Category: words

Friday, November 29, 2002

Dumas To Be Moved To Pantheon Alexandre Dumas is one of the most popular French novelists of all time. But he’s not been officially honored. That changes this week when his remains are moved to the Pantheon in Paris. “He will then be laid to rest alongside other French literary greats such as Victor Hugo and Emile Zola.” BBC 11/28/02

Supplementary Pleasures Everything about The Times Literary Supplement, that “coded message to the intellectual elite whose 36 pages of densely packed articles have come out regularly for the past century and a bit” is “endearingly odd.” The TLS’s “circulation has never topped 50,000 and is now level-pegging at about 35,000 worldwide” but its influence is enormous. The Times (UK) 11/29/02

Art Of Words An American designer has produced “an interactive program (found at Textarc.org) that reproduces the text of more than 2,000 books as works of art. The software converts the text into an interactive map that allows viewers to quickly see relationships between words and characters at a glance, even without having read the book.” BBC 11/28/02

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Another Swipe At Lilly Meghan O’Rourke suggests that Ruth Lilly’s gift of $100 million to Poetry Magazine is a bad idea. “The gift, though well-intentioned, is foolish. The real problem is that the gift is the essence of bad philanthropy—an overblown act of generosity that undermines its own possible efficacy. Poetry, which had a staff of four, an annual budget of $600,000, and a circulation of approximately 12,000, is suddenly among the best-endowed cultural institutions in the world. If Lilly were truly interested in advancing poetry, the best way to do it would have been to spread the wealth around. Lilly should have given $10 million to 10 different magazines or started a nonprofit foundation with an elected board to hand out grants to writers. This would have started a conversation, not a cultural hegemony.” Slate 11/26/02

Share The Wealth So many resources in the hands of so few. “The vision of an 800-pound tastemaking gorilla, no matter how august, is not a rosy one for all concerned.” There are many other ways Lilly could have made a bigger contribution to the cause of poetry. How about giving a lot of it away to other magazines? Village Voice 11/27/02

Writing For $133 A Word Any doubt modern publishing is big business? In 1975, the year’s best-selling book, E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime sold 232,000. By 2000, John Grisham’s The Brethren exceeded the sales total of “Ragtime” by twelvefold. So what do the big-time authors make? A New York Magazine survey does the math: Tom Clancy gets $45 million for two books, which works out to an advance of $42,694 per page, or $133 per word. See what some of the others make… New York 11/24/02

Book Clubs Rise Again After nearly flaming out in the early-90s, writes Thomas Winship, book clubs have become hugely popular again. But today’s book clubs serve more niche audiences… Nando Times (UPI) 11/26/02

Attacking The Judge Who Didn’t Read Michael Kinsley’s claim not to have read all the books as a judge of this year’s National Book Awards has a fellow judge annoyed. “His failure to read more books represents an abdication of responsibility—and a cynicism about the literary enterprise. When was the last time someone boasted in print of not doing his job? Which raises the question: Why did he agree to judge the National Book Award?” Slate 11/26/02

After 2000 Years – He Has A New Book Out For much of the past 2,200 years, the Greek poet Posidippus was at best a footnote in history. But scolars found a collection of his work on papyrus that had been cut up for scrap as a mummy casing. And now there are conferences on his work, and – after 2000, a new book of his work… Chronicle of Higher Education 11/24/02

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Publishing Groups Sue Over SC Censorship Law A group of publishing industry groups is suing to overturn a South Carolina law that prohibits posting images on the internet that the state considers unfit for children. The law was passed by legislators last year, and “prosecutors say the lawsuit is premature because the law it challenges has never been enforced.” FreedomForum (AP) 11/25/02

All Funded And No Place To Go? Many applaud heiress Ruth Lilly’s gift of $100 million to Poetry magazine. And yes – giving money to something so worthwhile as poetry is a good thing. But really – what can a big slug of money do to help the cause? It’s not like funding our way to the moon, or underwriting research for a new drug. “The fact is, poetry’s current problems aren’t the sort that are easily solved by large infusions of money.” OpinionJournal.com 11/26/02

New Yorker In The Black? The New Yorker magazine has been promising it’s on the verge of profitability for years. Now it finally looks like the magazine is in the black and is expected to announce a profit of $1 million. “Since Si Newhouse took over The New Yorker 17 years ago, he’s sustained losses estimated at more than $215 million – including nearly $40 million over the past five years alone.” New York Post 11/26/02

Monday, November 25, 2002

Big Brother Protest George Orwell’s estate is protesting the publication of a parody of the author’s 1940s book Animal Farm. “The contemporary setting can only trivialize the tragedy of Orwell’s mid-20th-century vision of totalitarianism. The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.” The New York Times 11/25/02

Just A Lot Of Bad Sex It’s an honor to be a finalist for the prestigious Whitbread Award. Less interesting is to be shortlisted for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist has been named for both prizes. “The aim of the [Bad Sex] prize is ‘to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it’.” BBC 11/25/02

I’m Just Writing To Say Fuhggedaboutit You can’t be a writer without getting rejection letters. But, as any writer knows, it’s how you’re rejected by that publisher that really counts… MobyLives 11/25/02

Sunday, November 24, 2002

Famous Poets Scam A writer enters a poetry competition, then is surprised at how bad the winning poem is. “What most of the other poets I met didn’t know is that the Famous Poets Society is a vanity publisher that heaps praise on even the worst poems to sell anthologies and convention tickets. The letter about the coveted Shakespeare trophy and poet-of-the-year medallion went to roughly 20,000 people, 500 of whom made the trek to Florida. Some of the poets, thinking this was a once-in-a-lifetime honor, paid for the trip with help from church groups, city councils or Rotary Club chapters.” Los Angeles Times 11/24/02

Sales That Aren’t Kid’s Stuff We make a fuss about adult bestsellers. But classic children’s books keep selling year after year. “Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express, which has sold more than 4 million copies since 1985, magically reappears on the bestseller list every Christmas. The Poky Little Puppy has racked up sales of more than 14 million since 1942. Goodnight Moon (1947) is still going strong at 6 million. These are among the books that never seem to date or disappear.” Washington Post 11/24/02

Friday, November 22, 2002

Touch Me… Feel Me… There is a visceral thrill to collecting books. Sure they’re difficult to store. But “most true book-heads will not be content with contact by catalogue alone. They must sniff the dust of ages, they must browse, they must handle the goods. Dealers have responded to this urge by peregrinating around the country offering their wares at book fairs.” The Spectator 11/02

National Book Award Winners “The third time was the charm for Robert A. Caro, who finally won the nonfiction prize for the third volume of his majestic Lyndon B. Johnson biography, The Master of the Senate (Alfred A. Knopf). Caro was a finalist in 1975 and 1983. Other winners include: for fiction, Three Junes by Julia Glass; for young people’s literature, The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer; and for poetry, In the Next Galaxy by Ruth Stone. Washington Post 11/21/02

• Confessions Of A Judge Michael Kinsley ought to have known what was expected of him when he agreed to be a judge for this year’s National Book Awards. “It served me right when the books started rolling in and I realized with horror that I was actually expected to read them: 402 in all. Three FedEx men and our local UPS woman had been retired on full disability by the time all these packages were lugged up our front steps. If you lined up all these books end-to-end, you would just be putting off having to open one and get cracking. Who are you trying to kid?” Slate 11/21/02

Looted Books Still Not Returned Art isn’t the only thing Nazis looted. Millions of books were also stolen by the National Socialists during their cultural raids. “These are books stemming from the private libraries of Jews, who either were forced to emigrate or deported, but also books from collections that were seized by the National Socialists in occupied regions.” Though many have been returned, too many have not, and the search for rightful owners has been slow. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 11/22/02

Kids Online A new website is putting thousands of children’s books from countries around the world online. And it’s free. “When it’s completed in about five years, the International Children’s Digital Library will hold about 10,000 books targeted at children aged three to 13. ‘There are places in the world where you’re going to find a computer way before you find a library or a book store’.” The Age (Melbourne) 11/22/02

Last Days For Salon? Is the online magazine Salon on its last legs? This week its stock was demoted toWall Street’s Little League. “The San Francisco company has said it could run out of money by Dec. 1, barring an emergency infusion of cash.” In the past two years, Salon has slashed staff and scaled back. “In all, Salon had revenue of $1 million in the last quarter. That is tiny by business standards, the equivalent of sales at two neighborhood gas stations.” San Francisco Chronicle 11 22/02

Art Of Familiarity Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations puts out its first new edition in 10 years. “Massachusetts bookseller John Bartlett first published his book of quotations in 1855 as a literary reference work. Shakespeare still leads everybody with 1,906 of the 25,000 quotes from more than 2,500 people in the 17th edition. The Bible is next with 1,642 entries. The book quotes about 100 new people, among them Mother Teresa and Maya Angelou, Alfred Hitchcock and Hillary Clinton, Jerry Seinfeld and J.K. Rowling, Katharine Graham and Princess Diana.” Chicago Tribune 11/22/02

$100 Million For Poetry? “One can but wonder what this will do for that most marginalized literary form. Visibility, for sure, since suddenly there’s lots of 0000’s at the end of the $$$$’s attached to the word poetry. Poets are a quirky lot, and the first, but not lasting, reaction from some was concern, since this peripheral art’s loneliness was seen as part of its strength; the next common reaction was that the idea of connecting money to poetry was somehow unpoetic.” The New York Times 11/21/02

• Previously: $100 MILLION FOR POETRY? “One can but wonder what this will do for that most marginalized literary form. Visibility, for sure, since suddenly there’s lots of 0000’s at the end of the $$$$’s attached to the word poetry. Poets are a quirky lot, and the first, but not lasting, reaction from some was concern, since this peripheral art’s loneliness was seen as part of its strength; the next common reaction was that the idea of connecting money to poetry was somehow unpoetic.” The New York Times 11/21/02

Thursday, November 21, 2002

This is Getting Ridiculous If you want to get a sense of the plot of the next Harry Potter book, it’ll only cost you $9500 or so. The latest installment of the wildly popular series by J.K. Rowling still has no official publication date, but Rowling has announced that she has prepared an index card with 93 ‘random words’ on it which hint at the plot, and that card will be auctioned next month at Sotheby’s in London. Seriously, an index card. Will be auctioned. At Sotheby’s. New York Post 11/21/02

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Limn This, Buster Is it because New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani is such a forceful and effective writer that everyone’s jumping on her right now? And what, for a little four-letter word? MobyLives 11/19/02

Bellesiles Stands Fast Michael Bellesiles, the historian who resigned his professorship last month after a panel of his peers concluded that he had made up much of the information and many of the sources for his controversial book on the history of guns in America, remains defiant about his scholarship, insisting that his facts are good, and that he was not motivated by anti-gun political leanings. He denies that Emory University paid him off to go quietly, and continues to carry on a vigorous e-mail debate with some of his sharpest critics. Chicago Tribune 11/20/02

• Previously: Bellesiles Resigns From Emory “Historian Michael A. Bellesiles, author of a controversial 2000 book on gun ownership in early America, resigned from Emory University in Atlanta yesterday after a devastating indictment of his research was made by an outside committee of scholars… Mainstream scholars raised questions [in 2001] about research Bellesiles did into probate records. His credibility problems were compounded when he said that he had lost all of his research notes in a flood at Emory.” Boston Globe 10/26/02

Stolen Books Returned “Four rare books — including a 17th century edition by Sir Isaac Newton — were returned to Russian libraries Monday after police arrested three people suspected in their theft.” Yahoo! (AP) 11/19/02

