February 28, 2005
The First Annual TMN Tournament of Books is over, and the winner of the Rooster Award has been decided. Congratulations to David Mitchell and Cloud Atlas, beating out Philip Roth's The Plot Against America.
Francine Prose's Blue Angel was one of the best books I've ever read about academia and political correctness. You really have to read it. Now Prose is back with her first novel in four years, A Changed Man. It looks great, despite the deeply unfortunate cover. Boris Kachka profiles Prose for New York magazine.
Among her current targets: the sentimentality of the "Holocaust industry," the egotism of professional humanitarians, and the spotty morality of a victim-besotted media that edits out all ambiguity. Prose’s last novel, Blue Angel, a send-up of a scholar’s midlife crisis, was nominated for the 2000 National Book Award—but she shrugs off the honor. "Academia is like shooting fish in a barrel," she says. "About halfway through this one, my husband read it and he said, 'It makes Blue Angel look like an Anna Quindlen novel.' And I went, 'Yes!'"
More than 8,000 items ranging from 16th century maps to copies of The Beano have gone missing from the British Library since it moved to new premises, it emerged yesterday.
That's pretty sad and all, but I just moved to a new house, and I can't find my stapler. That thing cost me ten bucks. So don't talk to me about missing stuff, OK? We've all got problems.
Joe Sacco has an 8-page comic about being embedded with US troops in Iraq. The Guardian has it available for download as a PDF. Be warned, it'll take forever to download, but it's worth it.
Thought Balloons reports on the alliance between Center for Cartoon Studies and Hyperion to create graphic biographies. First on the list will be the life of Harry Houdini as written by James Sturm and Jason Lutes (author of the great Berlin).
Are they an ethnic or a national sub-group? Can the discrimination episodically exercised against them be described as "racist", or is it based on religion and class? How integrated have they become, over the past couple of centuries, into the host community? What has been the effect of a large, active and self-conscious Irish community on British politics, and on the history of British labour?
All these questions continue to be the subject of lively debate; but too often the argument assumes that Irish immigration took the exclusive form of working-class manual labourers, male and female.
Yeah, from what I hear, the Irish didn't just build railroads. A couple of them wrote some books, too.
This week's Guardian Digested Read is Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.
I realise now how lucky Tommy, Ruth and I were to be brought up in such surroundings. We even had a sports pavilion where we would go to chatter amongst ourselves. You may wonder why I mention these details, but such empty observations are the hallmark of the consummate prose stylist.
I present to you the most beautiful poem ever written in any language.
Hurry, Hurry .....Dont delay, rush to Walmart buy today.
Have a baby? Need a crib? THEY have blue to match the bib....
Hurry ..Hurry...they have more..Visit at their online store..
Super Center Shoping Store?....Walmart's at the very core.
Thank you, Sue Graham. Thank you.
D.H. Lawrence's wife was "the real Lady Chatterley," according to author John Worthen. Even more surprising: she was also Deep Throat.
That's one hell of a heckler's veto. Jose Canseco has been forced to cancel dates on his book tour because of an email death threat.
"We are not taking the threat lightly," (Canseco's lawyer Robert) Saunooke told the paper. "It's not that I believe Jose is in immediate danger. He's a black belt in three different kinds of karate, so he can take care of himself. We are more concerned about the people who come to the book signing."
From Whisky Galore to The Wind in the Willows, it is the ultimate literary search: a quest to find the best Scottish book of all time that organisers say will take six months and will include every library and bookshop in the country.
As you might expect, there's already some controversy about the competition, though the list won't be officially unveiled until Thursday. Scotland on Sunday obtained a draft list, and some are aghast that Scottish novels such as Treasure Island and Ivanhoe were left off. They found room for J.K. Rowling, however, so you can rest easy. Barry Didcock is unimpressed with the whole enterprise, and wonders what the hell To the Lighthouse is doing on there.
The winner of the Canada Reads competition: Rockbound by Frank Parker Day. Inspired by the CBC's competition, the Fox network will soon launch a copycat program, to be called America Watches TV and Maybe Eats Some Potato Chips.
The Observer asks six debut novelists to write about their attempts to launch their careers: Carole Cadwalladr (The Family Tree); Charles Chadwick (It's All Right Now); Diana Evans (26A); Peter Hobbs (The Short Day Dying); Marina Lewycka (A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian); and, David Nwokedi (Fitzgerald's Wood).
Barbara Fisher smashes Smashed, Koren Zailckas' memoir of her drunken college days, in the Boston Globe.
Somewhere along the line, she learned to tell a riveting story. But it is less clear that she has learned to live a good life. Moving from smashed to whole takes more than narrative talent. Someone has to pick up the pieces and put them together carefully. Although Koren has described many of the pieces with precision, she has a very short perspective and very slight insight. And all the pieces may not be there anymore.
Michael Dirda reviews H.P. Lovecraft: Tales for the Weekly Standard, and not once does he call the author disgusting or one of America's worst writers. See, Laura Miller? It's not that hard.
Before we get to books, I just have to say: Is that Sean Penn a dick, or what?
February 25, 2005
When deciding to hook up with a partner of the same gender, some people either get bogged down with sexual identity issues or they just jump right in. And some do both, like Jen Sincero, the hetero author of “The Straight Girl's Guide to Sleeping with Chicks” (Fireside).
“I had definitely fooled around with women before. You know, made out or pulled out a boob at a party. But I had never really gotten down with a girl,” Sincero says.
The terrible, terrible movie is now a terrible, terrible book!
This is going to be one hilarious divorce.
I bet copy editors fight among themselves over who gets to write the headlines for stories about Deep Throat. (Exhibit A.)
The LA Times profiles Monowi, Nebraska, where the population is 1, but the library is still open.
Because they run on volunteer labor, making do with the books at hand, rural libraries survive even in tight times like these, when big cities are shutting branches. In California, John Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas (population 150,000) has announced plans to close all of its libraries by April to save money. But it's still possible to check out a book in Gaylord, Kan. (population 97), and Strang, Neb. (population 38).
Hey, all you librarians out there — is it too late to do something about this guy? Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, is throwing a red-faced hissy fit over "Blog People."
Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.
I had heard of the activities of the latter and of the absurd idea of giving them press credentials (though, since the credentials were issued for political conventions, they were just absurd icing on absurd cakes)....
It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.
What was this guy's platform when he ran for ALA president? "Hypersensitive. Uninformed. Pretentious." I'm hoping the folks at Waterboro never leave this guy alone. (Via Metafilter.)
