overly concerned with historical and exotic themes; there's
not enough of it reflecting contemporary life, politics and economics;
it wears insipid pastel covers; it's fey, solipsistic, parochial,
difficult, not difficult enough; people don't buy it and readers
don't read it; and now, perhaps unsurprisingly given this litany
of complaints, publishers are retreating from publishing it.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
How'd They Vote
If you're still uncertain about which party to vote for in Monday's
federal election -- "Hmm, am I evil? Good? Or just plain neutral?"
-- then this site may help
you. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Vote with your mind not
your wallet
The
Harper Conservatives are hiding their loudmouth candidates.
Harper has figured out how to appear 'bland.' Canadians like bland.
We live for bland. The
Conservatives have sequestered their anti-abortion, misogynistic,
racist candidates and are trying to make this party look like a
middle-of-the-road, sensible choice for a good, strong, accounting-style
government. It's got Margaret Wente fooled (who says you can't
fool the fool?). It's got a lot of stay-at-home mums fooled (re:
childcare policy).
The truth is, with Harper we won't get what we want (i.e. bland),
we'll get something far,
far other.
Will America return to the culture
that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western
culture? Or will we continue the long slide into the cultural
and moral decay of political correctness? If we do, America, once
the greatest nation on earth, will become no less than a third
world country.
Judeo-Christian? Hello? Get your
heads out of the sand. These are the people who want Harper to win.
Call your waffling parents. Call your culturally- shielded aunt.
Plead. On hands and knees. For the sake of bland, tell them, do
not vote Conservative. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
01/20/05:
More on the
Sony Reader
Wired
has a detailed piece on Sony's new e-book reader, including
pics and an explanation of how the E Ink technology works. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
The year ahead in the book
biz
Publishers
are discovering this Internet thingy.
If 2005 showed one thing, it was
that the web continues to explode in terms of importance to the
book industry. Matthew Shear, senior vice president and publisher
of St. Martin’s Press, summed it up: “We need to be
[on the web] with our books, our ads, our blogs, our promotions
and whatever it may be.”
In 2005, a website called TheNamelessNovel.com
used interactive trivia, games and promotions to combine many
of these aspects and promote the latest Lemony Snicket novel from
HarperCollins. In 2006, HarperCollins plans to continue this trend
to promote the 13th and final Snicket title, said Jim McKenzie,
director of online marketing for HarperCollins Children’s
Books. As long as Internet promotions “reach consumers and
create community,” Jane Friedman said, “experimenting
and being innovative will continue into 2006.”
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Look out, Oprah
It's
the Amazon talk show!
With "Amazon Fishbowl With
Bill Maher," Amazon.com Inc. is trying to blend commerce
with entertainment, much as Starbucks Corp. sells CDs and DVDs
alongside coffee to position its brand as a lifestyle. In an e-commerce
twist on movie and TV product placement, Amazon will place links
to buy the works discussed during the show beside the program's
display window.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
What
does a book sound like?
That depends on whether it's one of my volumes of poetry
or the Lowell Collected... ("Pif" or "THUD"
respectively...)
this
is the first time he has had to ponder what
a footnote sounds like. But the industry increasingly has
to address such vexing one-hand-clapping questions: What does
an illustration sound like? Or a chart? A map? A photograph? A
blank page?
There
are a few things left unconsidered here: dog ears, coffee rings,
and the occasional fallen beard hair among them. Oh, hell, it would
all be so much easier if we just skipped audio and made books TV.
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Poe circus sends in the clowns
I remember the first time I read
about this, maybe five or six years ago, I thought, once word
gets out, this will turn into a circus. Now the clowns are ruining
some goth's party. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Carol Ann Duffy
Winner of the Eliot, profiled.
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Speaking of poetry...
A former "student" of mine, James Reid has a poem in the
Guardian poetry workshop. Way to go, Jim! (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Peter Pan II: The Recopyrighting
The
sequel is coming October 5th of this year. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Purty book
1922's Ulysses by some no-name hack is the most
valuable novel of the 20th C. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Potter thief gets time in Azkaban
Four-and-a-half
years? The journalist should get half that himself for being
a fucking idiot. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Naughty librarian week
Only a week!? Can
television get any better? (Thanks, Tate) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
How things have changed
Google
Earth captures a picture of a flying antique once used for "photo-reconnaissance
duties". (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The right takes out bounty on the left
See
this article. Continue your reading with the post below. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The church of Stephen
Harper
Ninja reader Paul pointed out some interesting tidbits on the
website of the church (Christian & Missionary Alliance)
to which Conservative
leader, and presumptive Prime Minister, Stephen
Harper belongs. Paul did a
search on the term "women" which turned up this page of
results . Click anything to have the Holy Bejesus scared out
of you. But for a real scare click point #5 (Role of Women in Ministry
- page 61) which will open a
Word document that will knock your socks off. I pulled a couple
choice quotes, in case you don't want to sully your computer with
the download (emphasis is mine).
THE
ROLE OF WOMEN IN MINISTRY
From its inception the Alliance leadership has interpreted Scripture
to affirm the woman’s right in the apostolic church to be the
channel of spiritual gifts for the edification of the local assembly.
Furthermore, Alliance leadership has historically affirmed a
restraint upon the woman’s role in the government of
the local church. The Board recognizes that the Holy Scriptures
teach the following principles.
BASIC SCRIPTURAL PRINCIPLES OF WOMEN IN MINISTRY
1. Authority and Submission. It is recognized that God has sovereignly
ordained, in the order of creation and redemption, relationships
of authority and submission. “Christ is the head of every man
and the man is the head of woman and God is the
head of Christ” (I Corinthians 11:3). The nature of authority
is modelled in the humility and self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ
(Philippians 2:5-11). The goal of authority is to build up the
household of faith (II Corinthians 13:10). Submission
to authority is noble and gives substance to unity (Ephesians
4:1-6).
4. Eldership. It is recognized
that the historical and biblical pattern has been that elders
in the church have been men. The weight of evidence would
imply that this pattern should continue.