Regressing to Harry Everyone has read Harry Potter by now, of course, and the franchise shows no signs (so far) of waning in popularity among all age groups. But why are adults so interested in these books aimed at children? Certainly, they are well-written and exciting, but what is it about today’s world that is making grown-ups more interested in reading about sorcerers and witchcraft than about love, sex, tragedy, and other more traditional ‘adult’ literary subjects? City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 11/20/02

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

No Hard Feelings – Poet Gives Mag $100 Million Some 30 years ago, the editor of Poetry Magazine rejected a submission by one Mrs Guernsey Van Riper Jr. of Indianapolis. Over the next few decades she kept submitting poems and he kept rejecting them. It turns out she was fabulously wealthy, and, now 87 years old, has just made a gift to the influential Poetry of $100 million over the next 30 years, with “no strings attached.” Chicago Tribune 11/18/02

• Newly Rich This gift has suddenly turned Poetry from a struggling journal little known outside literary circles to one of the world’s richest publications. [Editor Joseph] Parisi said it was by far the largest single donation ever made to an institution devoted to poetry. ‘There just isn’t anything to compare it to. We will be the largest foundation in the world devoted to poetry. It’s a huge responsibility, as I’m realizing every day more and more.” The New York Times 11/19/02

Zine Dreams Zines are a publishing phenomenon. They’re self-published little magazines usually “written and self-published by one or two obsessed souls in places like Hoboken and Topeka, then sent out into an unsuspecting world bearing such wonderfully loopy titles as Brain Thong, and Murder Can Be Fun, and The World Would Be a Much Better Place if Everybody Wore Tight Pants.” Zines are what result “when the citizens of a great nation are granted an inalienable constitutional right to publish anything they darn well please – then also granted easy access to computers and copy machines.” Washington Post 11/19/02

An Indie Success Story Enough with stories about the woes of independent bookstores. Here’s a success story, in a southern suburb of Miami: “At a time when book lovers are mourning the disappearance of the independent bookstore, Books & Books has become a beacon of hope for independent booksellers. It is one of the few stores in the country that have succeeded in showing that individuality, personality and a passion for books can go a long way in competing against retail giants.” The New York Times 11/19/02

Magazines Too White “A survey of 471 covers from 31 magazines published in 2002 — an array of men’s and women’s magazines, entertainment publications and teenagers’ magazines — conducted two weeks ago by The New York Times found that about one in five depicted minority members. Five years ago, according to the survey, which examined all the covers of those 31 magazines back through 1998, the figure was only 12.7 percent. And fashion magazines have more than doubled their use of nonwhite cover subjects. But in a country with a nonwhite population of almost 30 percent, the incremental progress leaves some people unimpressed.” The New York Times 11/18/02

Monday, November 18, 2002

Booker Won’t Admit Americans: Organizers of the Booker Prize say that they have decided not to open up the award to American writers. Earlier this year the Booker, which is given annually to an author who writes in English somewhere in the Commonwealth, toyed with the idea of including Americans in the competition. Critics complained the move would damage the tone of the award. The New York Times 11/18/02

Powell’s Expands Seattle may be home to Amazon. But any Northwesterner will tell you the best bookstore is Portland-based Powell’s. The independent bookstore is in no danger of going out of business. Indeed, in spite of the general corporatization of the industry, Powell’s has flourished, making major expansions to its store in recent years. Now it’s bought a 60,000 square-foot warehouse about two miles from its downtown location to handle its expanding online business. The new building will store one million used books. Publishers Weekly 11/18/02

The Real Dave Eggers – Who Knows? Dave Eggers has a way of polarizing opinions about him. Is he a brilliant writer, a lone wolf who has gone his own way and eschewed Big Publishing? Or is he a shrewd PR guy who’s figured out how to play the fame game? “Eggers can’t lose: he will either be remembered as one of the leading American writers of the twenty-first century, or as someone who discovered, nurtured and galvanised those who are.” The Observer (UK) 11/17/02

Sunday, November 17, 2002

Alt-Weeklies face Antitrust Action: “The U.S. Department of Justice has begun what some legal experts believe is a serious investigation into whether the country’s two largest alternative newspaper chains violated federal antitrust laws when they closed competing weeklies in Los Angeles and Cleveland, thereby dividing the markets between them.” Los Angeles Times 11/16/02

Monday September 30

OUT OF TOUCH: Are American writers out of touch with real life? Stanley Crouch thinks so: “While those who profess to be literary types surely should live through books on a profound level, they would do well to move beyond the segregated cocktail parties, English departments and other places where they gather to talk about books they have read, and what they or anybody else thinks about them. But since they don’t do much of that, it is easy to understand why our writing is so far behind the best of our television dramas and our films, both of which represent, at their finest, an America quite different from the one we see over and over in American fiction: a body of work that almost always submits to a separatist agenda in which Jews write about Jews, Negroes about Negroes and so on and on. Ugh. Corny and not true and cowardly. One more time: cowardly.” Washington Post 09/29/02

FRANZEN STIRS CONTROVERSY AGAIN: Why did the rich Jonathan Franzen get an award of $20,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts? “Franzen had applied for the award, supposedly intended to help struggling writers, after signing his million–dollar contract for the book and movie versions of The Corrections. What’s more, his good friend Rick Moody had been on the judging panel.” Trying to defuse the controversy, Franzen said he used the money to buy art. But the excuse backfired when it was pointed out his contract on accepting NEA required him to use the money for his writing. MobyLives 09/27/02

FUN WITH PUBLISHING: Dave Eggars’ new book is self-published. He’s limited the copies to be printed, and he’ll distribute only through independent booksellers. Some complain the move is just a publicity gimmick. But “Eggers is not churlishly walking away from an industry that helped him achieve fame. He’s merely trying something different. For the hell of it. ‘This stuff, publishing books, should be fun. So I try to make it fun’.” Sydney Morning Herald 09/30/02

ALL ABOUT THE BACKLIST: The glamor might be in publishing new books, but for many publishers, the backlist is what keeps them solvent. “A very strong backlist is more dependable than frontlist fiction, except from repeating genre writers who turn up dependably year after year. In my view, a healthy backlist provides up to 50 percent of a publisher’s volume and with a lot less work” than new books. The Star-Tribune (Cox) 09/30/02

POET STANDOFF: Amiri Baraka became the Poet Laureate of New Jersey last month. This month, the governor of New Jersey asked him to resign the job because “a poem he read at a recent poetry festival implies that Israel knew about the Sept. 11 attack in advance. But Mr. Baraka said he would not resign, creating an unusual political quandary. Aides to the governor said he did not have the power to remove Mr. Baraka because Mr. McGreevey had not directly selected him. And a member of the committee of poets and cultural officials who chose Mr. Baraka said that group had no power to remove him either.” The New York Times 09/28/02

Sunday September 29

CENSORING A BOOK ABOUT CENSORSHIP? Richard Meyer’s book Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art has been getting good reviews in the US press. But evidently Oxford University Press, the book’s publisher, is squeamish about some of the photographs in the book, asking Meyer to remove some of them. When he refused, Oxford decided not to publish in the UK (or Canada). Says Meyer: “I mean, the whole book is about censorship, about images that are troublesome, about intellectual and artistic freedom. I just didn’t think the book should end up colluding in the very thing it was exploring.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/28/02

THE STORY’S THE THING: This year’s Booker short list is controversial not for the books that made it, but for the comments of the jury who chose them. “Not since Andrew Marr, chairman of the Samuel Johnson Prize, decided non-fiction was the new rock’n’roll has a literary prize judge provoked so much commentary. If this year’s crop defines ‘a new era,’ as claimed by jury chairwoman Lisa Jardine, that new era is old values. ‘Narrative is back in fashion. The favourite, William Trevor, actually proclaims it in his title (The Story of Lucy Gault) and at least three of the other five titles (Life of Pi, Family Matters and Fingersmith) wholeheartedly embrace strong plotting and believable, sympathetic characterisation.” The Observer (UK) 09/29/02

• WHOSE/WHO’S BEST? Lisa Jardine’s cry to include lighter work points up a tension in choosing “best” novels. ” ‘Ideally we would have gone to a bookshop looking for books we have missed,’ because publishers, it seems, cannot be trusted to submit their best authors. They tended to enter only ‘heavyweight’ and humourless books, she complained. ‘I think there’s lots of popular fiction which could easily be submitted for the Booker,’ opined another judge, David Baddiel, a comedian and author of popular fiction.” The Guardian (UK) 09/28/02

Friday September 27

NEW (SHORTER) OED: “The first new edition in nearly a decade of the short version of the classic word bible will appear Thursday, with 3,500 new entries, from ‘ass-backwards’ to ‘warp drive’.” Yahoo! (Reuters) 09/26/02

NEW CELEBRITY BOOK MAGAZINES: New magazines devoted to books and authors treats writers as celebrities. And that has brought some criticism. “The criticism that most of these publications turn serious writers into celebrities is a strange one, as if that necessarily subtracted the amount of literature that would be written and published every year. Unfortunately there are other forces cutting back on the literary. And we are still a long way from seeing kids trading author cards.” The New York Times 09/26/02

THE BOOKER OF CLASSIC LITERATURE: The BBC plays a game of what-if, holding pretend competitions for the Booker Prize in classic years of great literature. “The programme has chosen four vintage years for consideration: 1847, 1928, 1934 and 1961. The judging is harsh — and quite unlike, in my experience, the judging of the Man Booker Prize, or any other prize, in that books are booted out one by one. ‘Who hates this book, then?’ was not a question I’ve ever heard in the course of judging.” The Times (UK) 09/27/02

Thursday September 26

WHY SO SERIOUS? The jury for this year’s Booker Prize declared war on “pompous, portentous and pretentious fiction,” which they said was well-represented in the books submitted for this year’s prize. “There were far too many books with an obvious gravitas – heavyweight books that are written with the clear agenda of ‘this is going to win a major prize’. It’s like a formula. They attempt to grab big themes, and have a vulgar obvious seriousness, yes, even a kind of pompous pretentiousness about them.” The Guardian (UK) 09/26/02

Wednesday September 25

THE CANADIAN BOOKER: “Canadians make up half the list for this year’s Booker Prize. Books by Yann Martel, Carol Shields and Rohinton Mistry were among six on the short list announced today in London for the literary award worth 50,000 pounds (almost $120,000 Cdn). The three Canadians are joined by William Trevor, Sarah Waters and Tim Winton.” Toronto Star 09/24/02

• CANADA’S GOLDEN AGE: “Perhaps typically, Canadians have taken the honours heaped on their writers with a mix of pride and unease. ‘Damn, Canadian authors can hold their own and more with the best of the rest of the world” is often followed by, ‘Gee, are we really that good’?” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/25/02

BANNED BOOKS WEEK: The American Library Association is holding its annual banned books week to draw attention to threats to free speech. But there are fewer “banned” books to report this year. “The number of times a book was removed from school reading lists or libraries dropped to an estimated 20-25 last year, far below the estimated 200 or higher of the early 1980s, when the ALA started its program. The ALA reported 448 challenges in 2001, compared to more than 900 in 1981.” Nando Times (AP) 09/24/02

IN PRAISE OF TRANSLATORS: A good translator can illuminate a writer’s work in an entirely new way, writes Wendy Lesser. “No translator wants his achievement stolen or denied; yet just as certainly, no translator wants her voice to overpower that of her source author. It’s a very careful balance: However well the disappearing act is done, something of the translator’s own sensibility invariably enters into the work we’re given in English.” Chronicle of Higher Education 09/22/02

