Category: publishing

Why is Steve Erlanger moving out of the job as culture editor at the New York Times? “Most see the change as a sign that Times brass was not happy with the way Erlanger handled movie critic Elvis Mitchell. Mitchell had been sharing the lead movie critic job at the Times with A.O. Scott when Scott was suddenly elevated to the job of chief movie critic.”

Steve Erlanger leaves his job as cultural editor of the New York Times. And to replace him? Jon Landsman, about whom editor Bill Keller writer: “Jon will be the first to tell you that he does not bring to the job a thick portfolio of cultural expertise, but he more than compensates for that with a deep and wide-ranging curiosity, a gift for managing big undertakings.”

Is it true that the literary life is “swamped by its epiphenomena, that books’ blurbs and author photographs have become more important than their content, that the industry is overrun by middlemen and women whom writers had to pay for, that bookstores resemble supermarkets whose fruit and vegetables had mutated and lost their flavour in favour of external appearance?”

Coach House Books, an icon of countercultural Canadian literature, is in danger of being taken over by a University of Toronto student coop, unless it can negotiate a lease soon. “It’s the first formal lease that the pioneer of small presses will have had since Coach House sprang up in 1965 as part of the wild cultural experiment that characterized Toronto’s literary sixties. It’s a lease that will likely sign off on the historic literary landmark where the early careers of writers such as Michael Ondaatje and bpNichol were nurtured, in the name of creating new residence space for students… Even if a lease is signed, the precise fate of the Coach House building, now rickety due to years of absorbing vibrations from the printing presses, is up for speculation.”

“Due to the rather dire current state of the print media, launching a new magazine goes against the grain of conventional wisdom. But when the Montreal-based creative team of Daniel Charron, Jean Blais and André Ducharme decided to create a new publication, they had a solid previous success in their favour. And with Manoeuvres, their ode to Montreal style, design, fashion and creativity launched tonight, the trio has maintained the principle rule they obeyed during their first print run of 1987-91: Ignore as many rules as possible.”

“Major publishers are spending thousands of pounds every month on ‘sweetener’ trips for the retail chains on our high streets, in a bid to influence retail buying strategy. The entertainment budgets involved, which can be as much as £40,000 per trip, are aimed at ensuring increased orders for their books.” Smaller independent publishers are protesting.

Jonny Hurst is the newly-chosen Bard of the Boots, or soccer “chants laureate.” Hurst beat 1,500 entrants for the post, more than 100 times as many as applied for Andrew Motion’s job (as British Poet Laureate) last time it fell vacant. Most of them, like him, not only sing chants but write them and try to get football crowds to adopt them. His brief is less onerous than that of the poet laureate, who is expected to produce poems about big public events, whether or not these are interesting. The chants laureate has to watch matches and compose a selection of chants reflecting key moments throughout the 2004-05 season.”

The remains of what was supposed to be the poet Petrarch are instead someone else. “Analysis of a tooth and one of the ribs exhumed from Petrarch’s tomb in Arquá Petrarca, the village near Padua where the poet died in 1374, showed that they belonged to a man and a woman.”

It’s not enough for authors to just get up and read, anymore. They have to entertain. “Once confined to libraries, bookstores and concert halls, these events have migrated to bars, with writers appearing in a new type of urban entertainment. On the reading circuit audience members drink cocktails and socialize, while readers work to entertain them. There are often a dozen readings a night in New York City, far more than the dozen or two in a month 10 years ago.”

“Popular musicians attempting to cross over into the realm of poetry isn’t a new phenomenon. Nor is it out of the ordinary for them to be scorned for their troubles.” But stand-alone poetry is a different from lyrics, and the pitfalls are many…