Why isn't this being reported on
the national news? It would be interesting to see what other keyword
searches turn up. If you're a swing voter and you go Harper, you're
going to regret it. Mark my words. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/19/05:
More author podcasts
Tattered Covers has started a site
for downloadable author readings. It has some good
names coming up. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
The New Yorker and slow
design
Timeless
or exasperating? I'll go with timeless myself. (From Maud)
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Atwood on the election
Oh,
yeah, and she's got more new books coming out. (From Quill)
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
01/18/06:
A Million Little Pieces
actually a memoir of Grand Theft Auto session
God bless the
Onion. (From Bookslut)
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Stephen King ringtones
I'm
waiting for the Stephen King vibration alerts myself. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Charles Taylor prize shortlist
Yeah,
it's a great time for memoirs to be nominated.... (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Joseph
Sherman obit
David Helwig remembers poet and cultural philanthropist Joe
Sherman in the Globe and Mail. (Thanks, Z) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Ah, the 18th of the month...
The day that marks the longest possible time before the hammer-like
pendulum of inevitability known as "big banking" swings
back round to clock me for another massive student loan payment.
How romantic.
See, that's my cheap-assed segue into romance
posts. Really. I can't think of anything else to say about the entire
genre. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
On the short story
Ang Lee's adaptation of Proulx's masterful story is leading a revival
of interest in the short story. Okay, I made that up. But the wee
dear things are getting some
good press.
The
Irish short fiction writer Frank O'Connor once noted that the
difference between the short story and the novel is "the difference
between pure and applied storytelling". The short story is the
adaptation of the primitive art of communicating experience by
telling a tale. Walter Benjamin, in his essay The Storyteller,
lamented the fall in value of experience, attributing it to dependence
upon information as communication. Information, he says, "doesn't
survive the moment in which it was new". Narrative achieves an
amplitude that information lacks: it can live forever.
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
CSM jumps right on that Frey story
Ah, the CSM... the daily that reads like a weekly. But seriously,
is there anything
left to say? Yes.
When the Christian papers are crucifying you, you're pretty much
facked. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Weapons... Energy... I can see how you might make that mistake...
CNN "mistranslated"
a comment by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (and possible
next US-deposed world leader), quoting him as saying that Iran had
the right to build "nuclear weapons"... Of course, this
had to be re-translated before it was passed on to Wubblewoo. "Now
Georgie, I want you to concentrate very hard. Look me in the eyes
when I'm speaking. The EYES, Georgie... Sit still, now. Good boy.
Iran is trying to build, and I quote, 'nukular weapons'. Do you
follow me? 'Nukular.' 'Nuuuukularrr.' Okay... good boy. Now... sic
'em!" (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Douglas Coupland designs a park
With
plenty of places to sit and feel dejected. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
McSweeney's folk do something wrong
Video magazine Wolphin (a cross between a Wolp and a Hin) not
working out already. Uncool, unpublished writers everywhere
dancing in gleeful schadenfreude. (From Bookslut)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Can't we all just get along?
Dudes, if this
shit can go down in a zoo with tiny-brained varmints, imagine
the possibilities for "higher"
forms of life. Like sea monkeys and Mensa members. (Seriously though,
I hope we get an update when the snake casually gobbles up it's
best pal without a second thought. Anthropomorphize that, suckah.)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/17/06:
Save
the Wales
They're big, they're blubbery and they're practically extinct;
Welsh
literary classics are being reprinted:
The
Library of Wales series aims to re-print books about Wales written
during the 20th Century which are either out-of-print or difficult
to obtain. The books have new-look covers even though they are
classics
A list of 20 has been drawn up by historian and culture writer
Professor Dai Smith. Each book has been given a new foreword by
contemporary Welsh writers, including Prof Smith.
(discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Ashes
to ashes dust to dust
How
developers are destroying history one condo at a time. Okay,
that's a little reactionary but still. The poor, wee, little books.
Think on the books, ye shiteholes!
The recent prosperity and development of the capital of Ireland
is causing major problems for one of the city's most venerable
institutions, the library of Trinity College, Dublin.
The university has discovered to its dismay that a quarter of
a million books, many of them irreplaceable and dating from the
earliest days of print, have been damaged by building dust.
News
like this make me want to cough; I mean, cry. Cry. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Michiko on Frey
And
everyone else, like a truth seeking hybrid of missile/wolverine.
We
live in a relativistic culture where television "reality shows"
are staged or stage-managed, where spin sessions and spin doctors
are an accepted part of politics, where academics argue that history
depends on who is writing the history, where an aide to President
Bush, dismissing reporters who live in the "reality-based community,"
can assert that "we're an empire now, and when we act, we create
our own reality." Phrases like "virtual reality" and "creative
nonfiction" have become part of our language. Hype and hyperbole
are an accepted part of marketing and public relations.
There's
no denying she's, as we call our son, a smartycakes. And
in related news: glutton for punishment, or thumbing her nose? Oprah
picks another memoir for her
book club. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Award news
Carol
Ann Duffy wins the Eliot for poetry for her Rapture.
Arundhati
Roy says no to an Indian Award. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
It's not just the call centre employee listening to you rant...
It's
their computer too. EwEwEwEwEeeeew! (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The Empire's assault on Bloggin 2 has begun
Help us
all, God
will. (First link from Slushpile)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
If poets named breakfast cereals
Sigh.
If only we could make that much money. (From Bookslut)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Review editors discover
blogs!
The Literary Saloon points to a couple of blogs
run by lit editors at newspapers. It'd be nice to have a full
list of blogging newspaper types, but I haven't seen anything yet.
Anyone know any others? See also the Guardian's Culture
Vulture, which directed my attention to the interesting Friday
Project, which turns blogs into books. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Free book a day
The Mad Professor points
out Project Gutenberg now has an RSS
feed listing its new titles. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
OW — Out of Whack
(or Oprah-Worthy)
The L.A. Times proposes a handy ratings
guide for memoirs to prevent future Frey fiascos. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
01/16/06:
Blogging writers
Log-jamming the tributaries of creativity with their putrid
decaying bodies. Or something
like that. Or not. What day is this? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
You have only yourself to blame, Oprahtomotons
It's
the readers done did it, see? You're off the hook again, Jimmy
boy!
There
is, however, a deeper issue worth considering buried in all this
pop-cultural titillation: Why are people so easily victimized
by this sort of emotional con man? For some years, book publishing,
television and — more recently — a growing segment
of the news media have been sinking deeper and deeper into a particularly
fetid sinkhole carved by two social currents that now dominate
our collective lives.
