Literary criticism could be one of our best tools for understanding the human condition: We literary scholars have mostly failed to generate surer and firmer knowledge about the things we study. While most other fields gradually accumulate new and durable understanding about the world, the great minds of literary studies have, over the past few decades, chiefly produced theories and speculation with little relevance to anyone but the scholars themselves. [Boston Globe]
‘Nobel Prize was a bloody disaster’: Lessing tells how winning award stopped her writing: The Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has said that winning the award was a “bloody disaster” for her, and fears she will never write again. [Independent]
Johnny Depp’s brother to publish debut novel: Daniel P Depp, the half brother of actor Johnny Depp, is to publish a debut novel set in Hollywood. [Telegraph]
May 13th, 2008 at 10:07 am
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
S.F. is crime central - on the printed page: Modern crime fiction was born in a small apartment at 891 Post St. in San Francisco. That’s where Dashiell Hammett wrote “The Maltese Falcon,” using his digs as the model for Sam Spade’s urban lair. Published in 1929 to popular and critical praise, the novel slapped around the commonly held notion that mysteries were marginal diversions, merely clever puzzles for slumming intellectuals. [SF Chronicle]
Turning over an old leaf: Only 24 books are produced for every tree felled. But book-swapping websites could provide a solution for the eco-aware reader. [Guardian]
Harry Potter No Longer a Best Seller: After 10 enviable years of sales, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have fallen off the New York Times best-seller list for the first time. The Times Book Review’s senior editor, Dwight Garner, announced Thursday on Paper Cuts, the newspaper’s group book Web log, that the best-seller list for the May 11 issue of the book review does not include a single Harry Potter title. [NY Sun]
The baron of bibliomania: Bibliophilia: the love, and collecting, of books. No problems there: the odd fit of extravagance, possibly, but everything more or less under control. But watch out. The next step up may be bibliolatry: an extreme fondness for books. And beyond that lies bibliomania: a mania for the collection and possession of books. That can be very dangerous territory. [Guardian]
May 5th, 2008 at 10:33 am
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
Novelist gets mother of all criticism: MICHEL Houellebecq is a literary icon whose novels have been acclaimed by critics as the cruel illumination of a troubled era. But France’s most celebrated and controversial contemporary author could be pushed off his pinnacle following an astonishingly vitriolic attack from a critic with a unique insight into his oeuvre. She is his mother - and she is threatening to knock his teeth out with her walking stick if he mentions her again in one of his works. [Australian]
Hoaxes hit bookstores: The caller addressed her like an old friend: “Oh — thank God I got you before you left,” he began. The call came from someone who said he was the Los Angeles blogger and first novelist Mark Sarvas, who was reading at the store in a few days and seemed to be in a pinch. His car had been impounded, he needed money to get it back and he needed it right away. [LA Times]
You’re an Author? Me Too!: It’s well established that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to. A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn’t read a book in the previous year — a state of affairs that has prompted much soul-searching by anyone with an affection for (or business interest in) turning pages. But even as more people choose the phantasmagoria of the screen over the contemplative pleasures of the page, there’s a parallel phenomenon sweeping the country: collective graphomania. [NYT]
The Boy Who Cried Author: The literary parlor game of “Who Is J. T. LeRoy?” got its final answer in February: The mysterious boy novelist with the horrifying tales of childhood abuse was the invention of a 40-year-old San Francisco woman. But the untold story behind this literary hoax is even more outrageous than the fictions. [Vanity Fair]
It’s National Poetry Month—what should you read?: While there’s plenty of good poetry being written today, there’s at least six times as much of the not-so-good variety. Take heart: Slate has winnowed the stack down to a manageable few. [Slate]
April 30th, 2008 at 9:06 am
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
50 best cult books: Our critics present a selection of history’s most notable cult writing. Some is classic. Some is catastrophic. All of it had the power to inspire. [Telegraph]