Tuesday September 24

SLIPPERY SLOPE OF CENSORSHIP: Should America’s small presses be prohibited from publishing sensitive political material? The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof suggested as much earlier this week. “Our small presses could end up helping terrorists much more than Saddam ever has” Kristof wrote. In addition to war, he said, we should “consider other distasteful steps that could also make us safer.” The idea drew an angry response from the presses. “If we agreed to suspend the First Amendment and broadly criminalize the dissemination of ‘dangerous information’ in books, where would we begin? With information about chemical and biological agents? Where would we end? With schedules of commercial airline flights?” Publishers Weekly 09/24/02

Monday September 23

WHY SHOULD THE BRITS HAVE ALL THE FUN? “In England, literary criticism is a blood sport. Critics choose authors’ ex-lovers, political opponents or former friends who are owed money to make snide remarks about their victim’s personal habits, morals, current lovers and latest embarrassments while occasionally mentioning the book. In one instance, Martin Amis was denounced for his dental work. It’s great entertainment and, in the end, probably not taken very seriously.” But in America, it’s big news when one writer trashes another in print. Isn’t there maybe a happy medium somewhere in between full contact and hands-off reviewing? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/22/02

WRITING ON DEMAND: “Authors write books for almost as many reasons as readers read them. Historically, writers have written because they have had a compulsion to do so and, assuming they could afford to continue, money hasn’t – on their side – entered the equation.” But as publishing stakes have become higher, the pressure on publishers to deliver big sales and on authors to produce on demand grows. Surely this can’t be good for quality… The Scotsman 09/22/02

BUCKING THE TREND: “You might have to be little crazy or a dreamer to think about starting a publisher these days. The heads of large American publishers are beset with stagnant sales, while their mostly foreign owners… are roiling in financial or management difficulty. Meanwhile, several small local book publishers have foundered or stalled in recent years.” But that hasn’t stopped a Boston teacher from starting Handsel Books, a publisher specializing in those most unprofitable of all genres – literature and poetry. The teacher insists, “We want to make books that are as beautiful to hold and read as the big houses… without entering into the corporate mentality.” Boston Globe 09/23/02

DO TITLES MATTER? “Before a book comes out, everyone (author, agent, publisher) fusses inordinately over what to call it. Once the deed is done and the book is published, the title, for better or worse, becomes part of the proposition offered to the prospective reader and is taken for granted. If people want to read something badly enough, the packaging is neither here nor there. But is the book’s title just part of the packaging? Many writers would vehemently disagree.” The Observer (UK) 09/22/02

CHILD’S PLAY: A number of big-name adult fiction writers are about to release books aimed at children. But the adult market for children’s books has expanded too. “The reasons so many adults are reading books written for children seem pretty simple. A good book is a good book is a good book. What holds true about movies made for children is also true of books written for them: There is no truly good one that adults can’t enjoy as well. It may also be that for adult readers, kids books offer the strong, straightforward storytelling that reminds them of why they first started to read fiction.” Salon 09/21/02

NOT SUCH A BIG LEAP: When Anna Quindlen went from being a columnist for the New York Times to writing novels, she found that many of her readers were confused by the switch, and viewed the two vocations as opposite ends of the literary spectrum. She disagrees: “The truth is that the best preparation I could have had for a life as a novelist was life as a reporter. At a time when more impressionistic renderings of events were beginning to creep into the news pages, I learned to look always for the telling detail: the Yankees cap, the neon sign in the club window, the striped towel on the deserted beach. Those things that, taken incrementally, make a convincing picture of real life, and maybe get you onto Page 1, too.” The New York Times 09/23/02

Sunday September 22

HAVANA OPENS A DOOR: “The Cuban government has agreed to allow access to a trove of Ernest Hemingway’s papers that experts say promises to illuminate the period in which he wrote some of his most significant works… Those who helped persuade the Cubans to open the collection, ending an impasse that has frustrated American scholars for 40 years, say they have seen just a small fraction of it, but it already offers hints of Hemingway’s creative process: raw fragments of stories scribbled on paper and book jackets, galleys and early drafts of major works, and a poetry anthology in which he circled ‘No man is an island.'” The New York Times 09/21/02

SIZE MATTERS: Author Dave Eggers, who has shaken up the publishing industry more than once, is doing so again. The author of the surprise best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is coming out with his first novel, and the big players in the industry aren’t invited to the party. Eggers is publishing the novel under his own McSweeney’s imprint, and is refusing to allow the mega-chain booksellers to sell the book. Selected independent booksellers across the U.S. are offering copies, but if there isn’t one near you, you’ll have to get the book on Egger’s own web site. The author admits that the strategy is a gamble, but one he thinks is worth the effort if it makes a badly needed point about the dominance of corporate booksellers. Toronto Star 09/22/02

Friday September 20

VANDAL NABBED: “For nearly a year, someone lurked in the stacks at San Francisco’s Main Library and the Chinatown branch, vandalizing books. Almost always they were volumes on gay and lesbian subjects, some of them out of print and hard to replace. Some books had cat eyes cut into the covers or pages. Others were defaced, then stuffed with Christian religious material. Sometimes, the attacker would insert the torn-off covers of romance novels.” Finally, a librarian staked out the stacks and caught the culprit, a 48-year-old security guard. San Francisco Chronicle 09/19/02

KELLY SCALES BACK AT ATLANTIC: “After three successful and eventful years at the helm of The Atlantic Monthly, editor Michael Kelly will cede control of day-to-day operations to Cullen Murphy, the managing editor, to pursue other projects and obligations, the magazine announced yesterday.” In reality, Murphy has already taken over many of the venerable magazine’s daily editor’s duties, and the change is unlikely to be very noticable to readers, since Murphy and Kelly claim to be on the same page on nearly every editorial issue. The Atlantic Monthly, one of America’s oldest magazines, has flourished under Kelly, with subscriptions and newsstand sales up considerably. Boston Globe 09/20/02

WHEN DOWNTRODDEN TREAD DOWN: Twenty-something former nannies Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus scored an unexpected best-seller with their novel about nannies coping with the whims of spoiled rich Upper Eastside Manhattan families. But the success seems to have gone to the women’s heads, and they’ve dumped agents and tried to get out of contracts as their book climbed the bestseller lists. “There’s a reason that they were able to write the book that they did. They are not the nannies, but the mother in this book.” New York Observer 09/17/02

HARRY’S READY: JK Rowling has come out of hiding to say that the next installment of Harry Potter is pretty much done and will go to the printer’s soon. “The novel, entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is already readable and she is happy with the result. She is now at the tweaking stage. So can her millions of readers expect a Christmas present? ‘Possibly’. There is a deep, throaty chuckle.” The Times (UK) 09/20/02

NOT JUST THE FUNNY PAGES: Once considered the exclusive realm of juvenile escapism, the comic book and graphic novel now harbour artists who are upending expectations with work that is nuanced, literate and decidedly adult.” And they’re winning respect (and literary awards). The Times 09/20/02

Thursday September 19

EGGERS FIRES BIG PUBLISHING: Dave Eggers has a new book coming out next week. But he’s turned his back on the commercial publishers and book chains that helped his last book become a bestseller. He’s self-published Velocity and “is making it available only over his own Web site and in a select group of independent bookstores known as the McSweeney’s 100. Eggers says he wants to reward those who have supported his quirky quarterly literary magazine.” His last book – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius made him millions of dollars. “Despite his extraordinary windfall, the experience apparently soured Eggers, 32, on dealing with large publishing houses or the totems of Big Publishing. He famously fired his literary agent and regularly dumps his publicists when visiting cities for a book tour.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/19/02

THE PARTY’S OVER: Once upon a time, book parties were standard to launch a book. But the parties have gone away. “At one time book parties created a buzz, which generated sales. Now, except for the occasional mention in a gossip column about a celebrity author, they don’t. They are, publishers believe, merely writer-ego builders, and the money spent on them would be better spent on other promotions.” The New York Times 09/19/02

POTTER PLAGIARISM CASE DISMISSED: A woman who brought suit against JK Rowling claiming that Rowling had plagiarized from her for the Harry Potter stories has lost her suit and been fined $50,000. “The court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that Stouffer has perpetuated a fraud … through her submission of fraudulent documents as well as through her untruthful testimony.” Nando Times (AP) 09/19/02

Wednesday September 18

AMAZON CUTS CANADIAN BOOK PRICES: Amazon, which opened its Canadian website last June, this week announced it is slashing prices on its top 40 bestsellers in Canada by 40 percent. The move substantially undercuts ChaptersIndigo.ca’s prices, which discounts its own bestsellers by 30 percent. “An Amazon spokesperson sidestepped questions about whether the aggressive discounting constitutes retaliation against Indigo Books & Music for stirring up problems for Amazon.ca in Ottawa.” Toronto Star 01/18/02

MYTHOLOGY OF THE BESTSELLER LISTS: What books sell well in Canada? You certainly can’t tell from the Bestseller lists, which aren’t compiled in any kind of scientific way. “We are in the Dark Ages. Have you noticed how when a movie opens, we know how many people went the first weekend? What we do in books is to say, ‘Let’s hold our finger up in the air and guess how many people bought our books over the weekend.’ That would never, ever happen in a grocery store, in the movies or in the record industry.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/18/02

WHERE’S HARRY? The world is waiting for the next Harry Potter installment, and author JK Rowling is behind on delivering the manuscript. No one’s more anxious about the delay than Bloomsbury, Rowling’s publisher. “The Harry Potter phenomenon was identified as the main factor behind a thumping 120% increase in Bloomsbury’s profits for 2001.” BBC 09/17/02

Tuesday September 17

NOT JUST ABOUT THE SCHOLARSHIP: University presses are feeling a squeeze as their budgets get cut. “As budgets tighten, the people making editorial policy at university presses find themselves playing an unaccustomed and disagreeable role. They have always been proud of influencing scholarship by helping new ideas see the light of day. But now they face the challenge of determining which specialties no longer make the cut.” Chronicle of Higher Education 09/16/02

COSTLY “INSULT”: Prize-winning French novelist Michel Houellebecq goes on trial Tuesday in Paris on charges of “making a racial insult and inciting religious hatred. The controversial writer is being sued by four Islamic organisations in Paris after making ‘insulting’ remarks about the religion in an interview about his latest book.” BBC 09/16/02

HARRY WHO? The children’s book Tanya Grotter and Her Magical Double Bass features “a heroine who wears round spectacles, flies a magic musical instrument, has a mole on her nose and attends the Abracadabra school for young witches.” Sound familiar? But it’s not a rip-off of the Harry Potter story, says Tanya’s Russian author. BBC 09/17/02

AUDEN RETURNS: When he died 30 years ago W.H. Auden was “the model of a modern poet who had lost his way and got stranded on an island of his own pet phrases. Yet, at the beginning of the new century, he is an indispensable poet. Even people who don’t read poems often turn to poetry at moments when it matters, and Auden matters now.” The New Yorker 09/16/02

Monday September 16

READ THIS. NOW! In the past, authors relied on their publishers’ publicity departments to get attention for their books. But increasingly, publishers are giving the majority of their authors less and less assistance. When times are tough, publishers prefer to invest their publicity dollars in books they’re fairly sure will sell – big-name authors, hot topics – rather than in promoting lesser-known or new authors, especially fiction writers. Not only that, but newspapers and magazines are trimming back their review coverage. And publishers are releasing more and more individual titles each year. The result is a lot of desperate authors who are realizing that getting published isn’t the end of a long struggle but the beginning of an even harder one.” Salon 09/16/02