Why
don't you celebrate with a wine spritzer and maybe a drive by insulting
of some old lady. Gentlemen! To Evil! (discuss)
(Posted by George)
A dream come true, OED-style
Imagine
finding yourself cited in the OED. This guy came up with "Nixonism".
My best neologism is still "douché" -- what you
say when conceding defeat to an asshole. But do you think THAT will
get in? NooOOOoo! (discuss)
(Posted by George)
National Book Critics Circle Award shortlist announced
Orhan Pamuk, Vikram Seth, and ... wait
for it... Joan Didion, are on the list. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
I say we must take a stand now! Raise your voices with me, brothers
and sisters: "No to tablets without psychotropic effect!"
The
future of reading. Think Star Trek. But clunkier. And on a rental
basis, most likely. Sigh. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The year of Ibsen
The
long, slow year of Ibsen. I guess I just don't get these big
budget musicals with their flashing lights, soundtracks and laser
beams. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
How to make a million off poetry
As
told by what appears to be a relative of Frodo Baggins.
Don't all click at once now, y'hear? We don't want to put the Beeb
servers out of sorts with a massive traffic flow of hungry poets.
Filthy Bagginses. (From Brenda)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
My inner nerd is all stiff and engorged with blood
Ahh... The term "hyperspace"
in a serious article. Now we're getting somewhere. Pleasepleaseplease
in my lifetime? Purtyplease? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Waiting
for the new Gutenberg
The
Guardian says e-books are going to take over the market sooner rather
than later. I was fine with that until Bill
Gates started talking.
For the demagogues at Microsoft
and Google, the future is a place where we will all be wandering
around with "tablets" onto which extracts of the entire
human literary output can be downloaded. Like an iPod for books.
"Within four or five years,
instead of spending money on textbooks," Mr Gates said recently
about students, "they'll spend a mere $400 or so buying that
tablet device and the material they hook up to will all be on
the wireless internet with animations, timelines and links to
deep information. But they'll be spending less than they would
have on textbooks and have a dramatically better experience."
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Some things never change
Like
Canadians not reading Canadian books.
Not one Canadian book was among
the top 20 sellers in that pre-Christmas season, a very important
time for the retail book market. Mass-market books from foreign
authors dominated. The top seller was A Million Little Pieces
by U.S. author James Frey. Second was Guinness World Records
2006 and third was Whiteout by British-based writer
Ken Follett. The highest-ranked Canadian book, in 23rd spot, was
Race Against Time, a series of Massey Lectures by Stephen
Lewis, the UN's African AIDS envoy.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Children of the corn
Jessa Crispin wonders what happened to all the adults in literature.
Boredom during a Chicago winter
can lead to all sorts of odd behavior, like rearranging furniture
for hours on end, as if the right feng shui will make the sun
burst through the clouds. I finally settled on moving the bookcase
of unread books into the bedroom to give myself reason to get
out of bed in the cold, cold morning; then I started going through
the books as I removed them from the shelves. There was The
Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. Ali Smith's The
Accidental. Galt Niederhoffer's A Taxonomy of Barnacles.
Dara Horn's The World to Come. Evan Kuhlman's Wolf
Boy. Amanda Boyden's Pretty Little Dirty. David
Mitchell's Black Swan Green. They all had one obvious
thing in common: the adolescent protagonist.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
01/13/06:
Vote
Canadian Arts
Nice website. Now let's
get some votes. The stack of five dirty loonies really captures
it, eh? (Thanks, Paul) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Joining the Frey
NYT
comments:
The
memoir is, indeed, a loose and slippery genre - as loose and slippery
as memory itself. And there's a difference, even in publishing,
between the lies we tell about ourselves and the lies we tell
about others. It is a rare publisher that troubles to fact-check
an author's claims, especially in times when proofreading can
seem like too much trouble. But Doubleday's defense of Mr. Frey
isn't about the author or the genre. It's about the audience's
response.
Also,
it looks as though future
editions will carry a warning. Perhaps they should have a picture
of a set of eviscerated black lungs over half the cover. This is
all well and good, but I think we're losing sight of the real tragedy
here: we're all too
late to help Oprah. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Irving gets his NYT obit
Here.
(I thought our country's highest honour was scoring a goal against
Russia in international hockey. You know, like five of them. You
learn something new every day.) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
I think Apollo really needs to proton torpedo Starbucks
Send
in the Cylons. Starbucks
has gone mad with power. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
That's right, just Kathryn.... like Madonna, or Prince...
Ninja K's The
Nettle Spinner chosen as a
January Magazine Best of 05. Way to go, Kathryn! (discuss)
(Posted by George)
LAT gets a Tan
Amy
Tan to assume LAT Magazine literary editorship. (From Bookslut)
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Me! Me! Oh! Oh! Me! Pick ME!
Bloomsbury
is looking for a target to drop their Potter earnings on...
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/12/06:
FTBITTTD
Neal Pollack's updated
his previous
commentary on James Frey.
It's been a hard life because
the cops won't start--I mean stop--beating me up. The other day,
I spilled coffee on the passenger seat of my 2006 BMW Convertible.
That pissed me off so much that I stopped off at the closest Catholic
church and hired a bunch of bums to gang-rape a nun. That's how
much of a bad-ass I am.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
More literary hoaxes
The CBC has a
roundup of other notable literary frauds. Not that James Frey
thinks there's
anything wrong with making things up in a memoir. Why should
he when
his publisher doesn't care? (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
It's my democracy and you
can't have it
The
White House won't let author, William Blum, attend a book fair in
Cuba. Ironically, his book is called Killing
Hope.
Killing Hope, translated into
Spanish and published by Editorial Oriente, is a detailed account
of the involvement of the Pentagon, the US State Department and
the CIA in diverse parts of the world spanning from the end of
the Second World War until the mid-1990s.
It's weird, you know; the US government
is rarely so short-sighted in these matters. Here's what you do,
Mr Blum. You buy a ticket to Toronto and then fly to Cuba from here.