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wants to help women overcome stereotype. In his new book Hating Women: America's Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex he outlines the four stereotypes (1) the greedy gold-digger; 2) the brainless bimbo; 3) the publicity-seeking prostitute; 4) the bitchy backstabber) and how women can take a stand and fight. But in this column that Ms. Magazine's blog pointed out, his advice seems to boil down to "stop flashing your titties on the tv." (Which, I don't know, seems like pretty good advice for women who want to be taken seriously, but I don't think I need to pay $25 for that.)
You know who the New Republic doesn't like? Newt Gingrich.
How are bookstores hurting publishers? By demanding long books be cut in half, and by continuing the system of returns.
People really want blogs to destroy something, don't they? Are they destroying newspapers? Are they destroying Dan Rather? Now On the Media asks if they're destroying webzines like Salon and Slate. Umm, people, we have to have something to link to. Do none of these people even know what a blog is?
Murakami talks to the LA Times about his new book Kafka on the Shore, his short story about a tsunami, and why it doesn't matter if you don't understand his books.
"In Europe and America they say I am surreal and unrealistic and postmodern and I'm happy to hear it," Murakami laughs. "But in Korea or China or Taiwan nobody says these things. They just enjoy the stories."
Thank you to everyone who has sent in reading recommendations. I plan on making a list and going to the bookstore this weekend, so please keep them coming. Nothing in my house looks at all appealing, except for the latest issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Reading bits and pieces of the Monster issue has been keeping me sane. And I've been learning so much! About Godzilla, about Shaun of the Dead (which really, if you haven't seen it, immediately go add it to your Netflix queue), about why poets wrote some horror films in the 50's and 60's, and why ugly people make better writers. (I don't think that last one really goes with the theme, but whatever.) In fact, I've loved everything that I've read in it, and so I've already filled out a subscription card, even though I suspect the next issue will be light on Godzilla-content. (Especially since the next issue's theme is Walt Whitman.)
If you really think about it, it seems ridiculous that we've gone so long without a comic book fact checker. We need someone to ask the tough questions like, "Would Judo Master's costume prevent him from being a Judo master?" And "Will the Teen Titan's archery cover lead to lawsuits once children imitating it lose their fingers?"
Kate DiCamillo, author of Because of Winn-Dixie, is happy with the recent film adaptation of her book. You've seen the previews, right? It stars (listed here in descending order, talent-wise) Jeff Daniels, Eva Marie Saint, a dog, several houses and trees, and Dave Matthews. I'm sure the grocery store chain is happy with the free advertising. Yep — it's going to be a great year for Winn-Dixie!
Today's The Morning News Tournament of Books finishes the semifinals with Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell kicking Tom Wolfe's ass.
(I would just like to thank TMN for asking me to join them and making me read Cloud Atlas. All of the talk about the innovative structure had made me afraid it was one of those stunning but cold books it would take me forever to wade through. Instead, one night I woke up at 2 am wide awake and desperate to read it some more. I finally went back to bed at about 7 am, very upset at leaving the book behind. I even read bits of it over the phone to people. So thank you, TMN, for introducing me to one of my new favorite books.)
February 24, 2005
OH MY GOD I CANNOT FIND A BOOK TO READ. The list of books started but I can't be bothered to finish continues to grow, and now contains Diary of a Rapist, Mad Mary Lamb, Brothers Karamazov, A Bad Man, and that's just from the last couple of weeks. Someone please write me and recommend me a book I'll actually want to finish before I have a nervous breakdown. Thanks.
The Pope has been hospitalized again, just after the European release of his new book, Memory and Identity (slated for release in the States in late April). The BBC has a brief rundown of the book's themes, and the Guardian covers the (justified, I think) outrage of Jewish leaders, angered that the Pope compares abortion to the German Holocaust. He also calls gay marriage part of an "ideology of evil," which sounds like it came straight from the mouth of Cardinal Ratzinger, the far-right advisor to the Pope who many suspect is running the Vatican behind the scenes.
In somewhat related news, the National Catholic Reporter covers the controversy surrounding Jesuit priest and author Roger Haight, who was disciplined by the Church for his book Jesus Symbol of God. The NCR also has a rundown of Catholic theologians disciplined by the Pope (read: Ratzinger) during John Paul II's papacy.
(If you're planning on writing me an angry email about this, I'd recommend you first familiarize yourself with Vatican II, the existence of which seems to continually surprise the right-wing fundamentalists who insist on calling themselves "Catholic," and the works of Dorothy Day, the great Catholic social activist. And if you're a conservative who thinks that only fellow right-wingers belong in the Church, do all of us a favor and pick up a copy of the Catholic Catechism. The Church's teachings on anti-gay discrimination, war, capitalism, the death penalty, and the separation of church and state might surprise you.)
The Seattle Weekly reviews a whole assload of comics.
Ouch. A reporter for Boston's Weekly Dig was not impressed by the launch party for Boink (link not safe for work), the new sex magazine run by Boston University students.
Boink’s first time, it turns out, is a little too real; though it sounded like fun, it’s actually awkward, self-conscious and entirely un-sexy. Plus, it ends without delivering any real action.
Not that that mattered to the hundreds of horny bastards who lined up outside The Roxy on Thursday, gladly fisting over $20 for the privilege of getting first pokes at the nascent porn rag—as well as scores of drunken BU girls in underwear, both of which prompted one of The Roxy’s bouncers to mutter, “I hate these fucking people.”
The Austin Chronicle interviews John Irving.
File this under "Things I Didn't Need to Know": Jonathan Lethem is turned on by Donald Sutherland's buttocks.
Oh my God! You mean, one of those fad diet books LIED TO US?! How will we ever recover our faith in mankind?
Jim Wallis is interviewed at AlterNet about his new book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, debating Jerry Falwell, and appearing on The Daily Show (which you can watch here).
USA Today looks at five books about Hollywood, in preparation for the Oscars. I love how newspapers use the week before the Academy Awards to tie in every single story to the Oscars. Even the food writers print recipes with lame Oscar-inspired names. ("Million Dollar Gravy is surprisingly easy to make!")
But anyway, there's an item about Roger Ebert's The Great Movies II, and Ebert's always worth reading. As for the Oscars, if Ray doesn't win for sound mixing, it just proves what a huge crock of shit this whole thing is.
An 18-year-old Flagstaff man who burglarized an eastside home in late January apparently knew he stumbled upon something valuable when he took a bundle of comic books sealed in protective plastic coverings.
On Feb. 1, he took the comic books to Bookman's Used Books, Music & Software to exchange for cash. Store staff offered to give the burglar $600 for the lot. The burglar accepted and walked out of the store with a check.