Orwell prize goes to lament for Palestinian landscape: Britain’s most prestigious award for political writing, the Orwell book prize, has been won by Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks, a victory further distinguished by such strong competition that the judges felt the need to extend this year’s shortlist. The subtitle of Shehadeh’s book is Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, and it describes how over 40 years the West Bank he loves has been steadily taken over by Israeli settlements, and how the destruction of a beloved landscape mirrors the damage to Palestinian identity. [Guardian]
Doris Lessing: prize fighter: At 88, Doris Lessing is still raging - at communists, war, Mrs Thatcher, the ‘bloody Swedes’ who awarded her the Nobel Prize… but most of her venom is reserved for the subject of what she says will be her final book - her mother. [Telegraph]
April 25th, 2008 at 9:10 am
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
Bookstores bracing for the next chapter: Only a few years ago, bookstores helped define neighborhoods. They were physical and cultural markers on the landscape - showcases of what mattered, there and then. Now, instead of perking up when I step through the doors of a good bookstore, I wonder morosely how long it will last. “It’s an antiquarian business model in a changing world,” admits Melissa Mytinger, manager of Cody’s Books in Berkeley. [SFGate]
Lois Lowry: A children’s writer who doesn’t talk down: Lois Lowry flies under the radar of most adults. But she’s a monumental figure to many readers in the 11-to-15 age range. “She has huge appeal,” said the librarian Judy Nelson of Tacoma, Washington, past president of the Young Adult Library Services Association. “Once she has been introduced, it’s not unusual for a child to read all her books as she grows up. We have schools that require her books, on the fifth- or sixth-grade level.” [IHT]
One thousand and one delights: But Arabic literature itself is not in crisis; in fact, it has never been more energetic and more varied than today. Some of the authors who came to maturity in the 60s are now writing the swan song of that decade, others turn to different episodes of history, either to look for parallels or for the lines that connect the “then” to the “now”. Younger writers are making their mark. Many are writing politically engaged works, others depict an alienation that is itself a comment on the “now”. Several deal with issues of the Arabs’ relationship to the west. From the epic works of Ibrahim al-Koni to the contemplative narratives of Bahaa Taher to the “puzzle” novels published by Malamih, the bestselling Alaa al-Aswany and the runaway success of the “blogs” brought out by Dar al Shorouk Publishing House, Arabic literature today grapples with and comments on the ills experienced by Arab societies. [Guardian]
Robots wrote my bestseller: Philip M. Parker has written over 200,000 books, and all of them have turned a profit. How does he do it? With the magic of computers. [Times]
April 16th, 2008 at 9:33 am
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
Is this the world’s finest bookshop?: ‘This is Holland,” a sales assistant tells me, as I scan bookshelves generously stocked with English as well as Dutch works. “We are not so religious. Yes, we have more mosques now - but we have also a lot of empty churches.” And here’s a great thing to do with such atmospheric yet dormant spaces. I’m in central Maastricht, standing in what must be one of the finest bookshops in the world. [Guardian]
The neuroscience delusion: A generation of academic literary critics has now arisen who invoke “neuroscience” to assist them in their work of explication, interpretation and appreciation. Norman Bryson, once a leading exponent of Theory and a social constructivist, has described his Damascene conversion, as a result of which he now places the firing of neurons rather than signifiers at the heart of literary criticism. Evolutionary theory, sociobiology and allied forces are also recruited to the cause, since, we are reminded, the brain functions as it does to support survival. [TLS]
Cairo’s greatest literary secret: The latest Booker prizewinner is tucking into seafood risotto beside the calm waters of the Arabian Gulf, weighing up a sometimes turbulent career. Bahaa Taher was sacked as a radio journalist in Egypt in the 1970s and driven into exile. Yet he says now, “I was freed, not fired.” As the Man Booker prize turns 40 this year, the foundation behind it has backed a new award, for the best novel of the year written in Arabic. [Guardian]
April 11th, 2008 at 11:39 am
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
2008 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, Drama and Music: The Pulitzer Prizes were announced on Monday. Following are the winners in Letters, Drama and Music. [NYT]
History out, celebrities in as top publisher wields axe: One of Britain’s most distinguished publishers has been condemned for turning its back on serious history books in favour of ‘crappy’ celebrity biographies and TV spin-offs. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, whose authors have included Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Golda Meir, Henry Kissinger and Pope John Paul II, has culled a number of planned titles at a cost said to run into hundreds of thousands of pounds in advance payments to authors. [Guardian]