You can even stop over and have dinner at my place; meet the kids,
see my photos of Havana (nice town, btw, though a little run down
what with all the sanctions and the fall of communism). (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Oprah figures out what to say
Phew. I knew she'd come through. Fast
on the ball, that one; hey, I wonder how many committee members
it took to come up with the 'Oprah'
reaction. Wait for it; yes, here it comes:
"What is relevant is that
he was a drug addict ... and stepped out of that history to be
the man he is today and to take that message to save other people
and allow them to save themselves," Winfrey said Wednesday
night in a surprise phone call to CNN's Larry King, who was interviewing
Frey on his live television program.
Yup. What is relevant is that he
was a drug addict. Yup. Yup. That's it. I liked the term 'emotional
truth'. It feels true so it must be true? (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Manga meets Buddha
This
sounds way cool. Deepak Chopra just got richer and way, way
cooler.
The biggest question on people’s
minds is this: will Deepak Chopra write comics? “Absolutely,”
he replies. “I have a novel I am writing right now on the
life of Buddha that we are going to also create a graphic novel
out of. It's a wonderful story and as my son likes to remind me,
the story of Buddha "pre-enlightenment" - so their is
action and lust and rage and so many of the elements that inspire
an epic. I'm planning on telling many more stories via this medium
as well.”
(discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Stamp news
The
biggest stamp mosaic. What can I add to that? (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
01/11/06:
Random House offers refunds
on A Million Little Pieces
For
customers who bought the book directly from the publisher anyway.
Random House will offer a refund
to readers who bought James Frey's drug and alcohol memoir "A
Million Little Pieces" directly from the publisher, a move
believed to be unprecedented, after the author was accused of
exaggerating his story.
Readers calling Random House's
customer service line to complain on Wednesday were told that
if the book was bought directly from the publisher it could be
returned for a full refund. Those who bought the book at a bookstore
were told to try and return it to the store where it was bought.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Short Story 101
The
Danforth Review asked a bunch of Canuck writers what short stories
they would teach in an introductory course. I avoided the question
by proposing a different course, but other writers had some nice
choices -- both expected and unexpected. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
The Sony Portable Reader
System
Sony's
latest e-book reader wants to be the iPod of books, and it may be.
Publishers certainly seem to think so, as Random House and HarperCollins
will sell books through Sony's Connect store. Unfortunately, their
Connect store only works with Internet Explorer 5.5 and up, so who
knows if the store is any good? Still, I'm intrigued by the reader.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Quill
& Quire news
If you walked into your local independent bookstore and complained
loudly about Quill and Quire
being late on the stands and then walked out furious (well, okay,
disappointed), here's some advise: ask the clerk at the front desk
for help. No, it isn't filed in the back row of a ten foot tall
magazine rack anymore. It's changed format. Meet the new, compact,
forest- friendly Quill
& Quire. You won't have to sully your fingers on the LRC to
get it, nor will you have to ask to borrow a step ladder. It's easy
to store and it looks great. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Publisher to public:
please continue to buy this book
Doubleday
and Anchor say it really doesn't matter if Frey
is lying. I wouldn't think so either if, you know, it didn't
say "memoir" on the spine. A few weeks back, before this
story broke, I overheard a couple of Oprah clones in Bookcity on
Bloor St talking about the book. "Have you read it?" one
asked. "It's terrible. Awful writing. And he's
full of shit." I guess some
saw it coming. Maybe we should have a contest to come up with
a new category name for books
like Frey's... "Fictoir", or "Memtion",
or "Autolieography" or something. Any ideas? (Last link
from Bookslut, second last
sent in by Alex) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Using language as makeup for your ugly face
"Ethnic cleansing" is used to avoid "genocide",
extraordinary rendition" is used to avoid "kidnapping
for the purposes of torture".
BEYOND
any shadow of a doubt, the ugliest phrase to enter the English
language last year was "extraordinary
rendition". To those of us who love words, this phrase's brutalisation
of meaning is an infallible signal of its intent to deceive.
I
guess it's not really fashionable anymore to point out similarities
with 1984, is it? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Treasure island
Poetry is an island unto itself. A rich fucking island thanks to
Ruth Lilly. What
now? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Pamuk primer
Feel guilty for not giving a shit about the whole Pamuk thing? Now's
your chance to get caught up on watercooler
fodder. Who am I kidding. Look behind you. Carefully! You don't
want to let them know you're looking. Do you think those people
talk about anything but Survivor at the watercooler? That's the
reason you're excluded, brainiac. You're alone. Alone and trapped
in a job you can barely stand with people you disdain. Admit it.
Then the healing can begin. Now, quietly rise from your desk and
gather your mildewy tomes for break. Go spend some quality social
time with your pal Proust. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Now, isn't it ironic?
Alanis
to publish self-help book. It's about how to help yourself.
And helping oneself to a self-helping of help. Oh, songstress! Heal
thyself! (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Like Prince, Bogman wore hairgel to make himself look taller
Turns out the whole A
Flock of Seagulls movement started much
earlier than previously thought. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
James Frey to appear
on Larry King Live tonight.
Or
so he claims.
Bridget Leininger of CNN said
Tuesday that Frey would not be interviewed for the entire hour-long
program, but otherwise did not discuss details. Alison Rich, a
spokeswoman for publisher Doubleday, and Frey spokeswoman Lisa
Kussell both declined comment.
Frey's book has sold millions
of copies and made him a hero among recovering addicts, but an
investigative Web site has alleged substantial inaccuracies, with
inflated claims about his criminal record and about his involvement
in an accident that killed two high school students.
Hmm,
wonder if all this will affect the film, er, adaptation. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Can newspapers really use
author photos?
My
job is getting all too complicated these days.
Harris, who has shot for The New
York Times, Time, and Newsweek, is suing the Knight Ridder owned
newspaper for using one of his photographs in a book review.
The San Jose Mercury News filed
a motion for summary judgment, which argued that taking copyrighted
photographs to accompany book reviews is a common practice at
other major newspapers and that the action was legal under the
"fair use" defense.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Look out, Amazon
Google
may be opening an online bookstore. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
01/10/06:
"A living, growing
thing"
The
canon is dead.
Since it first appeared in 1962,
"The Norton Anthology of English Literature" has remained
the sine qua non of college textbooks, setting the agenda for
the study of English literature in this country and beyond. Its
editor, therefore, holds one of the most powerful posts in the
world of letters, and is symbolically seen as arbiter of the canon.