WILL WRITE FOR ROOM: Last year novelist Fay Weldon, (best known for the book The Lives And Loves Of A She-Devil), “caused controversy last year when she signed a deal with jewellers Bulgari to mention them repeatedly in a novel.” This year she’s made a deal with the Savoy Hotel in London to live in the hotel while she writes her new book. “Weldon, 71, will be given a room with a view over the Thames worth £350 a night from October. The deal also includes breakfast, although she will be expected to pay for other charges incurred, including lunches, dinners and the mini-bar.” BBC 09/13/02

Sunday September 15

THE GOLDEN AGE OF READING? “To everyone who remembers burying an oily adolescent schnoz in a paperback every Friday night while better-looking classmates were necking on Lovers Lane, I say: Relax. Your time has come. To that kid who boarded a school bus each day and ended up in Narnia: Strike up the band. To anyone who has ever toted a thriller to an Indians game (guilty) or who occasionally finds the company of books preferable to the company of company, I say: You are not alone… Some time between sixth grade and today, being a reader became cool.” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 09/15/02

Friday September 13

NEW PUSH FOR PUSHKIN: “For Westerners Pushkin has always been more historical celebrity than poet. (Astonishingly, the first full translation of his works has only recently appeared.) If the life has overshadowed the work to such an extent, it is partly because the old truism about how much is lost in translation is even truer of Russian verse, and truest of all in the supremely musical Pushkin. But it is also because Pushkin’s was an almost absurdly romantic life.” A new biography is published. The Telegraph (UK) 09/13/02

SHE REALLY REALLY LIKED IT: Need another example of the rot infecting some literary criticism? Alex Good says Salon’s new list of books to read for the fall is exhibit A. He’s got special scorn for the list’s editor Laura Miller, who writes in over-the-top fashion about Zadie Smith: “A new novel from her feels like an occasion to open up another chamber in your heart and another lobe in your brain to take it all in; some books are expansive, hers are expanding, but never in a dreary, good-for-you way.” Good Reports 09/12/02

Thursday September 12

THE ACCIDENTAL READER: Here’s an idea to recycle those books you’ve read and no longer need. Leave them for others. BookCrossing.com is an online book club that “combines karma and kismet and encourages people to leave their books at coffee shops, parks, airports or anyplace else. Books are registered online, which allows members to follow where the books travel and who reads them. As word spreads, membership has surged, turning the world into a sort of virtual library – with no late fees.” Nando Times (AP) 09/11/02

Tuesday September 10

WHERE THE AUDIENCE IS: “There are 35 million Latinos in the US, and “their purchasing power is more than half a trillion dollars and rising at more than double the rate of the rest of the United States.” So some of the book world’s best-known publishers are beginning to pay attention. Harper Collins and St. Martin’s Press have begun imprints hoping to appeal to the growing audience. The New York Times 09/10/02

Monday September 9

ALL ABOUT THE BRAND NAME: Great painters of the Renaissance put their names on work created by members of their studios. So why can’t writers so the same? Two new books carry best-selling author Tom Clancy’s name, but they weren’t written by him. “The name Tom Clancy generally takes up from one-third to half of the cover. But in very small letters at the bottom it says: ‘Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik, written by Jeff Rovin’.” The Age (Melbourne) 09/09/02

POETIC LICENSE: Some have been surprised that poetry has become so popular after September 11. Not former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky: “We have a significant thirst for individual scale. Great poems and mediocre ones, by the singular nature of the art, share that quality of personal scale with teddy bears and photographs pinned to the chain-link fence surrounding a disaster site. Great poems and mediocre ones have been invoked, aptly and inaptly, in response to this particular calamity.” Slate 09/06/02

Sunday September 8

YOU MEAN HE HASN’T BEEN KICKED OUT YET? “Lord Archer, the novelist, jailed for perjury in July 2000, faces expulsion from the House of Lords under proposals for reform of the second chamber to be presented to Parliament next month. Senior members of the cross-party group on Lords reform intend to ensure that Lord Archer is caught retrospectively by a planned bar on peers convicted of a serious criminal offence.” The Telegraph (UK) 09/08/02

Friday September 6

WHERE’S HARRY? The fifth installment of the Harry Potter stories was due out by now. But there’s no sign of it, and book-sellers, in need of a bestseller pick-me-up are wondering where it is. “At first we were told she [author J.K. Rowling] hadn’t turned the manuscript in yet. Then they kind of dropped that story. Now they just give you more delays. The fans are anxious for it, I can tell you that. And it’s funny, it’s the parents who are asking more than the kids.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 09/05/02

Thursday September 5

DARING TO DIS MAYA: Wanda Coleman’s scathing review of Maya Angelou’s recent book is notable for the controversy it has stirred up. “The book has gotten some other poor reviews, but it seems that Coleman caused trouble by accusing Angelou of hustling the public, selling a skimpy book in large type and large hype at a high price, containing rehashed material and what may be exaggerated claims for a high-minded, race-conscious past. A book review that wouldn’t begin to damage the reputation, book sales, or livelihood of the country’s most popular and successful living poet became a subject of controversy as much for its rarity as for its rudeness.” Village Voice 09/04/02

Wednesday September 4

AFRICA’S LOST LIBRARIES: “There generally tends to be the view that Africa is a continent of oral tradition or the continent of song and dance – that this isn’t a continent that has an intellectual tradition of its own.” But there are hundreds of thousands of 600-year-old manuscripts in troves around the African city of Timbuktu that prove a rich and long intellectual literate tradition. “When much of Europe was in its Dark Ages, Africa was recording its literate history.” Few documents have been translated into Western languages. And many of the crumbling manuscripts are being lost to the desert. Chronicle of Higher Education 09/02/02

BERTELSMANN BAILS ON ONLINE BOOKS: The giant European conglomerate Bertelsmann is getting rid of its internet business – Bol.com. The site is expected to lose $40 million this year. “Bol.com simply got in the game too late to compete with Amazon.com’s European operation, and it was never able to compete with Amazon’s cost-savings sales pitch. Bertelsmann stopped putting money into Bol.com about a year ago. At that point there was an appreciation that they were never going to beat Amazon in the business.” Forbes.com 09/03/02

Tuesday September 3

ARE SOME SUBJECTS TABOO? France’s literary world is in turmoil over the publishing of two books whose “heroes are an obsessive paedophile and a perverted serial killer with a preference for very young girls, including his two-year-old daughter. Publishers and a number of authors are defending the works on the grounds that violence, whether sexual or not, is an intrinsic part of contemporary society and writers are only doing their job by addressing the subject.” The Observer (UK) 09/01/02

TRUTH IN FICTION: After ten books about the music business, critic Norman Lebrecht was looking for fresh game – so he crossed over to fiction and finds, on the eve of the publication of his first novel, a whole new world he’d never dreamed about. “I thank my lucky stars that I have switched from digging facts to telling tales. The creative rewards are richer and the fictions I invent can, I think, reveal deeper human truths.” London Evening Standard 09/02/02

ALL ABOUT THE BRAND: The Tate Museum isn’t just a museum, it’s a brand. One that caters to 6 million visitors a year. So why shouldn’t those visitors be a natural market for Tate, the Magazine? “It’s an art institution on steroids, a mega brand, and it covets more. It’s determined to raise its profile further, to up the brand by another notch. It hopes to reach right into our homes with the relaunch of its eponymous magazine, which it wants us to rush to the newsstand to buy.” The Guardian (UK) 09/02/02

THE STORY OF… The world will always need a good story. Fiction plays with reality and time to help us learn about ourselves. “Rumours that fiction is dead have been around for so long now that we have good reason to be sceptical of their accuracy. The latest to spread them are the critical theorists, but their arguments are based on ways of reading so much less responsive and psychologically complex than those of the ordinary reader (they have no capacity for the sort of naivete that fiction demands) as to need no answering.” The Age (Melbourne) 08/31/02

Sunday September 1

PUBLISHING HOUSE OF CARDS: All Jack Stoddart wanted to do was create a publishing empire with a distinctly Canadian identity. All he wound up with was a businessman’s nightmare, complete with lawsuits, furious politicians, and the shambles of a dream. “The fall of the house of Stoddart is more than the end of a company that could count David Suzuki, M.T. Kelly, the late Carole Corbeil and Senator Keith Davey among its stable of authors. It is the public humiliation of a man who is a member of the Order of Canada, a three-term president of the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP), and the head of a company that was voted publisher of the year in 1994 and 1996 and distributor of the year in 1998 by Canadian booksellers.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 08/31/02

THEY’LL NEVER RUN OUT OF SUBJECTS: “It is a sort of writers’ colony for the mind.” The Lucy Daniels Foundation is running a study of the effect of psychotherapy on the creative mind, and has enlisted the help of eight writers, described as “successful but neurotic,” as test subjects. The program pays the bulk of the cost of their therapy, and the foundation, which is named for a successful novelist who was forced to undergo electroshock and other torturous methods of ‘therapy’ in her youth, uses the information it gathers as fodder for its main mission: to reestablish psychotherapy as a respected branch of the analytical sciences. The New York Times 08/31/02

GLIMPSES OF THE POET’S WORLD: A collection of letters, photographs and poems belonging to the American poet Carl Sandburg sold at auction this week for better than $80,000. The contents of the collection, which was owned by one of the poet’s closest friends, are fascinating scholars, who say some of the pieces provide further insight into Sandburg’s dalliances with espionage, his connection (however slight) to Soviet communists, and his decision to support FDR after considering a presidential run of his own in 1940. Chicago Tribune 08/31/02

Friday August 30

PESSIMISTIC ABOUT BOOK SALES: Publishing industry stocks have been falling, and sales projections for the rest of this year are down. “A fragile economy, the stock market meltdown, the lack of job growth, huge government deficits, fears of war and the dampening affect of the anniversary of the September 11 attacks are working together to make analysts pessimistic about retail sales for much of the rest of the year.” Publishers Weekly 08/28/02

Thursday August 29

CRITIC WINS GOETHE PRIZE: German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki has been awarded this year’s Goethe prize for his life’s work. “Known as the pope of German literary criticism, Mr Reich-Ranicki, 82, has himself been a best-selling author.” Earlier this yearhe was in the news “as the inspiration for a controversial book by Martin Walser called Death Of A Critic, which was widely criticised for anti-Semitism.” BBC 08/29/02

MISSING THE MOB: Simon & Schuster is suing a Hollywood talent agency for misrepresenting the identity of a writer. S&S paid $500,000 to the author of The Honored Society, who was represented as “ the highest ranking mob member ever to record the innermost workings” of the Mafia. The writer was said to be the grandson of mobster Carlo Gambino, but is not. Nando Times (AP) 08/29/02

SCOTLAND IS FOR WRITERS: Scotland is attracting writers – particularly women writers – from abroad. “Scotland has the most fantastic opportunities for first time writers. In Edinburgh, not only are there some brilliant publishing houses like Canongate, but with the city being so compact there is a real writing community that is facilitated by the Scottish Art Council which is fantastically supportive in the way of grants and advice for first time writers.” The Scotsman 08/29/02

POETIC PORTRAIT OF A CITY: Really – do your run-of-the-mill postcards capture the sense of a city? Doubtful. So along comes a new project that puts poetry of postcards. “Chosen in an open competition, with winners recently selected, poetic likenesses of L.A. will begin appearing on thousands of free postcards around the city in November.” Los Angeles Times 08/28/02

