Category: publishing

Evidently, Brad Pitt makes Homer’s The Illiad sexy. University professors are expecting an upturn in enrollment for courses in the classics. And book sales of The Illiad are rocketing up. “In fact, the Iliad has already cracked the Amazon.com top 100 book list at No. 86.”

A new interactive reading device expands the experience of reading. “You can get God’s eye view if you want, or you can go in and be part of the scene. You can flip a switch and transition into an immersive VR experience. You can fly inside and see what it feels like to be a blood corpuscle going through the heart.”

What’s happened to literary criticism, asks James Wood. It’s been replaced by academic-speak. “For the first time in history, many poets and novelists are graduates of English studies, many of them put through the theory machine for good measure. Writers and academics teach together, attend conferences together, and sometimes almost speak the same language (Rushdie’s essays and academic post-colonialist discourse; DeLillo’s fiction and academic postmodern critique). But during the same period, literary criticism as a discourse available for, and even attractive to, the common reader has all but disappeared.”

“House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties, Craig Unger’s book about the tangled connections between President Bush and his circle and Saudi Arabia’s royal family, became a best seller in the United States this spring, and is now being published in Germany, Spain and Brazil, among other places. But it is not for sale in Britain… British publishing has long been notoriously hamstrung by the country’s libel laws, which place the burden of proof on the defendant… But what is causing particular consternation in publishing and legal circles now is that Mr. Unger’s case may be yet another example of how wealthy Saudis are increasingly using British laws to intimidate critics.”

“Chat show hosts Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan have single-handedly catapaulted authors into the bestseller charts over the past year with their Best Read bookclub. Now they are moving into the holiday reading market with the announcement of the six new novels they will be championing over the coming months. Readers will also be invited to vote for their favourite summer read. The six novels on the list, for whom soaring sales are now guaranteed, fall firmly into light entertainment territory.”

“The number of visits made to libraries nationwide more than doubled between 1990 and 2001, according to the most recent data available from the American Library Association. Sixty-two percent of adult Americans surveyed in that 2002 study said they had a library card, and they visited libraries an average of 13 times per year. Part of the draw results from the depressed economy. “Instead of paying $24.95 for a best seller, they say, ‘I think I’ll get it from the library.’ But a bigger increase, some analysts believe, comes from libraries’ nimbleness in adopting new technologies. Rather than becoming obsolete in the Internet age, they have expanded their role.”

“Today’s educational establishment is making actual illiteracy look good, like an act of humanity and rebellion. Writing, which ought to nurture and give shape to thought, is instead being used to pound it into a powder and then reconstitute it into gruel. The thoroughly modern grade-A public-school prose style is not creative or interesting enough even to be wrong. The people who create and enforce the templates are, not to put too fine a point on it, people without understanding or imagination, lobotomized weasels for whom any effort of thought exceeds their strength.”

“A trove of Arthur Conan Doyle’s letters, papers and manuscripts, which gathered dust for more than 25 years in a lawyer’s office while its future was debated, was sold on Wednesday for $1.7 million, according to Christie’s, which handled the sale. Numerous items were bought by Bernard Quaritch, a specialist bookseller in London who may have been acting on behalf of unidentified clients.”

As the New York Times’ new culture editor, Jon Landman will oversee a plan to revampt the paper’s cultural coverage. “Executive editor Bill Keller, in a staff memo, conceded that Mr. Landman — best known as the Metro editor who tried to warn higher-ups about Jayson Blair—’does not bring to the job a thick portfolio of cultural expertise.’ So how’d he become the new culture boss? ‘Bill asked me to do it,’ Mr. Landman said. ‘Sometimes life is simple’.”

The papers of Arthur Conan Doyle are about to go on auction. “Even as that auction house has attracted a stream of Conan Doyle enthusiasts thrilled at the newly released material, it has also been sharply criticized by some scholars and members of Parliament for allowing the sale because they say crucial legal questions remain unresolved. They also say that the material is too important to be sold off piecemeal.”