With the publication of the anthology's
newest edition this month, Norton is marking a significant generational
shift: after more than 40 years as founding and general editor,
M. H. Abrams, a leading scholar of Romanticism, is handing the
reins over to Stephen Greenblatt, a Shakespeare scholar and Harvard
professor.
Long live the canon. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Will
kidlit revive the post office
As burning a question as, Will kids ever put down their Gameboys
and play post office again? America
has cool new stamps. Too bad no one actually uses the mail anymore.
No. I mean that. It is too bad. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Papa Hem and the beeg Ceegar
Cuba
has allowed a lecturer from Wales access to a Cuban archive on Hemingway.
Philip
Melling, a reader in the department of American studies, has been
given permission to study research conducted by Cuban writers
and academics over the past 40 years.
Sounds
like Fidel is loosening up in his old age. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Literature is alive in the cracks and corners
Like
mildew. Someone get an old toothbrush!
This
isn't the first time I've seen a red flag. Ten years ago, Lewis
Lapham heralded the death of literature in a published letter
to his nephew (an aspiring writer) in Harper's magazine. I wondered
then, as I do now: Could this be true? I've always found literacy
and literature outside the mainstream and in the private corners
and cracks of society. Below Manhattan, in the city's subway system,
you can find more readers of classical and contemporary literature
than you can in all the city's libraries. I wonder how the report
might have come out had New York City subway riders been tested.
Dudes,
if you're merely talking about "print", I say, yes, it'll
remain alive in the subways of New York. But the grimy issues of
the New York Post and tattered movie posters don't count as literature.
Seriously, even if the margins ARE the ones holding up the
roof, shouldn't we be worried that there aren't enough walls? They
ARE the misfits, after all, not the masses. Should we be
shifting our save-the-whales rhetoric about "the death of literature"
to "the death of society's outcasts"? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
And in related doom and gloom news
The reading
crisis is whack, yo. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
I'm betting the dog won't talk
about the five hamburgers, the quick stop at the intern's desk,
and the briefcase full of non-sequential, unmarked bills...
I kid. Kid, because I love. I love my decadent Democrats, just as
much as I despise my decadent Republicans. Ted Kennedy has "written"
a
children's book about a dog that follows his senator around
for a day. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Reading the post-LANGUAGE poets
Joan Houlihan, everyone's favourite American pot-stirrer (we have
our own up here), tries
to read three books of LANGUAGE poetry. Hilarity ensues.
The
lag time between the appearance of an original, culturally significant
art form and the culture’s ability to apprehend it has a
long, well-documented history. It was during such time that we
laughed when Pollock spattered his canvas, covered our ears upon
hearing Bob Dylan’s croaky tunes, or tossed our first Ashbery
onto the floor in frustration. Then we caught up to, marveled
at, enjoyed these expansions of our aesthetic pleasures. A history
of the creative arts, along with the development of our own taste
and ability to enjoy them, teaches us that we are less likely
to appreciate something new than we are to reject it, often to
our subsequent embarrassment. We learn that prudence should prevail
in the face of the new. After all, no one among us wants to be
seen as the historical ass, one who, like Edmund Wilson, complains
about the “impenetrability” of Henry James only to
be shown decades later that the only impenetrability was that
of Wilson’s brain. We may even learn to welcome the new
as a freshening process. Failing that, we can tell ourselves that
“history will take care of it” in the same way a wronged
believer is comforted by the idea that “God will judge”
when there seems to be no earthly justice. There’s no understanding
now, but surely, someone, somewhere, at some future time will
understand—and that’s enough. Isn’t it?
Not really. Not when it
comes to three decades, and counting, of Language, post-structuralism-influenced,
neo-surrealist, post-avant poems. Such poems are not simply mutating
from one type of impenetrability to another; they are multiplying
fiercely. In fact, the 2004 Best American Poetry was positively
swarming with them. It’s time to create a swarm-free space
where we can evaluate them, hold them to account, appreciate or
discard them. But how does an interested reader do that, except
by trying to read them? That’s where the trouble starts.
These
first two paragraphs made me drool. And I won't tell you whether
it was from relish or foamy rage. Hope you enjoy or are enraged.
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
The shattering memoir that will leave you guessing
A
Million Little Pieces is breaking
up. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Da
Vinci people
Take a walking
tour of a beautiful city as seen through the eyes of a lucky
hack writer. Magical. Make sure you don't accidentally see anything
not in the book. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
7M
Potter's
still got the magic, baby. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Canadian film magazine dies
Maybe it was just the battery in the Handicam. Did you check
that, guys? Sometimes if you give it a little shake it'll start
recording again and we can get this NFB film done by this aft. Come
on! We're a hundred bucks over budget here and the craft services
truck will only hang around so long! (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Proof that TV is bad for you
You'll
be watching it two years after you're dead. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
I should really save this for Friday
But I'll forget about it by then. Some Ninja/Pirate
silliness. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/09/06:
RIP:
Joe Sherman (1945-2006)
Ninja-reader, poet and critic Zach
Wells writes in with this obituary: "PEI poet Joe
Sherman, the author of four poetry collections and two more
forthcoming, died today in Charlottetown, a few months after his
diagnosis with cancer of the liver. Joe's precisely laconic, often
witty, poetry dealt with themes both personal and social, particularly
Jewishness. He was actively involved in the arts as a curator, editor
and journalist, and encouraged emerging poets from PEI as a publisher
with Saturday Morning Chapbooks. He is survived by his wife Ann
and children Matthew and Rebekah." (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Copyright infringement
indeed
Sam Bulte, my local Liberal candidate, and Parliamentary Secretary
to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Liberal whose Bulte Report
on copyright issues caused a stir when it came out, is being feted
in a little fundrasier next week at The Drake. Guess who's going?
Oh, no one. Well, I mean besides
all the publishing, theatre and music industry and corporation people
who are already helping pay for her campaign. And besides the
pro-copyright lobby. But I'm sure they're all going because they
like a good party and not for any, you kow, corrupt
or scandalous reasons (see second entry). Oh, those Liberals;
they're so...liberal. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Hypergraphia
Grateful Dead lyricist, Robert Hunter, is writing
novels now. I'm sure you were all wondering what the heck had
happened to him. I know I was.
