Category: publishing

Literature’s New Critics “weren’t the first to theorize about literature, but they were the first to establish theory as a distinct practice in the humanities. Like the theorists who came after, they regarded texts as dense and multilayered, and scorned interpretations that overlooked the figurative and formal aspects of the work. On the other hand, the New Critics erected disciplinary walls, while the theorists who followed knocked them down.”

Publishing houses across North American are creating new lines of romances aimed at people of Asian and African descent.

Publishing experts are predicting piles of stock for remainder bins and badly dented finances after a spectacular failure of the “decline-and-fall-and-plucky-fight-back” memoirs.

The Beaux-Arts marble building, now known as the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, is suffering from cracks, chipping, and erosion of the marble, the library said in its announcement. Restoration will cost $55 million.

“Just as the Whos down in Who-ville managed to celebrate their Christmas even after the Grinch stole their stockings and trees and presents and roast beast, we will soldier on and keep covering books even though “the Grinch” stole our pages.

“One of the pleasant aspects of judging the Man Booker, I have realised, is that bonding between judges is considered a serious part of the process, presumably because when our decisions are announced and the brickbats start flying, we will be able to console ourselves that we still have some mates left.”

In the 1880s, the writing of history was professionalized, “committed to supposedly ‘scientific’ standards of evidence and proof; largely university-based, and (by the 1950s), with the PhD as the near-universally required qualification for its would-be practitioners. The new professionals tended to look rather patronisingly on their non-professional forebears. In fact, they tended to regard them as hardly proper historians at all.”

“Most big literary awards have a star judge nowadays. Prizes gain exposure as a result, but they also lose credibility. If an accolade for literary merit is to have much meaning, it should be awarded by people capable of discerning literary merit – rather than wielding a pair of oars or sitting in a TV studio.”

How come so fw books from Central Asia are translated into English?

“The delivery of the content of a book in different forms and formats is making people nervous,” he said, not quite uttering the name ‘Kindle.’ So we’re trying to publish in a lot of different formats because we don’t know where the readers are going to be. A lot of us in the publishing industry started out when we still used carbon paper and manual typewriters.”