Had the burglar done a little homework, he might have discovered the comic books were worth more -- a lot more. $140,400, to be exact.
A Stanford student turns to a book club for entertainment. I guess it's a little slow there now that there's no Chelsea Clinton to hit on.
Maryann Reid is promoting her upcoming book Marry Your Baby Daddy with a contest for all-expenses-paid weddings for ten couples with children.
"Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith" details how the author, Dr. Martha Beck, a sociologist and therapist, recovered memories in 1990 of her ritual sexual abuse more than 20 years earlier by her father, Dr. Hugh Nibley, professor emeritus of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University and arguably the leading living authority on Mormon teaching.
Umm, did no one tell her about this book? Or this one? Or the highly publicized revelation that recovered memories are a bunch of shit and every therapist who tells you you just don't remember your parents dressing in black cloaks, raping you and drinking the blood of the baby brother you also don't remember having should be castrated and exiled? No? Well, then, maybe the book deserves all the hate mail it gets.
Tobias Seamon recalls reading Hunter S. Thompson for the first time.
It wasn’t a coincidence, then, that the first time I got drunk, around the age 13 on cheap white wine from a big green jug, I commemorated the occasion by reading Hunter for the first time too. The book was insane, confused, desolate, angry, mournful, and about the funniest goddamned thing I’d ever read. In short, the thing was similar to its enraptured reader: a geeky and awkward teenaged boy in an already doomed farmhouse sneaking downstairs to guzzle wine from his father’s jug more from curiosity as any desire for inebriation or escape.
Flashback to 2000 and 2004: The morons win in Florida, again. The "media committee" for a Lake Wales elementary school have voted to ban the children's book Anastasia Again! by Lois Lowry from its library. Parent Kristi Hardee, who spearheaded the censorship drive, refused to comment to The (Lakeland) Ledger, but the newspaper details her motivations:
However, in her complaint she objected to the book's references to beer, Playboy magazine and Anastasia making light of wanting to kill herself.
The committee managed to resist the urge to ban five other books in Lowry's "Anastasia" series, despite Hardee's best efforts.
Today's The Morning News Tournament of Books brings us to the semi-finals with Philip Roth's The Plot Against America moving into the final round, beating Cynthia Ozick's Heir to the Glimmering World.
February 23, 2005
Matt Williamson's "Queer Studies: Six New Texts" is the funniest story I've read in years — hell, it's one of the funniest stories I've ever read. (Matt's written a few reviews for Bookslut.) He's unquestionably one of the most talented young writers in America right now. And he's younger than me. Fuck. (Thanks to Laila for the link to Barrelhouse.)
A San Diego city councilwoman is leading a crusade to install "smut filters" on the public library system's computers.
"I'm not going to let it lie," (Councilwoman Marie Waldron) said. "Do we want to wait until a child is attacked or molested in a restroom? It's not a matter of if but a matter of when."
Yeah! Wait. What?
Guillermo Cabrera Infante's death might have gone largely unnoticed by the American media, and been studiously ignored by the Cuban media, but some people are paying attention. The Literary Saloon has a rundown of notices and obituaries, and some good news about the planned publication of some of his books by the Dalkey Archive Press, one of America's best publishing houses.
McSweeney's looks at banned books in the year 2191 (Our Robot Masters: Though They Force Us to Say Otherwise, We Are Not Proud to Serve Them) and the last lines from Best American Short Stories Not Yet Written.
Magazine Publishers of America is launching a three-year ad campaign to convince you to read them and their ads.
One of its basic premises is that — unlike most commercials on TV and the annoying pop up ads on the Internet — consumers identify with and enjoy magazines — and that extends right down to the ads.
Yes, because you want your magazines to smell of three types of conflicting perfumes, you love the little subscription cards that you find weeks later in the cushions of your chairs and couch, and that terrifying new Dillard's ad of the bras that you can mix and match so you can have one pink tit and one blue one, you know, for whimsy! Yeah, there's nothing annoying about magazine ads at all.
Malcolm Gladwell and I have a lot in common. He has a huge faux-Afro that probably isn't as cool as he imagines; so do I. He's a Canadian of Jamaican extract; I'm a Texan with German and Italian ancestors. He's a certifiable genius and a world-renowned author; I make dick jokes on the Internet. We really do have a lot in common, but mostly it's the hair.
I figured out how a person can read Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety without losing your sense of perspective. Mentally add "Privileged white" in front of every mention of "women." Then maybe her book will make sense.
Also, you can try reading these imagined IM conversations about the book.
NYT: those women are so boring
Newsweek: who?
NYT: the ones who stay home with their kids
NYT: they're so self-absorbed
NYT: unless they went to princeton
NYT: if they went to princeton and they stay home, they're cutting edge
The Cuban media didn't report on the death of the greatest writer in their country's history, Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Well, mostly:
...(O)nly the online version of the culture magazine La Jiribilla noted Cabrera Infante's passing — in a four-paragraph story that said his writings were "unfortunately tainted with his stance against the Cuban revolution, which became a fanatical obsession."
Quick! Name the book they're talking about!
_______ says she recognized the problem after returning to this country after a few years in France, where attitudes toward _______ were very different.
A. Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner
B. French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano
C. Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure by Juliet B. Schor
D. Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World by Gina Mallet
For a nation that hates France as much as we do, we seem pretty sure they've got all the answers.
Students at the University of North Carolina — the school that former Sen. Jesse Helms charmingly suggested be fenced off and turned into a zoo — are protesting the Alabama bill that would forbid state funds from being used to purchase books by gay authors.
Olivia Henderson, a UNC senior majoring in dramatic arts, said she was influenced by her recent part in a production of Tony Kushna's "Angels in America" at the school.
"Tony Kushna is my favorite writer," she said. "The thought of other people not being able to experience him is just terribly sad to me."
Ha! "Kushna."
Unfortunate headline of the day: Zadie Smith to tackle 'young black men'. Good for her. I just don't want to hear about it.
Francesca Lia Block may be getting an award from the American Library Association for her YA novels, but that doesn't mean the protests against her Weetzie Bat books have ended.
In 2003, for instance, Parents Against Bad Books in Schools, a group in Fairfax County, Va., tried to have several of Ms. Block's books removed from school libraries, because of what it called "profanity and descriptions of drug-abuse, sexually explicit conduct and torture."
“One night, Jackie woke up past her bedtime. She smelled something funny in the air, so she walked down the hall to her parents’ bedroom.
“‘What’s that, Mommy?’ asked Jackie. ‘Are you and Daddy smoking a cigarette?’
