- On the AMS fallout front, five publishers have been selected for the AMS creditors committee: Random House, Penguin, Hachette, Grove/Atlantic and Wisdom Publications. The Delaware Bankruptcy Court declined to form a second committee consisting of the remaining PGW clients. Whether the creditors committee will take into account the precarious burdens of indie publishers remains to be seen, but with the second committee denied, this doesn’t look good. Galleycat has more.
- Over at the LBC, this quarter’s Read This! choice has been announced. Once again, The Bat Segundo Show will be teaming up with Pinky’s Paperhaus to bring you interviews with all the nominators and nominees. (And I’ll be back in business very soon on the Segundo front, as soon as I get things squared away on other fronts. There are some hot interviews coming up that you won’t want to miss.)
- Norman Mailer says that there’s very little interest in novels anymore. Perhaps he means to suggest that there’s very little interest in his novels anymore.
- Is knit lit a new genre? I hope not. It’s difficult to take any word that’s close to “nitwit” seriously.
- Normally, I’m all for awards that recognize both the novelist and the screenwriters behind a literary adaptation. But I must strenuously object to awarding P.D. James the Scripter. Children of Men went from potboiler to engaging cinema entirely because of Cuaron and his writers. And to award James any kind of merit for the way that these screenwriters turned a sow’s ear into a bleak purse is to reward mediocrity. What next? Giving a hack like John Grisham an award for the work done by Clyde Hayes and Francis Ford Coppola? If ever there was an honor awarded for a no talent assclown sitting on her ass, the Scripter may very well be it.
- UPI reports on the Decibel Penguin Prize controversy. The prize, established to award diversity, faced serious legal action because it discriminated against Caucasians. It probably wasn’t a wise idea to introduce an award in a country where affirmative action was about as common as food without mayonnaise. Perhaps this was a case of misunderstanding with our friends across the pond. But don’t worry, folks! The oppressed white male will get yet another shot at dominating yet another literary award. Remember, folks, there’s always room for Whitey!
- Paul Krassner is right. Where’s the mainstream media attention to Robert Anton Wilson’s death?
- Dana Spiotta appears as part of Largeheartedboy’s Book Notes series.
- Laila Lalami reports on the banning of Nichane.
- And I’m the walking dead today, folks: good for perhaps little more than a poorly translated (and poorly remembered) Swedish joke about a milkmaid in a brothel that I heard from a bleary-eyed pal in a beer hall. No putsches here, but certainly many putzes now parked on my medulla oblongata. But I’ll try and check in later.
Author / Edward Champion
Suffering Fools
Martin Amis answers questions from readers. Hilarious results ensue.
Writers with Drinks
I’m not one to plug my fictive endeavors (and frankly I’m still bemused that I’ve been invited to do this, perhaps because they associated the “drinks” part with me; who knows?), but this is a reminder to any and all interested parties that I will be making an appearance at Writers with Drinks on Saturday, January 20, 2007 at The Rickshaw Stop at 7 PM, along with writers who are much better at this fiction thing than I am. In fact, the hell with me. Check out this lineup: Michelle Tea! Andrew Sean Greer! Kim Stanley Robinson! Michael Blumlein! Justin Chin! I mean, how can you not swoon over that roster?
I will be reading the first chapter of my novel in progress. There was an impromptu test reading over the weekend, largely because Mr. Asher coaxed me to read it in front of a small group of literary types.
The Writers with Drinks performance will be considerably more high-octane, and it will also feature a live reprise of Part One of “The Neurotic Chronicles” (for those who haven’t heard it) and possibly some audience participation.
Check it out! There may also be another very special guest.
1981 Time Warp
Is Colson Whitehead Stuck on Novel #4?
From New York Magazine: “Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days, The Colossus of New York, and Apex Hides the Hurt, is currently holed up in the bistros of his neighborhood, Fort Greene, at work on his next novel, which is about a teenager who subsists on TV dinners and toils at an ice-cream parlor (the novelist’s traumatic summers in a Hamptons scoop shop are documented in his New York Times essay ‘Eat Memory, I Scream’).”
Now this seems a bit suspicious to me. First off, a novelist shouldn’t be in the business of describing an unfinished work. And when pressed by an interviewer, the novelist should probably just say, “Yeah, I’m working on something. Next question.”
But in this instance, Whitehead has offered an answer. And it isn’t “a teenager overcoming a personal obstacle” or “a teenager who comes of age.” No, the great human angle on this story is “a teenager who subsists on TV dinners and toils at an ice-cream parlor,” suggesting that cultural reference comes before character development or that Whitehead is riding the great food crutch that many writers dwell on during a gestation period.Of course, it’s probably unfair of me to read so closely into an answer like this. Nevertheless, after the lackluster Apex Hides the Hurt (a passable novel, but lackluster in comparison to his two previous books), I worry about Whitehead’s ability to deliver.