The
first book is called ''Doppelganger,'' the name for the twin that,
according to mythology, each of us has somewhere in the world.
Hunter is loath to describe it in detail before publication, except
to note that it puts to use the quantum mechanics theory of physics
and includes ''a whole lot of doppelgangers.'' He's waiting on
word from his publisher on when it will be released.''I feel I've
got 10 books in me.''
I
feel just the same. I just need time to, excuse me, urp, digest
them all. Hey, which mythological creature took the name doppelganger,
anyway? I'm a little hazy on that. Anyone? (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
High hopes for DVC PB
Random says it will print 5M
paperbacks of The Da Vinci Code. One can only wonder
whether this will bite them in the ass. Most people I know either
refuse to read the book on grounds of artistic snobbery (me) or
have borrowed a hard-cover copy that's been passed around more times
than that girl in high school who always wore the Iron Maiden shirt.
(Gotta love the part where they say Bertelsmann figures readers
have been waiting for a less-expensive version... Um, yeah. How
come you haven't given it to them yet, greedy guts?) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Truthiness?
Word
of the year. Funny. It's all relative, I suppose. Judging from
my life, you would have thought "craptastic" would have
made it. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Write a novel in a year...
I guess that's more reasonable than a month or three days, but it
kind of sounds like you end up with the same thing. Regardless,
if you're not one of the many already-writers who read this site,
then you could be, a year from now, if you follow
this column. I'll pass out the tams and turtlenecks at next
December's graduation. And then you'll be given the keys to the
secret door at the back of The Second Cup. Neato. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
It's official: the CIA doesn't like books
Especially
ones about the CIA. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
More Irving
A
little more Irving, clinging
to
headlines,
worldwide.
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
Why don't men read relation-advice books?
BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! O GOD, THAT'S RICH! HAHAHA HAHAHAHAAHAAAAA!
Wooo! Let me catch my breath...! Hang on... Hee hee... Hee... Okay,
seriously....
you see, the problem here is that men... BAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! I CAN'T
DO IT! HAHAHAHAAAAH HAAAA! (It's because we're insensitive shitbags.
See my DVC post above for details.) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Make sure you moisturize your books every now and then, or they
might end up with unsightly wrinkles...
Books
bound in human skin. Blech. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The most stolen book?
The Bible.
Didn't you just know it was coming? (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Loopholes in the language
I used to have this joke when I was a an insufferable kid like Calvin
(as opposed to my current insufferable self). I'd say to someone,
"Do you know how to spell pneumonia?" and when they said,
"Yes," I'd say, "Okay, spell it." Then they'd
go through the motions and I'd say, "Duh, that's not how you
spell it. It's spelled "I-T"..." I never got tired
of that one. This
reminds me of that. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Weekend
Edition:
A Criminal and Addict? Or
a Fraud?
The
Smoking Gun investigates James Frey, author of A Million Little
Pieces. Threats of lawsuits follow.
Police reports, court records,
interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have
put the lie to many key sections of Frey's book. The 36-year-old
author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated
or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career,
jail terms, and status as an outlaw "wanted in three states."
In additon to these rap sheet
creations, Frey also invented a role for himself in a deadly train
accident that cost the lives of two female high school students.
In what may be his book's most crass flight from reality, Frey
remarkably appropriates and manipulates details of the incident
so he can falsely portray himself as the tragedy's third victim.
It's a cynical and offensive ploy that has left one of the victims'
parents bewildered. "As far as I know, he had nothing to
do with the accident," said the mother of one of the dead
girls. "I figured he was taking license...he's a writer,
you know, they don't tell everything that's factual and true."
(From 3
Quarks Daily) (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Second-novel syndrome
Everyone
suffers from it. Except me. I've switched to writing porn scripts.
Peter Carey still fears it after
two Booker Prizes and 20 years. Harper Lee feared it so badly
she gave up. Zadie Smith had it, but crashed through. In March
the world will discover whether DBC Pierre, the 2003 Booker winner
with Vernon God Little, is suffering from it.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
22 cents a story
Bert Archer has a piece
in the Toronto Star about the online
subscription fiction of Bruce Holland Rogers. Quite appropriately,
he turns to Bookninja for a quote. Really, we should be everybody's
primary source.
So, since January 2002, Rogers
— who's published several books the old-fashioned way, and
won several prestigious prizes, including the small-press Pushcart
Prize for short fiction, and two Nebula Awards for science fiction
— has been sending out three stories a month to subscribers
who send him $8 a year. That works out to 22 cents a story.
Is it worth the money?
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Reading Lolita in 2006
And
how Reading Lolita in Tehran got it wrong.
To her, "Lolita" is
"the story of a twelve-year-old girl who had nowhere to go.
Humbert had tried to turn her into his fantasy, into his dead
love, and he had destroyed her. The desperate truth of Lolita's
story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man,
but the confiscation of one individual's life by another."
(Emphasis Nafisi's.) Here one takes a deep breath, pauses and
wonders what to say to her.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
I'm tired of books
Well, despite the rumours about the end
of reading, Alex Good thinks
things are looking up (sort of), although that
may end with the publication of the last Harry Potter (last
link from Quill).
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
The young man who had it
all and threw it away?
The
New Yorker on James Agee.
In “Famous Men,” Agee
is not a political writer but a poetic and metaphysical writer,
who wanted to honor reality, and also to abolish it. There is
a trap built into his kind of intense receptivity. That a person
or a thing is itself and nothing else, and is therefore worthy
of notice and celebration, may be the beginning of morality, but
it’s also the beginning of tragedy.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
J.G. Ballard is everywhere
The good -- but slightly twisted -- people at Things see J.G.
Ballard's ideas everywhere in modern society, from architecture
to silt. Can't wait to see that silt movie. (discuss)
(Posted by Peter)
01/06/06:
More
Layton encomium
And deservedly so. That old lech was, on
average, a great poet--his most enduring work cancelling out
the scads of dross. Star.
Reuters.
JTA.
Spectator.