“‘No, baby,’ said her mother. ‘This is a “joint.” It’s made of marijuana.’”
So begins It’s Just a Plant: A Children’s Story of Marijuana, written and illustrated by Ricardo Cortes, CC ’95, who read his book Tuesday night to an audience of about 50 Columbia students.
It's expected to be the biggest-selling marijuana-themed children's book since Curious George Learns to Appreciate Phish.
A German state that holds the rights to Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" said Tuesday it was seeking legal action to prevent the book from being published in Poland.
You can get to know Dave Eggers' velocity in this interview if you really want, but this article is much more Bookslut's speed.
Today's The Morning News Tournament of Books has John Warner judging between Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons and Louis de Bernieres's Birds Without Wings.
Coming soon to a dictionary near you: "wife-beater."
Not the abusive husband, mind you -- but the sleeveless, white undershirt. The "wife-beater" -- frequently spotted on Kid Rock, available at your neighborhood Gap -- is soon to be immortalized in the Oxford English Dictionary. It'll likely be added, somewhere between "whip" and "women's lib," next month.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a surprisingly complete article on the etymology of the term, including a new variant:
And young celebs such as Avril Lavigne and Haylie Duff have reportedly worn tank tops that say "Boy Beater." (In fact, plenty of clothing sellers have taken to calling all women's tank tops "boy-beaters." Ask for one at the Gap or American Eagle and they'll know exactly what you're talking about.)
February 22, 2005
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is remembered at the Seattle P-I, The New York Times, Flak, the Philadelphia Inquirer (via the Duluth News Tribune), MTV, Editor & Publisher, The Miami Herald, the Tucson Citizen, Newsday, and The (Louisville) Courier-Journal.
Library gives teens what they want.
Oral sex and pot? Only in California.
Boston cops busted the release party for Boink magazine (link not safe for work, unless you work at a place where naked pictures of college students are tolerated and encouraged, in which case, are you hiring?), the new Boston University porn publication. (Via, of course, Nerve.)
The Writers Guild of America honored screenwriters Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (Sideways) on Saturday. The WGA also gave awards to television writers for Malcolm in the Middle (seriously?), Late Night With Conan O'Brien, The Simpsons, and the funniest live-action show on TV, Arrested Development.
Unbelievably, the best movie of 2004 was once again snubbed. God, who do the writers of Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 have to blow to get some recognition? Jesus Christ.
Why do some people seem to resent Ivy League graduates?
For Colleen Kinder, author of the campus bestseller "Delaying the Real World," there is something to be said for eschewing the post-graduation office environment and jumping into the wilder parts of the world.
Oh, that's why! I guess some poor bastards just resent 23-year-old Yale graduates lecturing them about why their office job sucks, and how they should be riding trains across Mongolia or teaching English in Kuala Lumpur. A lot of people actually have to work in offices to pay off their student loans or support their families, and they tend to not like it when people dismiss their lives as boring. But hey, good for Kinder, who talks like a true Ivy League kid:
"The idea of strangers reading my book is still, like, wow," Kinder said.
Yep. Wow.
At the height of his powers, Walter Freeman could take an ice pick, hammer it into a person's brain twice and, in six minutes, sever the fibers at the bases of the frontal lobes.
Jack El-Hai talks to Skyway News about his new book The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness. Why I laugh?
Art Spiegelman responds to the controversy his book In the Shadow of No Towers has caused at Lafayette College.
"Maus seems to have become canonical. This book is more of a loose cannon. I'm surprised by institutional support." At the time he was making the pages that were first published abroad and then later collected into the book, this kind of debate was even further from his mind. "I didn't even think of these things as political cartoons for the most part, but looking back now it's clear that's the category this stuff would fall in. I was even surprised when people told me the pages and the book were polemical. I just thought of them as descriptive."
Just between you and me, Jessa's pretty broken up that she didn't win this contest. But I think she'll fare better in this one.
(And yeah, I read Infinite Jest a few years ago while recovering from surgery, and that was only after reading several issues of Sports Illustrated many times over. I seem to remember the book had a lot to do with tennis and marijuana, but that might have been an SI story about Jennifer Capriati. I'm not sure. I was taking a lot of codeine.)
The astonishing thing about Miuccia Prada's fall collection is just how much it has in common with the rhythm of modern language, whether the verse of Ezra Pound or the chilling clarity of Elfriede Jelinek, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, whose novel "Women as Lovers" presents marriage as the end of youth and the beginning for women of a death throe that will last through years of looking after men.
When I'm elected president, I will round up the nation's fashion writers and make them sell NASCAR t-shirts at Wal-Mart.
Chicago Sun Times: "Thompson did things with words that Clapton does with a guitar."
Chicago Tribune: "Thompson could work a sentence like Seinfeld could work a room."
And that, Chicago newspapers, is why you're not relevant.
Steve Hendrix is the world's worst speller.
"Do you say" - the actor spelled the letters out - "L-E-D or led?"
"On this planet we say L-E-D," said Mr. Topping, wearing an expression that was equal parts amusement and acid-reflux, the expression of a man who has heard Beijing, bruschetta and Chile mangled too many times.
"I hear some people say led," the narrator offered.
"That's linguistic anarchy," Mr. Topping said.
See how many times you can fit "That's linguistic anarchy" into conversation today.
I don't know if forced bed rest really leads to great works of literature as Virginia Woolf suggests, but I do know it leads people to being able to finish Infinite Jest and other bloated novels. Personally I never would have finished the damn thing had I not spent most of that summer in bed, and I even liked the book. Isn't that how you read it, too, Mike? On the other hand, no amount of confinement has ever led me to finish reading To the Lighthouse. (Link from Maud.)
Great. If there's one thing the literary world needs now, it's more bad news. Exiled Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante has died in London at 75. He was one of the best Spanish language writers of all time. If you haven't read Three Trapped Tigers, check it out.
That libel case that wasn't really libel? The court didn't see it that way, and granted the plaintiff $2.1 million.
Damn it, the British have trumped us. I thought it was cool that we now have James Baldwin stamps in the US (currently displayed on my refrigerator), but they have won with their Jane Eyre assortment. One thing, though: Bronte said Jane was plain looking, not hulky and nasty.
The Morning News Tournament of Books continues. Today's battle: An Unfinished Season vs. Cloud Atlas. Judge Jessa Crispin shocks the literary community by selecting Juiced as the winner.
Artist Ralph Steadman, who provided the now-legendary illustrations for many of Hunter S. Thompson's books and articles, remembers the good doctor at The Independent.