Wednesday August 28

THIS YEAR’S PUBLISHING PREOCCUPATION: Hundreds of books about 9/11 are being published as the one-year anniversary approaches. “At Barnes & Noble bookstores in New York, tables are stacked high with titles related to 9/11, a grouping that includes not just books about Sept. 11, but also picture-book tributes to the World Trade Center, poetry anthologies about New York, coffee-table books about the American flag and stocking-stuffer-type books on the inspirational words of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.” The New York Times 08/28/02

JUST THINK OF THE CLASH OF ACCENTS: Canada is justifiably proud of its writers, and a huge contingent of Canucks is present at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival. Among other things, it is starting to become clear that Canada’s writers share a common sense of humor and appreciation for the theatrical, and that they further their own cause in the global publishing world with their lack of pretense (as compared with, say American authors.) Edinburgh has been particularly kind to the Canadians this year, thanks to the festival’s organizer, Catherine Lockerbie. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 08/28/02

Tuesday August 27

BOOK SALES UP: This is turning out to be a pretty good year for book sales. Revenues for America’s three largest bookstore chains increased 3.9%, to $1.73 billion in the second quarter. “The increase was slower than the 4.8% increase recorded by the booksellers in the first quarter.” Publishers Weekly 08/26/02

REMIND YOU OF ANYONE? Books no longer stand by themselves – they’re all planned and marketed to make the potential reader relate them to successful books which have come before. It’s “harder all the time, however, to distinguish the descendants from the ancestor, and at some stage, when the proliferation of similar titles—with their sometimes intentionally confusing similarity of cover designs and jacket copy—reaches a true saturation point, it ceases to matter. How many long-dead statesmen can the market bear? How many fatal voyages, doomed expeditions, valiant racehorses, Tuscan reveries, and tales of botanical obsession?” Speakeasy 08/02

NAME AUCTION: An e-author auctions off the names of dogs in her new novel as a way of raising money for rescued greyhounds. “More than 4,000 greyhound lovers unleashed online bids to name canine characters in best-selling author Cyn Mobley’s first self-published novel, Greyhound Dancing.” The book has already sold enough to cover its production costs. Wired 08/27/02

Monday August 26

SMUGGLED TREASURE FOR SALE: A set of scrolls known as Buddhism’s “Dead Sea Scrolls” are about to be sold for £70 million. But there’s a moral issue about the sale. The scrolls are owned by a Norwegian collector, who bought them after they were smuggled out of Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. They are believed to come from the Bamiyan area, and at least one expert believes that “this cache of manuscripts, although obviously very different, is of ‘comparable importance’ to the Buddha statues, which were destroyed by the Taliban last year.” The Art Newspaper 08/23/02

A SLAMMIN’ STRATEGY FOR POETRY: The poetry slam would seem to be about lone poets getting up and talking. “Yet this seemingly ego-centered solo art masks a complex game of tournament strategy, of regional differences and scoring psychouts. The slam may look like poetry-as-therapy onstage, but off-stage, it’s poetry-as-team-sport. It’s the most personal artistic expression tied to the kind of competitive game plans you’d find in football or basketball.” Dallas Morning News 08/25/02

• Previously: SLAMMIN’ JAM: The 12th annual National Poetry Slam was held in Minneapolis this weekend. “The slam, founded by ex-construction worker Marc Smith, was meant to liberate poetry from its academic ghetto. It took its cue from wrestling, relying on audience participation to judge victors. Slam turned into something else – mostly a way to get dates. Many of the poems still sound like come-ons. Like hip-hop, which it has influenced and from which it borrows performance techniques, this fluid form is so much more.” The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 08/18/02

SANDBURG FIND: An antiques dealer in Pennsylvania was getting rid of some old boxes last year when he discovered a cache of writings by Carl Sandburg. “The collection includes manuscripts with handwritten revisions, correspondence with the likes of the late Illinois governor and presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, and 12 photos of Sandburg’s 75th birthday party, taken by his brother-in-law, photographer Edward Steichen.” The papers will be auctioned off this week. Nando Times (AP) 08/25/02

DOROTHY HEWETT, 79: Yesterday morning, Australian literature lost, if not one of its saints, than one of its most cherished and authentic larrikins, when Hewett, poet, playwright and novelist, died, aged 79. The Age (Melbourne) 08/26/02

• A GREAT AUSTRALIAN: “Dorothy was one of the most inspirational women I know. A great writer and poet with a lifelong commitment to her craft, she never lost her passion for social justice or her courage in supporting left-wing causes. Her sardonic irreverence, intellect, honesty, warm heart, her encyclopedic knowledge of Australian literature and history were some of the qualities that made her a formidable friend, a wonderfully talented writer and a great Australian.” Sydney Morning Herald 08/26/02

Sunday August 25

A BOY AND HIS (IRREPLACEABLE) TOY: Jim Irsay – owner of an Elvis guitar and the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts – bought the manuscript of Jack Karouac’s On the Road last year. And scolars and historians are dismayed. “Whether he’s stubbing out cigarettes just inches away from his fragile and irreplaceable draft of On the Road or fondly recalling how he gave reporters the finger after buying the manuscript, or stripping down to a tie, an artfully placed guitar and little else in the course of a photo shoot, Irsay is, depending how you look at it, either a party permanently in progress or an accident waiting to happen. ‘To me, it’s already got this mystical aura to it. And it would be really cool to add to that. And I think I have the capabilities and the creative thinking to do that in a way that’s viewed as fun, but universally viewed as safe and respectful.” Baltimore Sun 08/24/02

WHAT’S PLAYING: Publishing the theatre world’s most-widely-used program book is not such an easy matter. With daily, weekly and monthly publications, Playbill is a complicated business. The magazine’s circulation has increased some 350 percent, to 3.7 million copies a month, and the demise of Stagebill, its main competitor, means Playbill dominates its market like no other. The New York Times 08/25/02

Friday August 23

WHO BOUGHT WHAT WHEN: A group of publishing associations wants to know how much snooping the US government has done on book sales information. “Section 215 of the Patriot Act [passed last fall] grants the FBI the ability to demand that any person or business immediately turn over records of books purchased or borrowed by anyone suspected of involvement with ‘international terrorism’ or ‘clandestine activities.’ The act includes a ‘gag order,’ preventing a bookstore or library from discussing of the matter with anyone or announcing the matter to the press. A bookstore may phone its attorney at the time of the request, but it can be done only as an afterthought, as the information must be supplied to the FBI immediately, or the employee risks arrest.” Publishers Weekly 08/22/02

POETS QUIT OVER RACISM CHARGES: More than 100 poets are boycotting Chicago’s largest annual poetry reading. The festival’s poetry coordinator quit after the Bucktown Arts Festival director “ordered him to ban poets who were the targets of hecklers” at another festival last month. “The problem is that all ‘those’ poets are primarily black and Latino,” charges C.J. Laity, the poetry coordinator. So Laity quit, and so did 100 of the poets, forcing cancellation of the event. Chicago Sun-Times 08/23/02

Thursday August 22

HE’S BAAACK: B.R. Myers is back with his manifesto against the quality of contemporary writing and the structure that props it up. “Boiled down to its essence, his message is this: Contemporary fiction is overrated; you’re better off reading Balzac. The last half of that claim has been true for more than 150 years, but never mind—let’s grant Mr. Myers the main point: The novels published today are almost never the marvels critics regularly make them out to be. The vast majority of contemporary writers are indeed overrated. Creeping grade inflation has made it too easy for accessible, intelligent and moving—but hardly perfect or transcendent—novels like, say, Mr. Franzen’s The Corrections to receive the critical equivalent of straight A’s.” New York Observer 08/21/02

Wednesday August 21

FROM WEB TO PRINT: Launching a new magazine is tough, particularly one about books. Book publishers have killed most of their print advertising in favor of in-store promotion. But the Readerville Journal is launching in September with a built in online audience of 20,000. “It’s as if a focus group of several thousand people met round-the-clock for two years to lay out an agenda for this content. What kills many magazine startups is the cost of building circulation in the early stages. We have the luxury of not having to spend huge sums of money to go hunting for subscribers.” Wired 08/21/02

Tuesday August 20

BOOKER FINALISTS ANNOUNCED: “Jon McGregor’s first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, yesterday catapulted him on to this year’s Booker longlist, alongside Anita Brookner, William Trevor, Michael Frayn, Zadie Smith, and 25 other writers. The field was picked from an original entry of 130 books. From it a shortlist will be chosen next month.” The Guardian (UK) 08/20/02

NEW LIFE FOR LINGUA FRANCA? Is Lingua Franca about to be revived? “Jeffrey Kittay, a former professor of French who created the magazine in 1990 but had to discontinue it after last November’s issue, when his major backer withdrew financing, said he had made a bid to buy the magazine’s assets from the bankruptcy court.” The New York Times 08/19/02

CAN’T TELL A BOOK BY ITS PUBLISHER: Do readers care who published the book they’re thinking of buying? A new study says not at all. “Readers simply don’t pay any mind to who has published a book. If they do think about publishers at all, they don’t think of them as part of the creative process of book production, merely as making money from it. It wasn’t always so. In the past, many imprints won great loyalty and affection from readers.” London Evening Standard 08/19/02

WHERE TO PUT POETRY? “Poetry, the cornerstone of most cultures’ bodies of literature, was always meant for a listening audience rather than a private reader. Written poetry today – with the exception of The Nation’s Favourite anthologies and Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters – is a poor cousin in the world of published literature. Yet all over the UK, in poetry cafés, arts centres and comedy clubs, poetry is blending with music, rap, stand-up and performance art and attracting an enthusiastic younger, multicultural following.” The Observer (UK) 08/18/02

Monday August 19

TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK… “Literary theories from formalism to Marxism to postmodernism are all pretty much agreed on the fact that the author, once he or she has put the final full stop on the final redraft, becomes irrelevant. What a writer intended to say is unimportant. What the book actually does say is all that matters. Odd, then, that every year thousands of people pay good money to listen to authors talk about their work, their motivations, hobbies, influences, tastes in music, and — a question guaranteed to produce a shudder of horror in even the most gregarious festival guest — where they get their ideas from.” The Age (Melbourne) 08/19/02

SLAMMIN’ JAM: The 12th annual National Poetry Slam was held in Minneapolis this weekend. “The slam, founded by ex-construction worker Marc Smith, was meant to liberate poetry from its academic ghetto. It took its cue from wrestling, relying on audience participation to judge victors. Slam turned into something else – mostly a way to get dates. Many of the poems still sound like come-ons. Like hip-hop, which it has influenced and from which it borrows performance techniques, this fluid form is so much more.” The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 08/18/02

CUT RATE BOOKS: Book remainders can crank out extra profits for publishers and booksellers. “For publishers and booksellers, it’s all pretty slick and efficient. Unfortunately, the system leaves authors out in the cold. A typical book contract gives the author a royalty on each book sold in the first round. But in most cases, if the book is remaindered, the author gets nothing except the right to buy his or her own book for a song.” Boston Globe 08/19/02

THIS IS LITERATURE? BR Myers roiled the literary world last year with his attack in the Atlantic magazine on modern writing and on critics who support inferior prose. Now his manifesto is being published in book form. “It takes a lot of arrogance to disagree with the consensus of critics … But this is precisely what we readers need. Our own taste is the only authority we should listen to.” FoxNews.com 08/08/02