Gazette/VC
Sun. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Michiko loves Nick
I normally don't link to reviews, but Laird seemed like a nice guy
in the minute I met him and IFOA and this
particular review contains a line I will print out for my wall
of fame: "his prose has none of the self-consciousness or preciousness
sometimes displayed by poets-turned-novelists." Ah. Endorphins.
Niiiiiice. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
fMRI fMRO
(Freaks me right out.) Boing
Boing points to a scanning process that can read the activity
of the mind as it is working. My readout looks just like a broken
VCR clock in the dark. 12:00... 12:00... 12:00... (discuss)
(Posted by George)
2,300-year-old writing!?
Apparently it's
Mayan, not an issue of the LRC as initially thought. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/05/06:
A
Bookninja political moment
My fellow Canajuns. Thinking of voting for Harper? Leave now.
But if you're a fence sitter, read
this speech to an American Christian organisation. A few choice
quotes:
- "Canada
is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the
term"
- "In
terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half,
don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't
feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous
social assistance and unemployment insurance."
- "the
NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the
affairs of men"
- "The
establishment came down with a constitutional package which they
put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society
status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that
would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution,
and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things."
- "As
long as there are exams, there will always be prayer in schools."
Still
not swayed? Leave now. If you're thinking he's changed, Nike and
Starbucks would like to talk to you about some merchandise. (Thanks,
Paul) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
RIP: Irving Layton
A
Canadian great, dead
at 93. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Where does Jesusland appear?
Raht in the middle. Always raht in the middle. A
linguistic map of the United States. I love articles with subheads
like "Resisting the low back merger". (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The literature of legal indictments
Hot
stuff, people. I actually get off reading legal opinions. They're
so clear and concise. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Word frequencies
Word
and letter frequencies. "The" is screwing up the averages.
(From Maud) (discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/04/06:
Little Red Riding Hood=MC2
The
physics of fairy tales.
Bringing a gold-laying goose to
life, meanwhile, requires a bit of Newtonian physics.
"What if a goose really had
to lay a golden egg?" Stocklmayer asked. "When
they lay a regular egg, it comes out quite soft so they can squeeze
it out. But gold is obviously hard [by comparison]."
According to Newton's Third Law
of Motion, every action requires an equal and opposite reaction.
"If you assume the golden
egg is three kilograms [seven pounds], then the laws of physics
dictate that when the goose ejects the egg it would have to move
in the opposition direction to the egg but with equal force,"
she said.
The industrious goose would therefore
shoot away from its egg with the same coniderable amount of force
required to lay the egg.
"We use a steel ball bearing
and a mechanical hen, and that's exactly what happens," Stocklmayer
said.
(From 3
Quarks Daily) (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Ghetto lit
I'm
not going to comment on this....
With an extra spring in my step,
I walked into the "African-American Literature" section
- and what I saw there thoroughly embarrassed and disgusted me.
On shelf after shelf, in bookcase
after bookcase, all that I could see was lurid book jackets displaying
all forms of brown flesh, usually half-naked and in some erotic
pose, often accompanied by guns and other symbols of criminal
life. I felt as if I was walking into a pornography shop, except
in this case the smut is being produced by and for my people,
and it is called "literature."
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
The 200 bestselling books
of 2005
Hey,
it's not as bad as I thought it would be. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Poetry
News:
Fiction News:
Award News:
Magazine
News:
Interviewing:
Humour:
01/03/06:
Another
year, another dollar
Well, we're back. Hope you are too. I spent much of the holidays
working on a new front- and back-end for the site, along with a
trusty mercenary-type to be named later, but alas, nothing to show
yet. Have you ever tried to install Apache Server and all it's helper
bots on your Windows XP Home machine from 2000? Don't. Anyway, it'll
be a bit, so you're stuck with the old site until then. Also, to
those of you hoping for another searing round of the Golden Shuriken
Awards... Meh. I looked back over the last year and, while there
was certainly the usual idiocy and ridiculous behaviour we've come
to know and respect from the book industry, I just didn't have the
vitriol in me to point it out. My bile levels are dangerously low.
In all, glad to have you with us. We'll turn three this year, should
we make it to the summer, and we're finally starting to act our
age. So please hang around and tell your friends about us. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The meek shall inherit the earth... and by that, we mean a handful
of soil...
The Guardian revamps how it calculates it's end-of-year bestseller
lists, and explains
why in this interesting look at the mechanics of bookselling.
In
horse-racing terms, the book trade is a bizarre inverted handicap
in which the runners with pedigree and form gain all the advantages,
while the outsiders have extra weights heaped on their backs.
This is particularly evident at Christmas - a festival, ironically,
promising the eventual triumph of the meek - when the main contenders
potentially rejoice in a triple boost of slashed prices, in-store
promotion and multi-buy offers.
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
On being a book slut
Forget working out. Forget eating right. Forget quitting smoking
(okay, don't forget that). This year, it's time to refine
your reading habits.
Being
a book slut means feeling compelled to gulp down anything that
comes your way. Great if you happen to have Proust by your bedside
or Macaulay crammed into your handbag, but not so wonderful if
you find yourself stuck on a bus with nothing to read. It is then
that great waves of existential terror start to lap at the corners
of your consciousness, turning your mouth dry and your fingers
thick and tingly. There's nothing for it but to dash into the
nearest newsagent and grab armfuls of distraction to carry away
to a park bench and consume in a kind of frenzy of sensation until
you have numbed yourself into something approaching calm.
But the problem with print
addiction is that, unlike bulimia, there is no option of sicking
the unwanted material back up 30 minutes later.
Um,
I hope that doesn't mean you'll cut us out... (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Turkey: trying to climb out of the ethical gutter
Progress
is progress.
Be happy to see something happening. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Blogging into the funny pages
Dave Barry, we hardly knew ye... It's so sad to see a successful
writer leave
print and devote all his time and effort to maintaining a blog...
Wait. And on
the flip side.(discuss)
(Posted by George)
And for the only year-end round-up worth reading
Check out The Onion.
(discuss)
(Posted by George)
01/01/06:
Publishers reject Booker
winners
Try
us with your next novel, Mr. Naipaul.
Typed manuscripts of the opening
chapters of Naipaul’s In a Free State and a second
novel, Holiday, by Stanley Middleton, were sent to 20
publishers and agents.