I had the good fortune to meet one of the great originals of American literature. Maybe he is the Mark Twain of the late 20th century. Time will sort the bastard out. I have always known that one day I would know this journey, but yesterday, I did not know that it would be today.
John Sutherland wonders why President Bush has taken to I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Surely if he is going to drop by the Vatican during his trip, The Da Vinci Code would have been more instructional ("Is it true, your gracefulness, that Jesus had a love child?")?
The Age profiles Heatherhill Secondary College in Australia, one of many schools there participating in the Premier's Reading Challenge. The excellent Australian litblog Matilda has been covering the Challenge, here and here.
February 21, 2005
More notices, obituaries and remembrances for Dr. Thompson at Salon, Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Denver Post, the Aspen Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR Morning Edition and NPR Day to Day.
Kate Taylor remembers Dr. Thompson at the Guardian.
This week's Guardian Digested Read is Michael Chabon's The Final Solution.
The old man walked briskly to the dairy at Gabriel Park. "Good day, sir, or should that be colonel," he rasped. "Touché," the colonel replied. "Indeed Mr Shane was an intelligence officer, for we had reason to believe the parrot had learned the Nazi cipher codes. The young man had been the son of a Jewish doctor who ministered to influential figures before his deportation."
Dr. Thompson's ESPN.com columns.
Largehearted Boy has posted two lectures by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
New York Magazine profiles David fucking Mamet.
Oh, wow. The Complete Review has posted an exhaustive "punter's guide" to the International Booker nominees — Saul Bellow and Gabriel García Márquez are given the best odds to win. Tomás Eloy Martínez is the longshot at a thousand to one. This is who they ignored Rushdie for? Huh.
Mark Steyn, right-wing propagandist for the Moonie paper, engages in some good old-fashioned character assassination of the late, great Arthur Miller.
Miller was the most useful of the useful idiots.
And it just gets worse.
Australians are trying to buy the house that legendary author Patrick White once owned, and convert it into a writers' center. But White's reputation as something less than a total sweetie isn't helping.
"Australians want their national icons to be cuddly, they want the koala but they aren't that keen on the spiny ant-eater - but I'm glad for the spiny ant-eater," (author Thomas Keneally) said.
"Who said we should let this national treasure slip away because, although he was a genius, he wasn't a cosy bloke?"
It's an all-star literary smackdown! In this corner, Salman Rushdie, perhaps the greatest English-language novelist alive! In the other corner, Patrick French, who...uh...
It's kind of an all-star literary smackdown!
Struggling writers everywhere prepare to throw yourself down the stairs.
"Leonardo is misrepresented and belittled," Vezzosi said in a telephone interview hours before the event. "His importance is misunderstood. He was a man full of fantasy, inventions and genius."
Everyone, repeat after me. IT'S A FUCKING NOVEL, DUMBASSES.
I swear I've been trying to care about the new Booker award. But I just can't quite bring myself to do it. After Salman Rushdie was snubbed, how the fuck is anyone supposed to take this seriously? The Scotsman notes that only one Scottish author (Muriel Spark) was nominated, while North America is represented well on the list:
The United States is the most heavily represented nation on the list, with Philip Roth, John Updike and the novelist and critic Cynthia Ozick alongside Bellow, while Canada, which could also claim Bellow as he was born there, has Margaret Atwood - a Booker winner four years ago.
The Guardian considers the nominees, and the Globe and Mail has more on Atwood's nomination.
Novels routinely portray children as adorable moppets who pop up with wisdom beyond their years at the dinner table. Oh, they may get a little fussy, but any less than charming behaviour is never their fault: they need a nap, or their parents are getting a divorce...
But that gag law ensures that if their parents do go through periods of disliking their own children, they will not say so, not to anyone. One of the reasons that mothers enter into a pact to be sunny come what may is that they live in terror that some careless slip or angry explosion will damn their poor urchins for all time, which is why my mother's honesty about her first pregnancy would be less likely a generation later. Modern-day mothers get stuck with virtually blanket responsibility for how their kids turn out.
Oh wow, Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin just shot up in rank on my "To Be Read Next" bookshelf.
After reading book #13, David K. Shipler's The Working Poor: Invisible in America, I felt the need for a light novel. Actually, the entire time I was reading the book I felt the need for a light novel. At several points when I started distressing about the direction of the country and my own financial situation, The Boy would physically take it out of my hands and replace it with book #15, Calvin Trillin's Feeding a Yen. I wanted something contemporary, and hell, even chick lit would work. I picked up Zoe Heller's What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal, thinking it would be a good mix of chick lit and literary.
My question is: why did no one warn me about this book? It got almost universally positive reviews. I found the book horrid. I do love hyperbole ever so much, and when I had finished the book (partly because I had a sick fascination with the book, and partly because people I know and trust liked the book and I kept waiting for it to pull together), I declared I was giving up books by contemporary women writers. (That declaration was helped along by the fact that the last three books I've read/started to read by women were painfully bad.) Since then I've read some Norman Mailer, some more of Diary of a Rapist, and it's cleansed my palate.
A question to Zoe Heller: Was it really necessary to make Barbara into the embodiment of every stereotype about spinsters you could think of? Desperately lonely, old cat, leaning towards lesbianism, bitter and cold, etc. Really, the reader could have pictured one of Marge's sisters from the Simpsons in the role and it would have fit.
There was no insight into Sheba at all. I mean, isn't that the title of the book? What was Sheba thinking when she had an affair with one of her students? Did you forget to add that part, Ms. Heller? Also, would it be possible for someone to create a contemporary book or movie with women characters somewhere inbetween the Ya-Ya sisterhood and this catty, must-destroy-all-other-women nonsense? That would be great. Let me know when someone does that, and until then I'll be hiding out with my Elizabeth Bowen.
You can read notices and obituaries for Hunter S. Thompson at the New York Times, the Sunday Times, CNN, the Scotsman, etc. More as it comes.
February 20, 2005
America has lost its greatest journalist. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, who was one of the main reasons I became a writer, has committed suicide.
I can't really imagine America without him.
February 18, 2005
The nominees for the International Booker Prize have been announced, and only three British writers made the shortlist.
Margaret Atwood (Canada)
Saul Bellow (Canada)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
Gunter Grass (Germany)
Ismail Kadare (Albania)
Milan Kundera (Czech Republic)
Stanislaw Lem (Poland)
Doris Lessing (UK)
Ian McEwan (UK)
Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
Tomas Eloy Martinez (Argentina)
Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)
Cynthia Ozick (US)
Philip Roth (US)
Muriel Spark (UK)
Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
John Updike (US)
Abraham B Yehoshua (Israel)
I predict high school seniors will be applying to Boston University in record numbers this year.
