Category: publishing

“A first-hand account of the Charge of the Light Brigade, by a trooper who lost an eye and part of his skull in the famous engagement, is to be sold, 120 years after the soldier wrote it to escape from begging on the streets.”

The problem with memoirs tends to be that they’re so darned long! (Does anyone really want to read 30 pages on your time in elementary school?) So a new collection of six-word memoirs by “writers famous and obscure” would seem to be just what the reading public ordered…

“Four Nobel Prize-winners for literature have joined seven other distinguished writers in issuing a statement of support for the Czech-born author Milan Kundera, who has been accused of informing for the Communist secret police when he was a student.” The signatories are J. M. Coetzee, Gabriel García Marquez, Nadine Gordimer, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, Jean Daniel, Jorge Semprun, Juan Goytisolo and Pierre Mertens.

“The economic crisis has people nervous. But imagine living during the time of Charles Dickens when the Bank of England was on the verge of collapse and financial ruin was sudden.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the election: “It has been a long idealist dream that someday society life on earth would evolve in such a way that dissident writers and intellectuals would no longer have to be dissident. There are similarities between Obama and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but they do not point to any real political or social revolution.”

Hélène Berr, a Jewish student at the Sorbonne who stayed behind in occupied Paris to help rescue Jewish children, was captured and sent to Auschwitz in 1944. The wartime journal she wrote for her fiancé survived; it was published this year and is becoming a bestseller.

Being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize is stressful enough for any author. Deciding what to wear to the awards ceremony when your nominated book is entitled The Clothes on Their Backs… now, that’s pressure.

Few Americans had read the work of J.M.G. Le Clézio when it was announced he had won this year’s Nobel for literature. “More philosopher than deviser of intricate characters or plots, Mr. Le Clézio is like a post-Darwin Rousseau, decrying the ruination of indigenous cultures around the world, often through the eyes of a child. At the same time, he is fascinated by the callousness of nature. In more than one novel he descends below grass level to record the brutality of insects.

While DC Comics won’t allow Superman and Batman to endorse, Image Comics’ Savage Dragon endorses Obama on a cover, two publishers have produced graphic novel-style candidate bios, and Bluewater Comics’ “Female Force” series has featured Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the weekday print editions are being eliminated, as is all home delivery. “The printed version of the paper will only be available in stores on Saturdays… Subscribers will be able to get the full digital edition of the paper at a special rate.”