Category: publishing

Baseball writing is far more than a literary niche – more like a self-contained genre populated by both specialists and one-time visitors, all determined to capture the simple beauty of America’s game on paper. Of course, it’s not as easy as that, as scores of mediocre baseball tomes have proven over the decades. Not everyone can be Ring Lardner, or even W.P. Kinsella, but that’s never stopped anyone (no, seriously, anyone) with a ball cap and a pen from trying.

The Paris Review, George Plimpton’s little-read but much-admired literary journal, hasn’t actually been based in Paris for decades. In fact, the small but devoted staff of the Review did their work in a small Manhattan office just one floor beneath Plimpton’s East Side apartment. But following Plimpton’s death last year, the editors found it inconceivable to continue putting out the magazine from a now-Plimptonless office, and chose to move again. No, they’re not headed back to Paris – lower Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood will have to do.

Three writers are spending a month locked up together while they write. “Architects and designers created three studio “pods” for the writers to live and work in – an indoor “treehouse” with grass on the roof, a high-tech Japanese-style angular box with rice-paper walls, and an open-plan space made of boxes and movable walls that can be hoisted with ropes and pulleys. The writers are allowed to use a roof terrace and other areas within the gallery for 90 minutes a day – they must clock out on time cards. There are no locks on the doors, but they are encouraged not to leave the building.”

The University of Texas is moving out all of its books, replacing them with an “electronic learning center”. “Such digital learning laboratories, staffed with Internet-expert librarians, teachers and technicians, have been advancing on traditional college libraries since appearing at the University of Southern California in 1994. As more texts become accessible online, libraries have been moving lesser-used materials to storage. But experts said it was symbolic for a top educational institution like Texas to empty a library of books.”

The controversial Steve Wassserman is leaving as editor of the LA Times Book Review. “Steve hit his stride about 1998, and for a few years there, he put out some truly great sections. More provocative than speculating about whether he ultimately jumped or was pushed might now be to start a conversation about the precarious ledge he leaves behind.”

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has named screenwriter/novelist Al Young as the state’s new poet laureate. “Young, 65, is a two-time recipient of Pushcart Prize for poetry – a national small press award – and a winner of the PEN/Library of Congress Award for short fiction. He has also taught creative writing at Stanford, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has also written film scripts for Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.”

A study has pinpointed the average writer’s peak. “The average age of writers who topped the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List from 1955-2004 was 50.5 years. Of the 350 authors who saw their novels reach the number one spot over the past 50 years, Francoise Sagan was the youngest with Bonjour Tristesse, published at the age of 19 in 1955. By comparison, Agatha Christie was the oldest author to top the list, with her novel Sleeping Murder, published shortly after her death at the age of 85.”

Oklahoma’s House of Representatives has passed a “nonbinding resolution calling for gay-themed children’s books and other age-inappropriate material to be moved to the adult section of public libraries.” The measure was introduced “after complaints from the parents of a 6-year-old who had checked out “King and King,” a book about two young princes who fall in love, from a library in the Oklahoma City suburb of Bethany.”

Why are the French so ticked off that Google plans to digitize libraries? “To some, the outcry smacked of just another case of misplaced Gallic pride; after all, Google plans to include French and other non-English books in its literary database. But a rapid response from bureaucrats in The Hague has sent a signal that the whole continent now sees Google as a threat. Last week, four months after Google’s announcement, the European Commission, which represents 25 countries, pledged 96 million euros to digitize all of the books from more than 20 of Europe’s most pre-eminent libraries before America gets there first.”

“This year marks the two hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Samuel Johnson’s magnificent Dictionary of the English Language, the most ambitious and idiosyncratic single-person etymological effort ever attempted. Accolades have accumulated over its reigning period of influence. Unabashedly entertaining it is, indeed. The current generation of professional lexicographers is taught to dissect words in a vacuum, to trace their etymological history with Protestant precision. Doctor Johnson is their Columbus. He is also an anti-model.”