Rob Neyer reviews Juiced for the New York Observer, and finds it kind of sad.
In the end, actually, one gets the overwhelming impression that Mr. Canseco is delusional. Early in the book, in the course of advocating steroid use for everyone—yes, everyone—he writes, "I’m forty years old, but I look much younger—and I can still do everything the way I could when I was twenty-five."
When Jose Canseco was 25, he hit 37 home runs for the best baseball team on the planet. Take a good look at him now.
Following its brethren in the music, video game and television industries, book publisher Random House is venturing into the burgeoning market for delivering content over mobile phones.
Unless this results in my being able to download "Back That Azz Up" as my ring tone, I do not care about this.
David Wygant, author of Always Talk to Strangers: 3 Simple Steps to Finding the Love of Your Life says not to be afraid of some drunk plucking.
Q: Any advice for women?
A: Women can "close" a guy the exact same way. You've got the guy, he's talking to you. He's scared to death to ask you out because he thinks maybe you're just being friendly. Just say, "Well, maybe we'll run into each other again." It's gonna bring up nightmares of all the times he screwed up on casual encounters with women. Take control. Stop waiting to be plucked by a guy because you keep getting plucked by the wrong drunks.
While the movie version destroys the hearts and dreams of fans everywhere, Hellblazer has passed its 200th issue. The Seattle Times makes a few recommendations for those unsure where to start with the series. (My suggestion: uh, the beginning?)
A mole was sent in to infiltrate a malevolent organization, learn its habits and organizational structure, and then get out and destroy it from the outside. Only an e-mail was intercepted, and the evil genius mastermind learned of the mole's plan! The mastermind decided to crush the mole... with a court injunction? It's really too bad US Weekly doesn't share more likenesses with SD-6.
Bill Maher responds to the survey that said that the majority of American teenagers think the First Amendment "goes too far" in a piece called "Kids Say the Darndest, Most Stalinist Things."
But the younger generation is supposed to rage against the machine, not for it; they're supposed to question authority, not question those who question authority.
And what's so frightening is that we're seeing the beginnings of the first post-9/11 generation — the kids who first became aware of the news under an "Americans need to watch what they say" administration, the kids who've been told that dissent is un-American and therefore justifiably punished by a fine, imprisonment — or the loss of your show on ABC.
The BBC profiles Nuruddin Farah's new book Links, "the story of Jeebleh, a Somali who returns to Mogadishu for the first time after living in the United States for 20 years." Farah himself is living in exile, but he returns to Somalia twice a year. In the interview, he explains why he feels safer in Mogadishu than in Johannesburg, why the Somali government should return, and what happened after American troops abandoned the country.
Scott Douglas has another Dispatch from a Public Librarian, this one titled "Corny Library Pickup Lines, and How Librarians Effectively Shoot Them Down."
Libraries should allow food in the building, because right now I could just eat you up.
Policy is policy, but if you'd really like to change that, the appropriate forms are behind you—just drop it in the suggestion box when you're done, and in due time it will be pulled out and set in the loser pile.
Iain Banks made a rather surprising move with his upcoming book The Algebraist, which is already out in the UK. In the US, he moved from Random House to NightShade, a tiny SF press. He explains why in this interview at Salon.
I think I've kind of played the field with the U.S., all the main contenders over time. Bless them -- they've all tried. And I think through no fault of their own, they've all failed to make me big in the States. The conclusion I've come to is that I just don't write for an American audience as far as the mainstream is concerned. The science fiction has done reasonably well. I've had some quite reasonable deals out of them, but they have never earned out or made any royalties. And usually after a few months a very large packet of books comes back and ends up in my garage gathering dust. I think with Night Shade it is a bit different because they are a smaller concern. I'm kind of a bigger fish in a smaller pond, and there's real enthusiasm over there. With the larger corporate concerns it's harder to maintain that enthusiastic edge. These guys are so enthusiastic, I thought it was worth a try.
Can't nobody hold Marcel down. Blake Morrison examines the heretofore unknown connection between P. Diddy and Proust.
February 17, 2005
Remember Earful of Books? Yeah, I didn't think so. The Austin-based chain sold and rented audio books, which must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The stores were all closed two years ago. Now founder Paul Rush has been arrested and charged with fraud and money laundering.
The news from Paraguay is that some people there don't seem to like The News from Paraguay.
The book depicts Paraguay, (poet María Eugenia) Garay complained, as a savage country "populated by uncouth and hairy aborigines, distinguishable from monkeys only by the fact that they know how to play the harp," Paraguay's national instrument.
Still, author Lily Tuck shouldn't feel bad. Ray Bradbury went through the same crap when The Martian Chronicles was released.
Jose Canseco's Juiced is no Ball Four, says Dwight Chapin. Don't let Canseco discourage you; there actually are great baseball books out there. ESPN and Largehearted Boy offer recommendations.
Put down that Harper's and treat yourself to a real magazine. The first issue contains a Galway Kinnell poem about Justin Guarini and Louis Menand's fascinating article "Whither DeGarmo?"
Salon asks the partners of the essayists of Committed: Men Tell Stories of Love, Commitment, and Marriage to respond to the allegations made about their relationships. Luckily, everyone stays in their assigned gender roles, so as not to confuse anyone.
Sex, Drugs and Jeff Tweedy's National Geographic Collection.
Sarah Hepola looks at the recent slew of rock memoirs. She's not a Mötley Crüe fan, evidently:
It's hard to romanticize anything about drummer Tommy Lee's TommyLand, a numbingly idiotic book that might as well be written in all lowercase with emoticons after every sentence. Lee's style could be a cautionary tale about the dangers of drug use, except I suspect he was always this stupid.
Lynne Cheney Terry Gross SMACKDOWN! I'm sure Ms. Cheney just wanted to talk about her children's books, but instead Ms. Gross pushed her on children being taught "intelligent design," gay rights, and whether Cheney is advocating for a sugar coating of American history. (The most unintentionally funny moment is when Cheney declares first wave feminism was "a breath of fresh air." The whole fight for real equal rights, however, didn't really do much for her.) It's just too bad that there was no performance from Sisters.
Memo to those trying to promote World Book Day and increase people's interest in reading: Why don't you first let us know which World Book Day is the "real" one? It would clear up a lot of confusion.