WRITING OVER REWARDS: Charles Webb had a big success with his novel The Graduate back in 1962. “With its subversive rejection of materialism and middle-class mores, The Graduate captured the nascent mood of rebellion that was to sweep through the 1960s. But somewhere along the way, Webb’s urge to write was swamped by his urge to reject material rewards and disappear. They were set for life. They found this oppressive.” So Webb and his wife gave away all their money to live in poverty… The Age (Melbourne) 08/19/02

Sunday August 18

QUIET TIME TO WRITE: Prison hasn’t slowed down author Jeffrey Archer. This week he “signed a three-book deal with Macmillan/St. Martin’s reportedly worth millions of pounds – from his jail cell, where he is doing four years for lying on the stand. His agent told the press that, because Archer has ‘never been writing better,’ he jokes that he’s leading a campaign to keep him inside.” San Francisco Chronicle 08/17/02

Thursday August 15

BRITISH LIBRARY STRIKE CANCELED: Workers at the British Library had planned to go on strike Monday, protesting the Library’s pay proposal. But negotiations have moved ahead better than expected, and the union has called off the strike. “We are hopeful that the suspension of strike action will provide an opportunity for a fair pay settlement to be reached.” BBC 08/14/02

Wednesday August 14

BAILING OUT PUBLISHERS: Canadian publishers were caught in financial trouble earlier this year when the country’s largest book distributor went out of business owing a lot of money. But various levels of government have stepped in to bail out struggling publishers. “As publishing goes through changes in Canada, we want to make sure that the really good publishers, who do outstanding literature and who are professionally excellent, can survive and thrive.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/14/02

AROUND-THE-WORLD BOOKS: San Francisco artist Brian Singer created 1000 journals, then released them into the world with strangers where they were to be passed on from person to person until the pages of the books are filled. Their progress can be followed on the web at www.1000journals.com. “The journals have crisscrossed North America and travelled to more than 30 other countries, from Guam to South Africa, from China to the Netherlands. But most unexpected has been how the journals have taken on lives of their own: “A lot of people are writing in the journals about the journals. These journals are having their own unique adventures.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/14/02

LUSH LIFE: “The rampant alcoholism of so many major American writers would be enough to put any young writer off drink for life. Problem-drinking was once so pervasive in the US literary scene that Sinclair Lewis used to challenge people to name five American writers since Poe who did not die from alcoholism. Ernest Hemingway famously insisted that all good writers are drinking writers, and once upon a time in America so they were.” The Age (Melbourne) 08/14/02

Tuesday August 13

ONLINE TREASURE: The £15 million Sherborne Missal is the first important UK document to go online for the public in a digitization project to put virtual copies of important rare documents online. The manuscript “was created in the early 15th Century at Sherborne Abbey, Dorset, and is regarded as a major masterpiece of UK medieval art.” BBC 08/13/02

A BESTSELLER SECRET? They don’t get much respect in the literary world, but Britain’s top-selling authors – among them Barbara Cartland, Jackie Collins and Jeffrey Archer – have sold 3.5 billion books. “What is it that makes these authors – often ridiculed but obsessively read – so stupendously successful? Literary merit? Perhaps not. Some have sold their souls brilliantly to the media, while others simply had the knack or luck of perfect timing. And their rewards continue to amass.” London Evening Standard (UK) 08/12/02

Monday August 12

TO BLURB OR NOT TO BLURB: Blurbing a book is – more often than not – an act of politics. Getting the right blurber for your cover requires strategy. “Nonfeasance is the norm in blurbing. Publishers expect little. Several galleys per week arrive at my door. I always open the envelope, and I always read the editor’s letter. I like the personal, the flattering, the imploring: ‘In so many ways this book reminds me of yours… The New York Times 08/12/02

SUBVERTING THE SPIN: Publishers try to orchestra the best media flurry they can when an important new book comes out. For big authors this means negotiating serialization rights and making sure the biggest critics and publications get first whack. But in the age of the internet, traditional embargos on reviewing books don’t make an awful lot of sense. The Observer (UK) 08/11/02

PEER (NET) REVIEW: Internationally, about 25,000 science, technical and medical journals are peer-reviewed, meaning they are vetted by two or three specialists, plus the journals’ editors. The authors and reviewers, who work as volunteers, can be anywhere in the world, and many journals’ editors work off site. With such far-flung participants, the submission and assessment process for peer-reviewed articles has traditionally involved lengthy mail delays, high postage costs and cumbersome administration. But in the past few years new software has dramtically cut don turnaround time. And it’s changing the peer review process. The New York Times 08/12/02

BRAIN DRAIN: “The notion of summer reading appears to stem from the belief that since everything else shuts down during the hot months, so, too, should our brains. It’s a holdover, of sorts, from early school days, when we were programmed to regard cerebration and summer as at odds. And the publishing industry only reinforces this precept, tending to save its weightier tomes and big-name writers for fall lists.” National Post (Canada) 08/10/02

Friday August 9

MOVING BOOKS ONLINE: Struggling used-book sellers in Australia are closing up their storefronts. But they’re not going out of business – they’re moving online, where the business seems brisker (and cheaper to run). “The success of online selling may soon see the second-hand book lover struggling to locate a suburban seller.” Sydney Morning Herald 08/09/02

FLUSHING OUT AMAZON: The Canadian Booksellers Association and Indigo, the country’s largest bookstore chain, have appealed to the Canadian government to stop Amazon from operating a Canadian version of its online business. Canadian booksellers say Amazon unfairly finessed its way around Canada’s foreign ownership laws. Wired 08/09/02

A MATTER OF BIAS: Do different standards apply when reviewing books by African-Americans? Critic Wanda Coleman believes so. “Critically reviewing the creative efforts of present-day African-American writers, no matter their origin, is a minefield of a task complicated by the social residuals of slavery and the shifting currents in American publishing. Into this 21st century, African-Americans are still denied full and open participation in the larger culture. Thus, our books remain repositories for the complaints and resentments harbored against the nation we love, as well as paeans to the courage, fortitude and sacrifice of peers and forebears.” LAWeekly 08/08/02

BATTLING SUPERHEROES: Selling comic books is not like selling books. In book sales, if you order too many copies, you get to return the unsold volumes. But comic book sellers have to guess how many copies will sell, and eat the ones that don’t Now a small Bay Area comic book seller is suing giant Marvel Comics (home of Spiderman) over sloppy returns policies. Sure Brian Hibbs is only out $2000, but when he certified a class action, the amount soared to millions… SFWeekly 08/08/02

Thursday August 8

TORONTO FINALISTS ANNOUNCED: “A translation of a Portugese long poem, three novels, an autobiography and a biography are the nominees for the 2002 Toronto Book Awards. The finalists, announced yesterday, were selected from 83 submissions by a six-member judging committee… The top prize is $10,000 while each of the finalists will receive $1,000. The winner will be announced at the Word On the Street festival on Sept. 29.” National Post (Canada) 08/08/02

SPEAKING OF BOOKS: Writers who can talk find there’s an increasingly eager audience for what they have to say (as opposed to what they write?). “The fee scale for writers in this country ranges from two thousand dollars for a well-respected poet to over a hundred thousand for a high-profile, celebrity writer.” Poets & Writers 08/02

BRITISH LIBRARY STRIKE, PART II: “Staff at the British Library are to hold a 48-hour pay strike on Thursday and Friday… Members of the Public And Commercial Services Union (PCS) took similar action in pursuit of a pay claim on 29 July but the impact was said to be minimal… The last strike forced the closure of reading rooms in the St Pancras Building in Central London, but the library remained open.” BBC 08/08/02

Wednesday August 7

CANCON MISUSED? Indigo Books, Canada’s largest bookseller, is suing to prevent Amazon from making inroads into the country, and some critics aren’t happy. “Canada has rules protecting cultural industries in Canada. Those rules limit, among other things, foreign ownership of bookstores and publishers. The idea is to create a balance between nurturing indigenous cultural products and fostering competition that favours consumers. Too often, in my view, consumers are shortchanged in this equation. I’m all for government-sponsored encouragement for the writing and publishing of Canadian books. But why… are we protecting booksellers from foreign competition?” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 08/07/02

SCHAMA SIGNS RECORD DEAL: Simon Schama has signed a £3 million book/TV deal for a series focusing on Anglo-American relations. “The book deal from HarperCollins for the non-UK rights to Mr Schama’s books is worth £2 million, thought to be the single biggest advance ever paid for history titles. The BBC, which is paying the remaining £1 million for the British rights to the books and to the two television series, said it thought Prof Schama was worth ‘every penny’.” The Telegraph (UK) 08/04/02

Tuesday August 6

BESTSELLING WHAT? Every writer, publisher, agent – anyone, in fact, who’s involved in the publication of books – pays attention to Bestseller lists. They pay attention even though everyone knows their accuracy is questionable. Some high-selling books never make it to the list, while other, lower-volume books manage to sqeak on. And then there’s the whole business of in-store placement and promotion… The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/06/02

THE SHAKESPEARE FRANCHISE: “The ‘did-Shakespeare-really-write-Shakespeare’ debate has raged for 200 years.” A new Australian documentary takes up the case and concludes that Shakespeare had some help – “that Shakespeare collaborated with Marlowe to produce the works; that Marlowe provided the great themes and learning, while Shakespeare was the voice of ‘the heart and soul of merry England’.” The Age (Melbourne) 08/06/02

RISE OF THE DEAL-MAKER: The literary agent is fast dying out. He’s being replaced by the multimedia packager, the deal-maker capable of putting together a deal for TV, movies, newspapers and brand marketing. What’s that doing to the author of work that doesn’t fit into easily-recognizeable categories? London Evening Standard 08/05/02

CHICK LIT EXPLAINED: “The term ‘chick lit’, with its post-feminist use of the word ‘chick’ and its sing-song almost-rhyme, originated as a way of describing young women’s fiction of any sort. Now it specifically means a ‘fun’, pastel-covered novel with a young, female, city-based protagonist, who has a kooky best friend, an evil boss, romantic troubles and a desire to find The One – the apparently unavailable man who is good-looking, can cook and is both passionate and considerate in bed. However, despite the Identikit covers and the join-the-dots plots, almost everyone you ask in commercial publishing says – at least publicly – that chick lit is not formulaic, exploitative or cynically produced. In fact, it is almost a conspiracy. It is virtually impossible to find anyone prepared to criticise the genre.” The Independent (UK) 08/05/02

Monday August 5

WHAT BECOMES A BESTSELLER? “As books editor, I have pondered this question more than once. Sure, great content helps. But let’s not be naive: Just as in dating, many other factors come into play. I have learned my lesson yet again: When it comes to books, the hype machine is an unreliable matchmaker, ruled as often by press and publishing self-interest as by literary ideals.” Rocky Mountain News 08/04/02

DUMPING THE DISCOUNTS: Online booksellers have offered deep discounts in an attempt to lure customers. But Korean bookstores complained the practice is driving them out of business. So last week the Korean National Assembly passed a law that declares “online operators will not be allowed to offer discounts of more than 10 percent for book titles less than a year old.” Korea Herald 08/05/02

BOOKS FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T READ: “They sell to people working at 30,000 offices, factories and schools, and 2 million more by mail order and the internet. They sell 14 million books a year, and each year they throw extraordinary parties with fairground rides and marching bands to celebrate their success. Peculiarly, unless The Book People send you their catalogues or visit your workplace every few weeks, you may never have heard of them.” The Observer (UK) 08/04/02

Sunday August 4

‘THE GREAT GERLACH’ JUST DOESN’T SOUND RIGHT: “Was Jay Gatsby, the title character of F. Scott Fitzerald’s most famous novel, a distinguished Austrian baron,or a poseur bootlegger who changed his name to cavort with the rich and famous of Prohibition-era New York? That is the question at the centre of an international literary hunt to unearth the shady details of Max von Gerlach, the man experts believe to be the prototype for the mythic American tycoon who graced the pages of the 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 08/04/02

