Category: publishing

“Encyclopedia entries are among the lowest form of secondary literature. It might be okay to “look something up” in an encyclopedia or some other reference volume. But read them? For pleasure? The implication that you spend much time doing so would be close to an insult — a kind of academic lese majesty.”

This year’s PEN award winners have been announced. Winners include Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith,” for best nonfiction debut, and “Forms of Gone,” by Yerra Sugarman, for best poetry.

An interview with the poet has been found in which Whitman gives aspiring poets some advice: “First, don’t write poetry; second ditto; third ditto. You may be surprised to hear me say so, but there is no particular need of poetic expression. We are utilitarian, and the current cannot be stopped.”

This week, three novelists will seal themselves in a small room and write for a month. “The goal is for each to complete a novel by June 4. The purpose is to consider the private and public aspects of writing. No cameras will record this voyeuristic experiment, though visitors can peep occasionally (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m). The potential for public humiliation comes not from the perils of constant surveillance, but from the more familiar writers’ problem of failing to meet a deadline. Make that deadlines. They will give weekly readings of their works in progress.”

“Both Amazon and Google are negotiating with American publishers to develop ‘search within the book’ programmes. Google already has a deal with several top libraries from around the world, including the Bodleian, to digitise out of copyright texts. Inevitably, some publishers and the Society of Authors are getting quite excited about this innovation.” But one publisher says ” ‘it may result in no sales’, the publishing equivalent of Armageddon. Collaborate with this ‘Napsterisation’ process, he told the Publishers Association, and the book industry risked ‘undermining the cultural and intellectual tradition of the past 600 years’.”

Google’s plans to digitize books from important libraries has many cheering. But in some European countries, there are big concerns. “For Europeans, the fear is that the continent’s contribution to the pillars of recorded knowledge will be crushed by the profit-oriented California company — and may end up presenting a U.S.-centric version of the world’s literary legacy.”

Sensitive to growing international concern over reports of human rights violations, in late April the government of President Fidel Castro conducted a secret trial of two Cuban librarians, Elio Enrique Chávez and Luis Elio de la Paz, and sentenced them to prison on a charge of “dangerousness.”

The New Oxford American Dictionary publishes a new edition electronically (and on paper too). “Of the new dictionary’s more than a quarter million entries, about 2,000 were added since the first edition came out in 2001. Words that gained currency in American English over the last four years, and gained entry in NOAD, include “bridezilla” (“an overzealous bride-to-be who acts irrationally or causes offense”) and “speed dating” (“a social activity in which equal complements of potential partners spend a few minutes in short interviews with all other participants in order to determine whether there is interest”).”

Organizers of the Booker Prize have announced a new award for translators. “The £15,000 honour has been created to recognise the role translators play in bringing fiction to a world audience. The author of a work translated into English will collect the new award, and decide who should win if several people were involved in the translation.”

Statistically Improbable Phrases: the term sounds like a highfalutin’ way of describing nonsense prose, but in reality, it’s an innovative new feature of Amazon.com’s search utility. The SIP utility “compares the text of hundreds of thousands of books to reveal an author’s signature constructions,” and is only one of several new options available for prejudging literature. “Customers can also see how complicated the writing is (yes, post-structuralist Michel Foucault’s prose is foggier than Immanuel Kant’s), and how much education you need to understand a book. (To understand French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, you’ll need a second Ph.D.)”