I have recently fallen in love with Zembla magazine. It's an expensive import, so I had to be sure before I committed to a $50 subscription, but when the last issue came out with Tom Waits on the cover, a story about Vidal meets Mailer, an author talking about the various cover designs for her last book, a new interview with the dead Arthur Conan Doyle, and a dozen other brilliant things, I was hooked. Of course, immediately thereafter came the rumors that it was shutting down production because it's broke. This interview with Dan Crowe at 3am Magazine was conducted before the financial woes, and they do confirm that the magazine has suspended publication. But Crowe's optimism about the future of literary magazines is cheery.
It somehow doesn't surprise me that Dean Koontz is obsessive-compulsive. The horror writer talks to an L.A. Times reporter about his dog-grooming habits and his "outrageously indulgent" Orange County home.
Today's installment of "Successful, Critically Acclaimed Authors Who Are Younger Than Michael Schaub" features Sightseeing author Rattawut Lapcharoensap. Join us tomorrow when I try to figure out what exactly went wrong with my life!
The Book Standard may have given a column gig to the unworthy Book Babes ("Margaret Atwood is such a nice lady!" "Isn't she though?"), they've also given one to Adam Langer, author of Crossing California. In the third installment, we find out hero struggling with blurb writing.
Still, at this moment, I’m struggling with the blurb format, which often seems to be a particularly literate form of Mad Libs:
“This (adjective) and (adjective/noun) cuts to the bone of (evocative phrase). Reminiscent of the works of (mainstream author) and (groovy, less well-known author), this (adjective) work marks (insert writer’s name) as a (choose one: [a] writer at the top of his/her game; [b] a bold new voice of his/her generation).”
Today's The Morning News Tournament of Books has Maud Newton choosing between Philip Roth's The Plot Against America and T.C. Boyle's The Inner Circle.
February 16, 2005
Largehearted Boy points out this unfortunate headline, leading a story about The Vagina Monologues being performed at Georgia State University.
Any nerds in the house? Check out the new trailer for the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at Amazon. Martin Freeman? Sam Rockwell? Mos Def? I'm not sure there's any way this movie can be bad.
GalleyCat looks at new books that will probably not enrich our culture, making a very important point in the process: "Western civilization doesn't need more rape-fantasies about God from girls named Mary." In unrelated news, the release date for my debut novel, Blessed Art Thou Amongst Women, has been pushed back while I do some last-minute retooling.
Sarah Crompton wonders why no one is saying anything negative about Ian McEwan's latest, Saturday. For what it's worth, she thinks the book is "exceptionally good."
For the past decade, The Pegaso bookstore, a cozy shrine to the printed word, has offered browsers free coffee, overstuffed leather sofas, and a wide-ranging literary selection. But now it's scaling back, ditching poetry and history, and keeping the few things that still sell - some novels and glossy art books. Pegaso, like many other Mexican bookstores, is on the verge of succumbing to a complicated crisis that threatens Mexico's book industry - one Ms. Woolrich says boils down to this: "Mexicans aren't reading."
Not even death can stop George Plimpton.
Random House to P. Diddy: Pay or die.
Anthony Sher discusses adapting Primo Levi's If This Is a Man for the stage.
Sher tentatively distilled If This Is a Man into a first draft without checking on the rights. He then discovered that the Primo Levi estate had decided never to allow anyone to film or stage the book. "I respected them for their stance," he says, "because the blood does run cold to think of what Hollywood at its worst would make of that book."
They almost had me. Hayden Christensen to play lead in adaptation of Italian classic The Decameron? Not a problem. Yeah, he was in one of the least erotic love scenes ever to be caught on film, but he was great in Shattered Glass. Then I read the next sentence, and my heart went cold. "Christensen will play the role of Lorenzo, starring opposite The O.C.'s Mischa Barton, who in December signed on as Pampinea, the project's leading lady." Yeah, that's not going to be any good.
Lafayette College has selected Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers as its freshman orientation book for 2005. The book has already been on the curriculum for the English course "The Graphic Novel" where the discussion was heated. The book was selected in the hopes that it would stir up controversy and strong opinions. (Link from Egonlabs.)
Gerard Jones, author of Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book comments on the ruling that Marvel Comics owes Stan Lee millions of dollars for the movies based on the characters Lee (co-)created.
Lee's lawsuit had sent a modest shock wave through the comics community — not because a comic book publisher scammed one of its creators — that's what those publishers have always done — but because Lee, of all the creators in the business, seemed to be the one immune to scammery.
"By all rights, 18 months from now we should be looking back at this and all kind of embarrassed to say the word blog -- I hope." I Want Media reprints Michael Wolff's keynote address from the 2005 SIIA Information Industry Summit held earlier this month. Wolff is the author of Autumn of the Moguls and the media columnist for Vanity Fair. He has some interesting ideas about media on the Internet, specifically about online newspapers and free content.
And then something happened, and I've sort of tried to figure out when this was. It was certainly mid-'90s in that the Journal kind of disappeared. The [Wall Street] Journal went out of the conversation as a point of influence other than the eccentricities of its editorial page. It seemed to if not stop existing at least stop mattering.
It was interesting because the product was as good as it had ever been. It just wasn't present in the discussion. I've spent a lot of time thinking what happened because I know a lot of people at the Journal, and it feels to me from a journalist standpoint something of a puzzle and a little bit of a tragedy. And I think that the answer is the online thing. I think the fact that the Journal felt that it was powerful enough to charge, and for a long time everyone regarded the Journal's activities online as the ultimate. They had unlocked the puzzle. In fact, I don't think they did. I think they locked themselves into a puzzle.
While the New York Times on the other hand became this ubiquitous information brand. It became finally the national information brand. And it did this, I think, because it was free.
Today's The Morning News Tournament of Books has Pitchaya Subanthad choosing between Louis de Bernières's Bird Without Wings and Lorraine Adams's Harbor.
I'm sorry, but if I told you that one of the following men accused the other of Satanism, which would you suppose was which? (Link from Mobylives.)
Just when you thought it might be safe to read the newspaper again...
February 15, 2005
Now that Salon's done beating the shit out of H.P. Lovecraft, you can read a more balanced, informed take on the author at the Boston Globe.
Slate finds an angle overlooked by other reviews of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep: would the protagonist even have been accepted by the elite college?
Why was a nondescript, white, middle-class girl from the Midwest awarded not just one of the top-notch school's coveted spots, but a fat scholarship, too?
If every generation gets the classic of disaffected youth it deserves, you might well expect that the heroine of Prep would at least come within hailing distance of that emblematic figure of our times: the "organization kid," as David Brooks christened the intensively parented child, steadily amassing credentials from cradle to college. But Sittenfeld studiously avoids supplying any evidence of accomplishments that might have moved an admissions office to look favorably on this particular applicant—except, of course, for the very novel we're reading, narrated in the first person by Lee a decade later.
