Category: publishing

“Except for high school musicals of ‘Annie’ and maybe a James Cagney film festival, Americans have done a great job of burying the Great Depression in the nation’s psyche. It took a financial collapse of today’s magnitude to reawaken the visions of that long, hard time of nearly 70 years ago. Publishers, naturally, are huffing and puffing to come up with the most appropriate new book to explain the current economic miseries.”

“Books like Freakonomics, defining significant cultural or economic trends with a punchy title, never seem to be produced by women. But why?”

“Tatiana Boncompagni, the author of ‘Hedge Fund Wives,’ a novel to be published in May by News Corp.’s HarperCollins, sued her sister Natasha over claims she copied parts of the manuscript and sought copyright protection as its co-author. Tatiana Boncompagni … accused her sister of secretly copying parts of ‘Hedge Fund Wives’ this year during family visits in New York and Milwaukee.”

“A new breed of politicized critic is emerging, full of the passionate intensity that springs from a righteous sense of historical vindication. They tend to be American, and to define their politics in opposition to what they regard as the effete intellectual culture of old Europe. They point out that neoclassical economics has implications for literature that are at least as suggestive as those offered by the Marxist tradition, and they argue that the social and political triumph of the market ought to be reflected in humanities departments.”

Every larger German library still has hundreds of these books in its inventory, books snatched up by the men of the SS and SA, as well as ordinary soldiers, both in Germany and in other European countries occupied by the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, during World War II. No one knows how many stolen books are still on the shelves in German libraries today, although experts, like historian Görz Aly, estimate that there are at least one million.

The economic downturn could prove to be a good thing for books, say some industry insiders. In the economic decline “books may well even reclaim market territory that many deemed lost to other, more expensive entertainments.”

“Kindle sales appear likely to get a significant boost on Friday, with talk-show megastar Oprah Winfrey apparently about to endorse Amazon’s digital book reader.”

“I try to heed another piece of advice: don’t cherrypick, just select at random, and make sure to write a brief, factual note immediately after finishing each book. ‘I felt,’ confides another former judge, ‘that “X is Y’s brother” would have been a more useful observation than “haunting prose”.'”

Jury chairman Michael Portillo says that the second-place author “is entitled to be disappointed” and that the novel was “the most beautiful book [on the shortlist], a glorious piece of writing with not a word misplaced.” (Sorry, folks – click on the link for the answer.)

The organizers of Toronto’s International Festival of Authors are aiming for a broader appeal than it may have had in years past. “In the six years since taking over from founder Greg Gatenby, [Geoffrey] Taylor has routinely added new wrinkles to an event that formerly served as the exclusive domain of writers of so-called literary fiction. The doors have been flung open to non-fiction authors, graphic novelists, poets, genre writers and the like.”