Friday August 2

TOLSTOY GATHERING: It’s being billed as the largest-ever gathering of descendants of novelist Leo Tolstoy. “About 90 of 300 known Tolstoy relatives — from Russia, Europe and the United States — will take a train today from Moscow to the writer’s estate, 200 kilometres south of Moscow, said the author’s great-great-grandson Vladimir Tolstoy.” Toronto Star (AP) 08/02/02

Thursday August 1

FORWARD AND BACK: The lead judge for the UK’s prestigious (and lucrative) Forward prize for poetry has resigned amid allegations that the prize props up a small group of poets, favors a single publisher, and ignores women. The accusations come from the head of a British publishing firm, the Forward sponsors deny them vehemently, and the resigning judge says that he is stepping down to remove even the appearance of impropriety. BBC 08/01/02

HEAVENLY REPRODUCTION: There are only four ‘nearly-perfect’ copies of the Gutenberg Bible in the U.S., and sadly for the type of scholars who break out in hives when they contemplate having to actually leave the Boston-New York-Washington corridor for a couple of days, one of the copies is all the way out in Austin, Texas, where an armed guard keeps it under constant watch. But the University of Texas is near completion of a project to digitize all 1300 pages of its Gutenberg, to the delight of religious scholars. Much of the book is already online, and the quality is said to be far superior to any previous reproductions of a Gutenberg. Chicago Tribune 08/01/02

Wednesday July 31

BRITISH LIBRARY CLOSED BY STRIKE: The British Library was closed for the first time in its history by a strike Monday. “The 24-hour closure was over the library’s refusal to raise a 4% pay award to staff. These include the library assistants – some of them earning only £10,000 to £15,000 a year – who usually bring the scholar his books from library stores.” The Guardian (UK) 07/30/02

MORE BRITS READING TO KIDS: A new poll in the UK reports that the number of parents reading to their children has more than doubled in the past two years. “Ninety percent of those polled said they regularly read to their child, compared with 40 percent when the same question was asked in 2000.” The popularity of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter is offered as a reason for the jump. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 07/31/02

MORE FALLOUT OF THE PECK AFFAIR: Dale Peck’s scathing criticism in The New Republic of Rick Moody’s recent book continues to stir debate in the literary world. “We can do with some controversy in the staid world of literary criticism. Peck’s literary antics have generated all sorts of discussion not only about Moody’s novels, but about book reviewing in general. That’s a good thing in my view. I wish we had more of it in this country.” But there are few places where such criticism can be published. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/31/02

Tuesday July 30

MAINLY MALE (AND EVIDENTLY THAT’S OK): Is it a problem that The New Yorker publishes many more male writers than female writers? Dennis Loy Johnson’s survey of bylines so far this year revealed an overwhelming number of male writers. But aside from a few letters reacting to his research and a defensive letter from the New Yorker, Johnson’s surprised the issue hasn’t touched more of a nerve. MobyLives 07/29/02

BOWLING FOR BOOKCLUBS: Now that Oprah’s given up reading, it seems every TV chat show is getting into the book club business. How do they compare? Here’s a survey. Boston Globe 07/29/02

LIFE IMITATES ART: Novelist Madison Smartt Bell always wanted to be a rock star, but you can’t always get what you want, and Bell was content to settle down as an accomplished writer with a guitar. But when he began writing a new book about a songwriter last year, the thought occurred to him to add a new layer of realism to the project. Accordingly, the novel was released in conjunction with a set of original songs on Bell’s website. Gimmick? Maybe. But it worked – Bell is cutting an album to be released next year. Wired 07/30/02

Monday July 29

LIFE OF THE BOOK: “Most books go through catabolic and anabolic cycles, just as foodstuffs are broken down to simple acids and usable energy, before the nutritional Lego is remoulded nearer to the heart’s or liver’s desire, using up some of the energy from the first step. So books, their information consumed, pass to charity shops, jumble sales, or through the hands of literate dustmen, to the lowest rung of dealer; and from there, they start an irregular climb, increasing in order, negative entropy, and incidentally price, until they reach the top collector of Wodehouse or Waugh, or the ultimate specialist in cheese or chess, concrete or campanology.” The Guardian (UK) 07/27/02

WHAT’S THE SECRET? Readers seem fascinated by the act of writing, and they tend to ask writers detailed questions about their craft. “Musicians tend not to face these questions because it is not generally held that everyone has a symphony in him somewhere. Language however belongs to us all. Is there a hint of resentment in readers? ‘We all speak English. We all write e-mails and letters every day. What’s your secret? Just give us enough detail, and we can be inducted into the coterie, too.’ It is almost as if some people feel that they were off sick or at the dentist’s the day the rest of the class was told how to write a book, and that it isn’t fair of authors to keep the mystery to themselves.” The New York Times 07/29/02

Friday July 26

WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON’T TELL YOU? Authors are always complaining that publishers shut them out of the book-making process: “They don’t tell you how much they are spending on promotion and advertising, don’t tell you how many copies have been sold, although they send out so-called statements. They don’t tell you that the editor who acquired the book, who believes in it, has one foot out the door and that your book is going to be handed off to an editor who doesn’t care about it. They don’t tell you that the public-relations person assigned to your book will be working with a celebrity author and will have no time for you.” The New York Times 07/25/02

Thursday July 25

WORSE THAN BAD (AND A POX ON YOU ALL IF YOU DON’T THINK SO): Critic Dale Peck’s roasting review in The New Republic of Rick Moody’s new book was so shocking, it’s got the literary world debating critical writing. “Reactions from other book reviewers ranged from dumbfounded horror to cringing respect to something like exhilaration. What makes for good criticism? Is the literary world too polite and clubby? Can a novelist fairly review his more critically acclaimed rival? And finally, what is the effect of this kind of skirmish on literary culture at large?” Salon 07/24/02

MAGAZINE OF THE MOMENT: The Atlantic’s Michael Kelly has been in charge of the magazine for two years. “With Kelly’s foot on the accelerator, The Atlantic can lay plausible claim to being the magazine of the moment. It won three National Magazine Awards in May, a harvest of honors matched only by The New Yorker. The current double issue – called ”probably the best issue of any magazine published in America this year” by The Washington Post – contains the first installment of the longest work of journalism The Atlantic has ever published: William Langewiesche’s 70,000-word series on recovery efforts at the World Trade Center. Though it’s still losing money, The Atlantic’s circulation has climbed from 463,000 to 598,000.” Boston Globe 07/25/02

Wednesday July 24

NOVEL SPLITS GERMANY: Reaction in Germany to Martin Walser’s new book in Germany has been violent. The work has been called anti-semitic and Walser has been been accused of attacking a prominent critic. “The extraordinary controversy surrounding Tod eines Kritikers demonstrates a considerable parochialism in the German literary scene. Too many of its denizens appear to be obsessed with what they see as the scandalous demonstration of anti-Semitism to read the text without prejudice. If they did so, they would recognize that the novel’s weaknesses do not lie in the savaging of identifiable personalities or the author’s private animosities.” Times Literary Spplement 07/17/02

TOO FAMOUS TO WRITE: A bizarre trend is developing in the fraternity of superstar fiction writers: big-time bestselling authors like Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler are employing other writers to write their books for them. This is not ghostwriting, per se – the ‘real’ author’s name usually appears on the front cover, albeit in much smaller lettering than that spelling out the more famous name of the ‘creator’ – but it does seem to call into question the basic definition of an author. “In the marketing world such profit-seeking forays are known as brand extensions — like Pepsi Twist or GapKids. In order to get away with such sleight of hand, writers need three things: a fruitful imagination, a total lack of personal style or voice, and a reputation as a rainmaker.” Washington Post 07/24/02

CHAIM POTOK, 73: Novelist Chaim Potok, who had been ill with cancer for some time, died at his home in Pennsylvania Tuesday. “Mr. Potok came to international prominence in 1967 with his debut novel, The Chosen (Simon & Schuster). Unlike the work of the novelists Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, which dealt largely with the neuroses of assimilated secular Jews, The Chosen was the first American novel to make the fervent, insular Hasidic world visible to a wide audience.” The New York Times 07/24/02

Tuesday July 23

READ AND RELEASE: That book you found at the theatre last week was left on purpose. Each book carries a note beseeching “the reader to ‘read and release’ and is part of a global sociology experiment. Already boasting 18,000 members in North America, the craze has begun to take hold in the UK, with more than 200 books now released across the country, proving that books and the digital age can co-exist. Part book club, part message-in-a-bottle experiment, the idea encourages people to register books on the website and then deposit them in public places, such as coffee shops and aeroplane seat pockets.” The Scotsman 07/23/02

SELFLESS SUCCESS: The stigma of self-published books is disappearing. As more self-published books rack up sales thanks to new distribution channels, traditional publishers are paying attention. “It’s just smart business to pay attention to the self-publishing successes. If an author, on her own, meets with reasonable success, a larger company has reason to believe it can build on that success and find a more significant audience.” Wired 07/23/02

MORE THAN COMIC BOOKS: “Graphic novels” are essentially comic books for adults, and so far this year 1.5 million of them have been sold in the US. “Publishers and comic connoisseurs use the term ‘illustrative literature’ to describe the books, which they say emerged from reader demand for more sophisticated comic-driven storytelling. ‘The thing about it is that everybody understands the vocabulary of comics. … The hope is that people who see and like the movie will be interested enough to begin to cross that perceived forbidden land into the world of comics and graphic novels’.” Raleigh News & Observer (AP) 07/23/02

RETURN ON INVESTMENT: Advances to authors have been soaring. Are these books really worth millions of pound? “While the rewards may be great if a title catches fire, a book that bombs not only leaves a dent on the balance sheet, it leaves egg on the face of the publisher.” London Evening Standard 07/22/02

GETTING UP FOR POETRY: The Poetry Review has new editors for the first time in 16 years. Their initial effort seems a bit… discouraged. “It seems a little sad not to admit wanting to bring new readers to poetry at the beginning of one’s editorship. What if you weren’t eagerly awaiting this issue? Would you plunge in? Not, perhaps, if earlier issues had put you off anyhow.” The Times (UK) 07/23/02

Monday July 22

UP THE AMAZON: Amazon.ca has launched in Canada, despite protests from the country’s other booksellers. But vistors to the site are reporting screwups in pricing (sometimes making books at the Canadian Amazon more expensive than at the US site) and delivery snafus that occasionally delay orders for weeks. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/22/02

POWER OF BOOKS (AND GOOD TEACHERS): “When I encountered Franklin Lears, I was a high-school thug. I was a football player, a brawler, who detested all things intellectual. The first time I saw this meager guy with his thick swinging briefcase, I wanted to spit on the floor. He was absurd, a joke. If you had told me that in eight months I would have decided to live my life in a way that was akin to his, I would have told you that you were crazy; I would have spit, perhaps, at you. But that is exactly what took place: I went on to become an incessant reader, a writer, a university professor.” Chronicle of Higher Education 07/26/02

DO IT TO ME BABY: Why is most writing about sex so dull? “There is pornography, there is eroticism, but is there anything else? D.H. Lawrence did it, Jilly Cooper does it, and everyone literary from Julian Barnes to Anne Michaels to Chloe Hooper does it; but have they actually written about it, or have they written about the stuff that surrounds it, the emotions, the personal politics, the sensuality, the awkwardness? Have they, in point of fact, in the main avoided the act itself?” The Economist 07/20/02