Bill Clinton won a Grammy on Sunday. (Via Political Wire.)
Oh sweet Jesus. Hi and Lois are totally going to fuck.
I know I just asked you guys to donate what you could last month (and thanks to you, the Mike Schaub Killer Bong Fund is doing better than ever). But this time, a legitimate cause needs you. Send a few bucks to Baltimore's The Book Thing. I'll know if you don't. (More information from The Old Hag, who puts the "Mary" in "Maryland." No, I don't know what that means.)
Ah, shitty Wal-Mart bookshelves. (Scroll down to the second list. Or you can read the first list if you want. I'm not your fucking mom, you know?)
The Bible's funny! Who says the Bible's not funny? It's fucking funny!
The experts will also focus on the story, told in Luke’s Gospel, of Zaccheus, a short man and despised tax collector who, eager to see Jesus at a busy gathering, is forced to take the undignified course of scrambling up a tree.
Zaccheus’ efforts are rewarded. Jesus chooses the company of the most hated man in town and gently tells him to come down from the tree, as he wishes to be a guest in his home.
See? Funny!
The best Virtual Book Tour stop yet: Largeheartedboy hosts Tom Dolby and his book The Trouble Boy and his inspirational mix tape.
The Guardian takes a look at the two Beowulf movies coming out — the big-budget Roger Zemeckis version and the smaller version out of Iceland.
Stanford student Grace Liu says she's a loser, though she's actually pretty hilarious. Check out her take on self-help, "This book will change my life, goddammit."
The year is 2007. After a clash with Turkish forces in northern Iraq, US troops stage a surprise attack. Reeling, Turkey turns to Russia and the European Union, who turn back the American onslaught.
This is the plot of "Metal Storm," one of the fastest-selling books in Turkish history. The book is clearly sold as fiction, but its premise has entered Turkey's public discourse in a way that sometimes seems to blur the line between fantasy and reality.
Chris Crutcher can't catch a goddamn break in Michigan. Soon they'll start blaming him for the decline of Motown and the popularity of Japanese cars.
It's hard being a debut author, particularly in the world of children's book publishing. It can seem nearly impossible to catch a break and make a name for yourself. But it's easier when the publishers happen to be on the board of a charitable foundation that pays you over $77,000 a year as a "consultant." And it's easier still when you're married to the governor of New York, and he agrees to provide a campaign aide to push sales of your book. Huh — I'm beginning to think maybe Madison in New York wasn't published on its own merits after all.
Today's The Morning News Tournament of Books has Danny Gregory choosing between Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons and Jonathan Ames's Wake Up, Sir!
Steve Almond found his last book Candyfreak being attacked by an unexpected source. It seems Republicans hate candy.
February 14, 2005
Ada Calhoun takes on the men of McSweeney's, and Neal Pollack responds. (Neal also has a new Bad Sex column at Nerve.)
Three men were arrested Friday for allegedly stealing several rare books from the Transylvania University library, including a first edition of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and then attempting to sell them to a New York auction house, authorities said.
Apparently the plot fell apart when the men asked to be paid in small, unmarked OxyContin pills.
The US government (or at least a spokesperson) tries to justify the sanctions against dissident writers from unsavory nations publishing in the US without first obtaining permission.
Officials from the U.S. Treasury Department, which oversees OFAC, declined to comment on the lawsuit, but spokeswoman Molly Millerwise described the sanctions as ''a very important part of our overall national security."
"These are countries that pose serious threats to the United States, to our economy and security, and our well-being around the globe," Millerwise said, adding that publishers can still bring dissident writers to American readers as long as they first apply for a license.
The Baltimore Sun points out some books that could have been affected by the law, including Persepolis and Reading Lolita in Tehran, as well as just about every Cuban writer.
Congratulations, New Orleans! My condolences, San Diego.
This week's Guardian Digested Read is Richard B. Pelzer's A Brother's Journey: Surviving a Childhood of Abuse. No word on whether his memoir is as fake as his brother's yet.
For the past 10 years I had allowed my brother Dave to cash in on the story of his abuse, while never daring to think that I, too, could have my own publishing contract.
I should have learned so much from Dave. Like writing in italics for no apparent reason, speaking inane psychobabble platitudes and mixing up my tenses. But I chose not to. How often the abused are condemned to repeat the tragedies of the past!
Whoa, whoa, whoa — Canadians have sex?
Loathsome gossip hacks Mara Reinstein and Joey Bartolomeo wrote a book about Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston in five days, but will the Pulitzer committee notice?
How did you write so quickly?
M.R.: I still don’t know.
J.B.: We looked like we’d been on some bizarre drug binge.
M.R.: Bob Wallace, the head of Wenner Books, said it had to be 40,000 words, which I didn’t really understand—all I knew was that an Us Weekly cover story is, like, 1,300 words, so I knew it would be a lot.
Roberta Alexander sticks up for the mainstream media, empirically proving that establishment journalism is superior to blogs and webzines by reviewing a bad print-on-demand novel. Yeah, I don't get it either.
Today's The Morning News Tournament of Books is Margaret Mason choosing between Ward Just's An Unfinished Season and Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker.
Any copy editors out there looking for work? Get yourself to the tattoo parlors. There's a need for you there.
Novelist Catherine Barry responds to the recent nonsense in Ireland about children of single parents being "bastards."
Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky presents "ten love poems to woo her with." But it's not what you think.
Love is linked to art and persuasion, and also to the ideal or affectation of innocence. Poetry has roots in courtly flirtation, seduction, and complaint—that is, in courtship.
Oh, wait — it's exactly what you think. Sorry about that.
"From the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent," reads the first line of the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Shunned House," but chances are Lovecraft, who died in 1937, wouldn't have appreciated the irony of his present position as American literature's greatest bad writer.
Laura Miller is writing about H.P. Lovecraft: Tales.
The French have developed an affection for graphic literature.. No one tell Bush unless you want to be reading "freedom books" for the rest of your life.
The only thing more annoying than that intrusive bitch at your office wondering aloud every time she passes by your office where your roses are on Valentine's Day would be someone like this girl declaring, "Cats are better than men!"
"I have never loved a guy as much as I have loved this cat," she laughs, marking her poor tabby Perry with a red smooch on his fluffy white fur. "And I totally understand why girls date guys in rock bands -- BECAUSE THEY LEAVE."
Two guesses what genre she writes in.