The Book Is Real Enough. It’s the Author That’s Fake: In a time of fake news and fake memoirs, why not fake authors? On Nov. 30, the glamorous, impetuous Kendall Hart — wife, mother, founder of a highly successful perfume company, woman in despair and one of the lead characters on the ABC soap “All My Children” — decided to try a little creative writing as a distraction from the pain of her husband Zach’s sudden (and of course mysterious) disappearance. [NYT]
April 8th, 2008 at 11:17 am
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
New HarperCollins Unit to Try to Cut Writer Advances: HarperCollins Publishers is forming a new publishing group that will substitute profit-sharing with authors for cash advances and will try to eliminate the costly practice of allowing booksellers to return unsold copies. [NYT]
Leaving the ghetto: Short of money and short of food, V S Naipaul found his early life as a writer in Fifties London harsh. Then the BBC offered him a lifeline with a radio programme, Caribbean Voices. It became an important influence, but one he later felt obliged to disown. [New Statesman]
New reason to surf the blogosphere: Book deals: And then March 20 Random House announces that it has purchased the rights to a book by the blog’s founder, Christian Lander, an Internet copy writer. The price, according to a source familiar with the deal but not authorized to discuss the total, was about $300,000, a sum that many in the publishing and blogging communities believe is an astronomical amount for a book spawned from a blog, written by a previously unpublished author. [IHT]
April 4th, 2008 at 8:59 am
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
Online raiders stole my book: In the digital age, anyone can publish more or less anything, legally or illegally, at the push of a few buttons. I recently found an entire digitised copy of one of my own books on the internet. Someone had simply fed the book into a scanner, changed a few names, and posted the text on a website. [Times]
It’s Not You, It’s Your Books: Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!” [NYT]
The Rescue of John Steinbeck: The extraordinary thing about John Steinbeck is how good he can be when so much of the time he’s so bad. There are talented writers who grow into their full maturity and then decline, slowly or precipitously. But that isn’t Steinbeck. You can divide his work up into coherent periods, but there’s no coherent trajectory of quality. [NYRB]
An Investment Banker Finds Fame Off the Books: Today Mr. Bhagat is still an investment banker, now with Deutsche Bank. But he has also become the biggest-selling English-language novelist in India’s history. [NYT]
March 31st, 2008 at 12:11 pm
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
Writing the Nation: The “state of the nation” novel is back in fashion, with recent examples from Hanif Kureishi, Sebastian Faulks and Louis de Bernières. But many of these books focus too closely on “authentic” period detail at the expense of convincing characters and stories. [Prospect]
In Mexico, on the Lam With Ken Kesey: I said I was doing nothing, but I’m actually trying to summon somebody: Ken Kesey, novelist, psychedelic prophet, leader of the Merry Pranksters, hero of “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” It was here, on this beach, that he took to the waves as I did, back in 1966. He was a hunted man then, on the run from the F.B.I. and Mexican federales, but even he, a man of great aplomb, found time for thoughtful bobbing. [NYT]
Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity: No matter how artful her prophecies, nobody ever listens to Cassandra until the catastrophe has come—so it shouldn’t be surprising that one of the most prescient, thorough, and hilarious satires of postmodernity fell into obscurity shortly after its publication in 1955. But it’s time we rediscovered that book, for Nigel Dennis’ Cards of Identity was written with so much foresight that it almost reads like this week’s edition of The Onion. [First Things]
Interview, Sara Paretsky: Author Sara Paretsky is best known for creating the feisty female detective VI Warshawski. But in her latest book, she finds the strength to tackle her troubled childhood in rural Kansas. [Guardian]
A Boy’s Life, Guided by the Voice of Cosmic Wonder: On the night last week after Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer and space visionary, died at the ripe age of 90, it was cloudy and threatening rain in New York. I was frustrated because I wanted to go outside to see if the stars were still there. [NYT]
March 25th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
This article is filed under Blog, Books.