Sunday July 21

MAKING READING MASCULINE: Let’s face it: book clubs are a largely female phenomenon. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there are men in the world who like to read and discuss books too, and some of them have apparently been having a hard time finding forums to do so. Why book clubs seem to be required to be single-gender affairs is anyone’s guess, but a Canadian library is on the verge of launching Men With Books, a club designed to lure the y-chromosome crowd with “a stack of testosterone-fuelled reading material chosen to help ease men into the chatty intimacy of a book-club environment.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 07/20/02

Thursday July 18

GET A JOB! What happens when a society turns out too many writers as writers? Their experience is narrow. How does one write cogently about the world when one’s world view is narrowly born? “That these people don’t know anything about how 80% of the world gets along isn’t important. Nor is it important that, one suspects, they don’t even know anyone who knows. What is troubling is the fact they don’t seem particularly interested. The labouring classes certainly aren’t very interested in contemporary fiction, and so contemporary writers in turn ignore them. This has led to a great closing of the literary mind.” GoodReports 07/17/02

STEALING TO THE BEAT: Not that it’s scientific, but “the books published can be examined as a sort of insight into a society’s psyche. So, too, can the choice of books stolen. Which means that different categories of books are ripped off in different parts of the country, and often neighborhoods within the same city can be identified by the genre of books lifted.” The New York Times 07/18/02

Wednesday July 17

A FAME LESS FAVORED: Publishing for the scholarly world can bring the satisfaction that your peers will see your ideas. But it’s a small audience and a limited fame. “Academics grumble all the time about the public’s neglect, the slow pace of scholarly reviews, and the feeble publicity efforts of university presses.’ So you might think that a scholarly writer would be delighted to be reviewed in the general press – the New York Review of Books, or the New York Times, say. But not always. “Scholars are justly indignant when, after spending five years mastering a subject, five months formulating a thesis, two years writing a manuscript, and another two years waiting for a press to accept and produce the book, they read a review of their work by someone who has never done research on the material.” Chronicle of Higher Education 07/19/02

WRITERS’ BLOAT: Writing programs have proliferated at American colleges. “In 1992 there were 55 master’s of fine arts graduate programs in creative writing in American colleges. Now there are 99. The number of universities offering creative writing degrees at the undergraduate and graduate level is 330, up from 175 a decade ago.” Why so many? And do they really do much for the cause of good writing? Chicago Tribune 07/14/02

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN? The New Yorker is riding a crest of reinvigoration since David Remnick took over as editor. There’s no question the magazine has improved under his tenure. But in one respect the NYer is delinquent. Where are the women writers? “As it turns out, there have even been issues of The New Yorker this year where the magazine’s table of contents featured no women at all, or where the only contribution by a woman was a single poem.” Here’s an issue-by-issue tally for the year. MobyLives 07/16/02

Tuesday July 16

SOME KIND OF SHOPLIFTER: Barnes & Noble keeps some books off its shelves and behind the counter. Why? No it’s not censorship. Sometimes a book gets held behind the counter because it’s just so gosh darn popular, and the good folks at B&N know their customers don’t walk all the way to the far ends of the store to find them. The other way books get behind the counter is if they make the most-stolen list. But really – Martin Amis? JD Salinger? That’s some kind of shoplifter. MobyLives 07/15/02

LIBEL LIABILITY: Insurance companies, hurting after large payouts in the past year, have dramatically hiked premiums on libel and copyright infringement insurance. As a result, some publishers are passing on the costs to authors, and the National Writers Union has dropped its libel insurance policy for writers. “There’s no doubt you’re going to have authors thinking twice, and society will be the poorer for it. The books that might not get written are the ones that most need to see the light of day.” Publishers Weekly 07/15/02

Monday July 15

BEYOND MAGIC: Latin-American writers first came to the wide attention of North Americans and Europeans with the magic realism novels of the late 60s and 70s. But the new generation of writers has turned away from magic realism. ‘What has died is the dictatorship of the ‘boom’ followers who imitated them ad nauseam and managed to reduce their literature to a (mere) formula.” The Age (Melbourne) 07/15/02

Friday July 12

THEN THERE’S THE ONE ABOUT STALIN AND KRUSHCHEV… Russian police are investigating a Russian writer for a 1999 book he wrote that contains scenes of sex between the Soviet dictator Stalin and Khrushchev, his successor. “The investigation alarms advocates of freedom of expression, concerned about the possibility of a return to censorship under President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who was elected in part on the strength of promises to re-establish order.” Nando Times (AP) 07/11/02

HARRY POTTER WASN’T AVAILABLE? “Fantasy author Terry Pratchett has been named winner of the prestigious Carnegie Medal for the best children’s book of 2001 – his first mainstream literary award, despite being one of the UK’s best-selling authors. Pratchett was described as an “international publishing phenomenon” by the prize organisers.” BBC 07/12/02

FINAL COPY: The head of Australia’s largest university has been forced to resign after multiple claims that he plagiarized. David Robinson, the embattled vice-chancellor of Monash University, quit after being summoned back from a trip to London. “He could see he was creating damage for the university. The only solution that he could see, and I could see, and we came to this together, was to leave.” The Age (Melbourne) 07/12/02

Thursday July 11

GENERAL WRAPUP: In April, General and Stoddart, Canada’s largest book distributor, shocked the country’s book industry by declaring bankruptcy, owing $45 million to various creditors. This week a court allowed the return of thousands of books to small publishers, much to the relief of those publishers, but also a sign that the company’s reorganization attempts have failed. Toronto Star 07/11/02

UP THE CANADIAN AMAZON: The Canadian government has ruled that Amazon should be allowed to set up in Canada. The govenment, examining the deal to ensure the company met Canadian ownership quotas, said that ” Amazon.ca doesn’t fall under majority Canadian ownership rules because the investment doesn’t involve the establishment of a new Canadian business or the takeover of an existing domestic business.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/11/02

Tuesday July 9

WHR4RTTHOU? Study guides have been a lifeline for many a last-minute student. For years CliffsNotes has been the go-to guide for the unprepared. Now there’s competition. SparkNotes promises a hipper, more irreverent interpretation of the classics. How do they compare? “Either way, a crutch, a crutch. You’ll be fortune’s fool to rely on these! Beware.” Washington Post 07/09/02

POETRY WARS: Poetry Daily is a web phenomenon, with some 400,000 visitors coming to the site each month. Indeed, poetry is hot on the web – listed in surveys as one of the top ten reasons people use the web. So many were interested when Verse Daily recently started up. But the site seems like a ripoff of PD, largely copying its format and architecture. Further, the site asks for money but its editors decline to reveal who they are. Just who is Verse Daily? MobyLives 07/09/02

E-READ VIABILITY: Many have been quick to write off e-book publishing because it hasn’t lived up to the hype of the internet bubble. But quietly, e-book publishers have been building a business in the past year. “We in the e-publishing industry are here to stay. It’s just going to take some time to build the industry,” Sanders says. “But building it we are. No stopping us.” Wired 07/09/02

Monday July 8

SUPERSIZE IT: How many Barnes & Noble stores is too many? There are 600 superstores in America now, and after several years of expanding rapidly, the pace of expansion has slowed in the past few years . But the company believes there is room for 1000 stores and is beginning to grow quickly again. The New York Times 07/08/02

GETTING OFF THE WORLD: It’s almost impossible to be a book reviewer for any length of time and not be torn by conflicting feelings when writing about a book. Maybe you know the author but hated her book. Or maybe you know the author and you liked his book. The literary world is small; it’s difficult to stay aloof. Maybe the only solution is to found an island where a critic would have no contact with anyone who has anything to do with anything… The Guardian (UK) 07/06/02

ALREADY UP THE RIVER: Canadian nationalists have been objecting to Amazon’s entry into the Canadian book market. But Amazon’s presence is already a fact of life, writes Alex Good about the country’s already largest bookseller. The book business is changing in many ways – and keeping Amazon at bay is a small matter compared to those other issues. GoodReports 07/05/02

STUDYING THE STUDIERS: Intellectual historians sometimes grumble that their peers don’t regard them as doing “real” history. After all, they study books and ideas, rather than digging around in archives to chart the course of wars and revolutions, or the almost-unreconstructible life of, say, an Aztec peasant. Tony Grafton works on old, dead classicists. How much less-sexy can you get? And yet his work is read not only by medievalists and Renaissance scholars, but by a general audience as well.” Chronicle of Higher Education 07/08/02

Friday July 5

(FAKE) HARRY IN CHINA: The new Harry Potter is out in China. Trouble is – it’s a fake An anonymous Chinese author penned a new Potter. “While Rowling’s name appears on the cover, the book is hardly the prose style her readers have come to know and love. Characters from the real Potter books have been resurrected and new ones invented, and one reader said the plot could have been borrowed from Tolkein.” The book has become a big hit. The Times (UK) 07/04/02

Thursday July 4

BORDERS TO RESTRUCTURE: Book superstore Borders has announced a restructuring of its business. “But in large part because the plan is called ‘category management,’ some in the book world have reacted with fear and suspicion, linking category management with such notorious general retail practices as stores selling shelf space and stocking control to suppliers, or big-box retailers dictating to suppliers. Moreover, because part of the plan involves publisher contributions to help fund consumer research and training and the institution of ‘lead’publisher partners in many categories, some have concluded that the plan includes preferential payments, misuse of co-op, and larger publishers blocking smaller publishers’ access to Borders’s stores.” Any foundation to the fears? Publishers Weekly 07/03/02

Tuesday July 2

NOT WRITE: B.R. Myers, who got the literary world in an uproar last year with an attack on the quality of contemporary literature, is back. His critique is being published in book form. “In A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose (Melville House), one-time Atlantic Monthly writer B.R. Myers claims that a vast conspiracy between corporate publishing houses, mediocre writers and mindless reviewers has robbed the nation of good, meaningful books.” New York Post 07/01/02

BOOKS AS ART – WHAT A CONCEPT: As large publishing houses become more and more focused on selling greater numbers of mainstream books, a curious thing is happening – small publishers are taking on classics and less-commercial books and finding they can be profitable. Dalkey Archive Press has made a business for itself with books the bigger presses won’t touch. “A lot of interesting things are becoming available because conglomerate publishers treat books as a commodity, not as art objects.” MobyLives 07/02/02

Monday July 1

I, REVIEWER: Thousands of “book enthusiasts, freelance writers, doctors, lawyers and other professionals” are writing reviews of books for book sites on the internet. They don’t get paid. And yet, some of them have as much influence on book sales as professional critics. Why do they write? And better yet – why do readers pay attention to them? Wired 07/01/02

GOING ALL LITERARY: The great literary supplements of the early 20th Century helped define intellectual life. The Times Literary Supplement was one of the best. But what happened, wonders a new book on the supplement. “The TLS’s earlier pieces on fiction, poetry, and literary criticism—specifically Eliot’s and Woolf’s essays—are by far its most impressive achievements; but some of its more recent ones, bloated and nearly incomprehensible, undoubtedly represent the paper’s nadir.” The Atlantic 07/02

RANDOM BOREDOM: Phyllis Grann, who built Penguin Putnam into one of modern publishing’s strongest houses, but then left last fall for a job as vice chairwoman of Random House, is leaving Random House after only six months, complaining of boredom. “Ms. Grann had no clear territory within the company’s many rival fiefs, and she complained that the company’s many publishers seldom sought her advice.” The New York Times 07/01/02