None appears to have recognised
them as Booker prizewinners from the 1970s that were lauded as
British novel writing at its best. Of the 21 replies, all but
one were rejections.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Library Overdrive
Now
you can skip the trip to the library and just download your books
from it.
Libraries throughout Greater Boston
and across the nation have launched services that allow patrons
to download recorded books onto their home computers and listen
to them over portable media players.
The service is available through
Old Colony Library Network south of Boston and the SAILS Library
Network, which link libraries in Southeastern Massachusetts communities
from Foxborough to New Bedford. The Boston Public Library also
began offering more than 2,000 downloadable audiobooks in September.
The service is seen as a great help to commuters, long-distance
drivers, and readers with limited mobility.
Librarians are hot. (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Happy
New Year!
Or, considering the feeling of your head this morning: jsa[[u mre
urst! We'll start posting again in a day or two. Best to you in
06. (discuss)
12/29/05
Favourite
fonts of 2005
Typographica returns after being banished
by Canadian authorities with a list
of its top fonts. And it's only Part 1. Santa bless them. (From
Metafilter) (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Someone
needs to teach Amazon some manners
Ironic it should be R.
Crumb. Hey, Amazon. You're supposed to ask nicely before you
go and borrow other people's property. Sheesh. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Oh oh oh oh staying alive
Artemis
Fowl is to be translated
into the Irish language.
“It
is important for Puffin to bring contemporary books in Irish to
people,” he said.
“There have been complaints from teachers that there aren’t
enough contemporary children’s books as gaeilge.”
He added: “I think it is good to encourage the Irish language,
it is not about money or profits, it is just about bringing Artemis
Fowl to a new audience.
Sweet
music. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Nafisi plans to outdo Oprah
At least intellectually. Uhm, no mean feat.
Nafisi,
who teaches at Johns Hopkins University's School of International
Studies in Washington, D.C., is planning an international
online book club. She hopes it will be "a place for genuine
debate."
(discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
12/28/05:
What a coincidence... 76 is my lucky number...
Well, it is now.
Thanks, CBC. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
Sittius downius et movius nottum!
Traumatic
injuries to children go down during Potter release weekends.
But the respite will end
soon. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
The statistics of success
How did The Da Vinci Code (known in Newfoundland as "The
Da Vinci Cod") become such a blockbuster when it should have
been destined
for the remainder bin (it only had a 36% chance of success,
apparently...)? Scientists, those wacky daffy wild and crazy guys
and gals, investigate. (discuss)
(Posted by George)
12/27/05:
Strong opinions? Or cheap
sensationalism?
Why
are book reviewers getting meaner?
Newspapers and magazines may need
to rethink their book coverage—including, as you say, both
reviews of books with literary merit and the more commercially
viable ones (two categories that do sometimes overlap). But I
don't think the answer is to revert to promoting cat fights and
name-calling.
Although Carlin Romano's attack
on Dale Peck wildly overstated his case, Romano had a point when
he took Peck to task for using such words as "crap"
and "suck" in describing books. And is calling an author
a "jackass" really very helpful? The coarseness and
lack of nuance in the language used these days in many book reviews
certainly is something to lament.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
The top 15 richest fictional
characters
According
to the Economist. Make sure you check out the profiles.
(From 3QuarksDaily) (discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
12/26/05:
“Editors
are noticed by what they buy, not how they edit.”
The
changing roles of book editors. Are they even necessary still?
I say yes, but no one ever listens to me.
Though editors have slipped to
the foot of the publishing scale of prestige, most editors I know
are robust in their defence of their craft. Dan Franklin, the
publisher of Jonathan Cape, blames the easy gibes of reviewers:
“Whenever they say ‘If only the book had been properly
edited’ some poor sod has usually spent two years cutting
it from 300,000 to 100,000 words.” Modern publishing just
doesn’t allow for the time needed to edit a book well. The
brilliant and dedicated men and women who spent their lives transforming
books and caring whether they were any good, whose work could
add significantly to the sales of a book and who usually did it
for peanuts, have come to be regarded as superfluous.
(From the Saloon)
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
The literary prize economy
How
will we know what's good without the ever-increasing number of prizes
to tell us?
The prize system, with its own
cadre of career administrators and judges, is one of the ways
in which value gets “added on” to a work. Of course,
we like to think that the recognition of artistic excellence is
intuitive. We don’t like to think of cultural value as something
that requires middlemen—people who are not artists themselves—in
order to emerge. We prefer to believe that truly good literature
or music or film announces itself. Which is another reason that
we need prizes: so that we can insist that we don’t really
need them.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
Amazon Connect
There are so many new publishing technologies and trends that I
can't keep track of them. For
instance, I just learned about Amazon Connect, a new blogging program.
Shoppers looking to pick up Meg
Wolitzer's latest novel, "The Position," on Amazon.com
last week found the usual readers' comments and excerpts from
reviews. They also found something unexpected - posts on the subject
of literature from Ms. Wolitzer herself.
The entries were part of a new program called Amazon Connect,
begun late last month to enhance the connections between authors
and their fans - and to sell more books - with author blogs and
extended personal profile pages on the company's online bookstore
site. So far, Amazon has recruited a group of about a dozen authors,
including novelists, writers of child care manuals and experts
on subjects as diverse as real estate investing, science, fishing
and the lyrics of the Grateful Dead.
(discuss) (Posted
by Peter)
12/22/05:
Anna
Porter interviewed
Porter
is interviewed by a business news press about her authors, her
writing, about Key Porter and about the book business. Finally,
someone out there is optimistic. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Remember when kids could be just that?
Another
child prodigy emerges. Listen parents and listen up good. Next
time your kid does something clever on paper, ignore it. Just once
don't say, 'Aren't you wonderful, Johnny.' Say nothing. How is it
going to be for these poor children when they enter the real world?
Are you going to hire someone to stand behind them and compliment
every brilliant business report they whip off? Please, for the sake
of the future of the world, get out of your kid's face. I beg. I
plead. Make it a New Year's resolution. (discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
Would you like some Greece on your Turkey?
Turkey
has charged a publisher with insulting Turkishness. Apparently,
the writer of the book, who is Greek and therefore unchargeable,
suggested parts of Turkey were dirty. Who thinks up this stuff?
(discuss)
(Posted by Kathryn)
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