Category: publishing

“Not one of the five novels nominated for the Governor-General’s was on the Giller short list – a fact that attests to the inherent subjectivity of juries and, perhaps, to the breadth and depth of Canada’s literary talent. All of the 42 shortlisted novelists, poets, dramatists, essayists, translators, childrens’ writers and illustrators were announced yesterday in Toronto. A total of 69 books were nominated for this year’s awards, in seven categories in both French and English.”

The Wikipedia has enjoyed charmed press and its supporters’ claims of a new collaborative world are impressive. But an increasing number of critics are complaining about Wiki’s quality problems. “In theory, Wikipedia is a beautiful thing – it has to be a beautiful thing if the Web is leading us to a higher consciousness. Only it isn’t. An encyclopedia can’t just have a small percentage of good entries and be considered a success. I would argue, in fact, that the overall quality of an encyclopedia is best judged by its weakest entries rather than its best. What’s the worth of an unreliable reference work?”

Finalists for this year’s Governor General’s Literary Awards have been announced. “The fiction nominees include David Gilmour’s A Perfect Night to Go to China, Charlotte Gill’s Ladykiller, Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, Kathy Page’s Alphabet and Golda Fried’s Nellcott Is My Darling. In addition to the $15,000 cash prize in each category, each laureate will receive a specially crafted copy of his or her winning book. The winning publishers receive $3,000. Non-winning finalists receive $1,000 each.”

Landis Everson wins a new literary prize for writers over 50 who have never published a book. “Everson, 79, quiet, pixieish and a little frail after a cataract operation, answered, smiling, ‘Imagine, if you had written a letter to a friend in Chicago and you never had an answer, and you kept writing and writing and not getting any answer back, would you keep writing?’ No matter. Mr. Everson will now receive the Emily Dickinson First Book Award of $10,000, with publication of his book underwritten by the foundation.”

The publishing world is too hung up on genres, insisting that every book be categorized and ranked. “What is it, when Man Booker juries meet, that makes genres ‘inferior’? Why is crime writing, with its ‘very conscious structure’and ability to raise ‘big moral issues’ outside the box of introversion, such a poor relation of ‘literary fiction’?”

War-criminal-on-the-run Radovan Karadzic has published a volume of poetry. “Karadzic’s publisher told AP news agency the poems had been completed in the past few months, but refused to say how they came into his possession. They describe mountains, thick green forests, rivers and wild animals. Mr Karadzic is accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for the persecution of non-Serbs in Bosnia.”

“Has American culture begun to mimic the chronic nostalgia of a certain strain of post-imperial Englishness? Is the embrace of these fantasies part of, in Michael Moorcock’s words, a ‘longing to possess, again, the infant’s eye?’ Or is there something in them that speaks to the moment more clearly than, say, ‘Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous’?”

“Two years after Greg Gatenby’s resignation as director, Toronto’s International Festival of Authors’ founder is a long way from having been forgotten. But the annual program of readings, author interviews and panel discussions — the 26th edition of which runs Wednesday to Oct. 29 — gives every appearance of continuing to thrive under successor Geoffrey Taylor, contrary to concerns expressed by some at the time of Gatenby’s departure.”

Flamethrower John Simon objects to Harold Pinter winning the Nobel Prize for literature: “I would have gladly accorded him the Nobel for Arrogance, the Nobel for Self-promotion, or the Nobel for Hypocrisy—spewing venom at the United States while basking in our dollars—if such Nobels existed. But the Nobel for Literature? I think not.”

Students at a Canadian college were given an assignment – develop a publishing business. “So what did these aspiring publishers, mostly in their 20s with a few senior faces among them, tell us about publishing? Well, the first inescapable fact was that not a single one of those five proposed publishing houses planned to publish fiction. No novels, short stories and definitely, as Scott Griffin, founder of the world’s most lucrative poetry prize pointed out, no poetry.”