Editor and Publisher: “A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal.”
Author / Edward Champion
Early Afternoon Torture
Justin.TV: Hardly Exhibitionism
Justin.TV Guide: “Admit it. When you first heard about Justin.TV, your curiosity quickly wandered toward the scatalogical [sic] and the sexual. Justin has obviously had no qualms about the former, but the latter seems to have presented a line he’s not willing to cross. We’ve covered moments in the past where Justin has unplugged or pointed the camera away, so it’s perhaps no surprise that this landmark moment would similarly be censored. It’s still disappointing.”
Roundup
- Just one new area to hit: A neologism traditionally anticipates kleptomaniacs, expectant and frenetic. Underlying concerns, kidding, innocent nefarious gambol. Criminally, hearts inside lilt low, pandering in lecherous lulls.
- The Guardian‘s John Lanchester examines the American concern with copyright, and what this means for Google Book Search and publishers. (via Scott)
- Apparently, there’s a Casino Royale play has been commissioned. My fellow Bond fan wonders if there have been any others. Me, I’m wondering what resemblance this has to Bond’s first dramatic appearance on television (which, by the way, also included Peter Lorre).
- Some details have been released on the forthcoming LATBR overhaul (as well as the general newspaper), and I happen to know that the writers being commissioned for the web-only columns are definitely going to be worth your reading time. Alas, I am sworn to secrecy. Not even torture flying in the face of Geneva Conventions will loosen my tongue. Of course, you’ll find out soon enough. What’s also interesting is that all this has caused the aforementioned Bond fan to pledge a revival of the LATBR thumbnail.
- Fuck you, give me my car.
- Attention, all reviewers! Can we put a moratorium to the use of “snookered” in relation to Lionel Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World? I mean, really, this is the best wordplay you can come up with? (See also Mr. Birnbaum’s views on the subject.)
- With all due respect to Jessica, who is a thoughtful litblogger, now that it’s out in the open, the recent Chabon-signed copies of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union sent out to bloggers strike me as a more escalated and egregious version of last year’s Diane Setterfeld controversy. I’m exceedingly grateful that I wasn’t targeted. I can read this book on my own, judging it independently, without having to feel guilty that it may not live up to any kind or personalized proclamations offered by Chabon. I generally set aside any and all handwritten correspondence, press materials, or other ephemera into a file, permit the book to sit for some time (so that I will have forgotten about the note) and read and respond to any and all notes or kind gestures after I’ve finished the book. I do not wish for my opinion to be corrupted or tainted in any way. Even my friends know, when offering any manuscripts or work for me to look at, that I will tell them the truth, and it is because I greatly care about literature (and, particularly, my friends’ creative development; I wish to see them blossom) that I will be honest (sometimes quite hard) yet always encouraging. I’m wondering, however, if some of my fellow litbloggers who received these packages might, in some small way, have been unduly influenced by a personalized bookplate from a high-profile literary author. After all, I don’t believe Chabon is doing this for critics and editors who are requesting review copies (and such a practice would be a no-no on a newspaper). Sure, it’s a clever marketing gimmick. But this preys upon the general bonhomie I’ve observed in the litblogosphere.
- I can’t believe that Jeff is ahead of me on this Vollmann item, but it seems that this reading has been made available by Politics & Prose.
- Warren Ellis: doing his bit for a nice, clean blogosphere.
An Elegy for Listening
Washington Post: “Even at this accelerated pace, though, the fiddler’s movements remain fluid and graceful; he seems so apart from his audience — unseen, unheard, otherworldly — that you find yourself thinking that he’s not really there. A ghost. Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.”
RELATED: Grimes Poznikov: “In 1987, after being ticketed by the police for playing his trumpet 13 decibels above the legal sound limit, Mr. Poznikov quit his act, moved out of his rented apartment and began sleeping in the streets. He stayed with friends from time to time — particularly his off-and-on girlfriend, Susan ‘Harmony’ Tanner — but the freedom of the outdoors always pulled him back to the sidewalk, he told a reporter last December.”