Category: publishing

Six finalists are chosen for this year’s Man Booker Prize. “The shortlist was chosen from a 19-book longlist described by the Guardian’s literary editor, Claire Armitstead, as ‘respectable but not startling’.”

“To many people, of course, the idea of marking up a book seems distasteful – a violation of the text, a sign of disrespect for the author’s authority.” But the markings of readers can also give the overlay of understanding by readers who have gone before.

Gunther Grass caused a storm last month when he revealed he’d been a Nazi. “Somewhat lost in the scandal is the fact that Grass has written a memoir of rare literary beauty. Beginning with his childhood in Danzig and ending with the publication, in 1959, of his first and most famous novel, ‘The Tin Drum,’ the book is not just an autobiography but also a meditation on memory—on the tricks it plays and the way it feeds the imagination of a born storyteller.”

Under editor David Remnick, The New Yorker has become a financial success as well as a critical one. The magazine “has the highest subscription renewal rate of any magazine in the country. It has a circulation of over 1 million, and although it is privately owned and such figures are not publicly available, it is thought to be turning a profit of around $10 million.”

“With the federal government ever more intent on spying on its own citizens, and on classifying, concealing and manipulating larger swaths of information and intelligence, librarians and library custodians are on the front lines protecting freedom of inquiry and our right to privacy.”

“The Sobol Award offers the enormous prize for the best unreleased novel by an unrepresented author, with prizes of $25,000 and $10,000 for the runners-up and $1,000 each to seven others. The award — available only to authors in the United States — is the creation of Sobol Literary Enterprises, a for-profit venture started by technology entrepreneur Gur Shomron as a venue to discover talented, unknown fiction writers and help them get the recognition they deserve.”

Fifteen Canadian writers are in the running. “This year the jury includes former governor general Adrienne Clarkson and authors Alice Munro and Michael Winter.”

“The National Library of Scotland, belatedly, is creating an archive of blogs, journals and e-mails written by leading Scots. Curators will harvest websites and inboxes for things of cultural significance, describing it as a ‘digital repository’ containing what will come to be regarded as the manuscripts of the 21st century. It all sounds very admirable: the e-mails of JK Rowling, Ian Rankin and Alasdair Gray captured for posterity. (JK’s e-mails to her investment manager would be the best read of all. Except those are precisely the ones that will never be kept and never be seen.)”

Readers are suing James Frey and his publisher for defrauding them? “Stunts like this give a bad name to class action suits that seek to redress genuine wrongs, like race or sex discrimination in the workplace, or pollution. The action against Random House also reflects an absurdly consumerist attitude toward reading: when the book – or author – isn’t what you expected, demand your money back!”

“Launched in 1982 by Hilton Kramer and the music critic Samuel Lipman, the magazine has outlasted T.S. Eliot’s Criterion, which ran for 17 years. For a quarter of a century, the New Criterion has helped its readers distinguish achievement from failure in painting, music, dance, literature, theater, and other arts. The magazine, whose circulation is 6,500, has taken a leading role in the culture wars, publishing articles whose titles are an intellectual call to arms.”