Category: publishing

James Frey’s editor now says he was duped by the author, and believed that everything in the book was true. “Throughout the editing process, I raised questions with James about the veracity of events he recounted in the book and in each instance he assured me that his account was accurate and true. The only things in ‘A Million Little Pieces’ that I understood were altered were the names and identifying characteristics of some of the people in the book to protect their real identities.”

A new biography of Mark Twain attempts to measure the author’s importance to American literature: “His way of seeing and hearing things changed America’s way of seeing and hearing things … he was the Lincoln of American literature.’ In his prime, a century after the Declaration of Independence, Twain was a Yankee original who rendered the vocabulary and tone of the American vernacular, previously despised, in a way that was neither parody, nor caricature, but literature.”

“To publishers and new writers, the imprimatur of a famous author has always been gold, carrying, as it does, all the solemnity of naming a successor. But the new vogue for non-literary champions – Robert Plant or Jarvis Cocker, for example – works on a much simpler syllogism: if you like Robert Plant, and Robert Plant liked this book, why then, you’ll like this book.”

Christian bookstores are struggling. “Association membership peaked at around 3,000 stores in the early 1990s but now totals less than 2,300. CBA said 337 retailers closed last year. To compete, independents look beyond books to sell music, gifts, jewelry, stationery, hymnals and communion supplies. Books now account for only 40 percent of sales in Christian retail stores. Religious books, primarily Christian, generated U.S. sales of nearly $338 million in 2003.”

The famously aggressive gossip columnists at the New York Post have come out swinging against Washington Post arts writer Philip Kennicott, following Kennicott’s scathing review of a new book about the effort to stop the looting of Iraq’s national treasures and mount a recovery effort following the American invasion. The Post calls the review “an unprovoked hatchet job… on Manhattan Assistant DA-turned-war-hero Matthew Bogdanos” and Bogdanos himself is quoted asking “What has that man [Kennicott] ever done for ‘culture?'”

Was Philip Kennicott’s review of Thieves of Baghdad really an “unprovoked hatchet job”? He does allow that there is “a good narrative and a lot of fascinating detail in this book.” But then, he also accuses author Matthew Bogdanos of subscribing to “an interpretation of military culture that goes beyond mere duty and includes a disturbing degree of entitlement — to bend rules, disdain criticism and place oneself above the people one serves.” Read the full review here…

“The Publishing industry bears the weight of contradictory expectations: It must make money, as well as maintain the illusion that it’s one of the last bastions of highbrow culture. Which leaves book editors and publishers with the impossible task of creating products that will both sell at Costco and serve as intellectual currency at Upper West Side dinner parties.”

It’s rare that a new word can be coined, popularized, and made an official part of the language through the efforts of a single individual. But that hasn’t stopped Professor James Vanden Bosch of Michigan’s Calvin College from pursuing a one-man crusade to get his favorite made-up word – presticogitation – into the Oxford English Dictionary. Vanden Bosch has actually done a remarkably good job of convincing his studnts over the years to use the word in their writing, but the folks at OED are a much tougher sell.

James Frey’s literary agent has dropped him in the wake of the scandal over his fictionalized memoir. The agent, Kassie Evashevski, also acknowledged that Frey inquired into the possibility of publishing A Million Little Pieces as a novel rather than a non-fiction work, but she says that the reason he gave was his desire to spare his family any embarrassment, and that he never admitted that large chunks of the book weren’t true.

Not an apology, the note is James Frey’s “explanation for making up incidents in his memoir. “I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories require,” Mr. Frey said, explaining the reason for the changes. “I altered events all the way through the book.”