- Rules for Writing Neo-Victorian Novels.
- Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog
- Golden Rule Jones, who is, as we established not so long ago is not a Peter Cetera fan, has finally weaned himself off Blogspot and grabbed himself a bona-fide domain. Do check it out.
John Barlow is now blogging, and he’s tired of the Jonathan Ames testicle contretemps.- Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller. No, it’s not another piece of Ron Howard treacle, but the lineup for Neil Gaiman’s Stardust.
- The Vancouver Sun and the Contra Costa Times report yesterday’s news today! Graphic novels are a literary phenomenon! It’s the evolution of a literary genre! Who knew?
- Carl Shuker has won the New Zealand Prize in Modern Letters. That’s $65,000. But it remains to be seen whether Shuker will collect his award in cash or in Buzz Bars. He looks like an intense fellow. My vote is on the Buzz Bars.
- In Japan, twelve writers will be profiled in a liquor warehouse. The program is carefully calculated to get literary enthusiasts inebriated with free drinks, have them sign a contract when not of sound mind, and to put them to work bottling bottles of schnapps in sweltering conditions as indentured servants. Some businesses are calling this new and innovative form of labor an “export reading zone.”
- I’m shocked that I’m quicker to the draw than my colleague down south, but John Banville will be headlining at the Between the Lines Festival.
- Alice Greenway is a literary bomb ready to explode. Other Orange Prize longlisters, concerned with Greenway’s eleventh-hour transformation into a piece of artillery, are turning themselves into B-52 bombers, Panzer tanks, and, in Zadie Smith’s case, a neutron bomb, in an effort to draw more attention to their work.
- Another interview with Alan Moore.
- Who knew that romance novels are apparently only for dumb women? Thank you, Judith McNaught, for “never underestimat[ing] women’s intelligence” and for likewise assuming that any woman who doesn’t read your books, looking for some innocuous escapism, is apparently the XX chromosome’s answer to Forrest Gump.
- This isn’t a good sign for Sci Fiction’s future. Scifi.com is to be restructured on podcasts, with video being played a prominent role.
- iPorn! Inevitable. (via Reverse Cowgirl)
- Fascinating article on how cheap consumer goods have affected UK culture. Cory Doctorow has more.
- The future of conversation. (via Book Ninja)
Category / Roundup
Roundup
- Beware the horrible popunders that come with this link, but this news site is reporting that Haruki Murakami’s manuscript collection, which include a handwritten translation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace,” are being sold to secondhand bookstores and the Internet. There’s also an accusation against a former editor!
- Joan Didion wins another award. An architect has been commissioned to add an “Award Room” to the Didion compound.
- Proving that the Booker Prize is something of a joke (or perhaps to inure the award against someone as cool as John Banville winning), Fiona “Aunt Petunia” Shaw is a judge this year. The Booker Prize Foundation is still in negotiations with Daniel Craig to see if he can be coaxed to show up to the ceremony in an Aston Martin.
- Greenspan to write about “the infleunce of his mentor.” And you kids thought I was joking about the sex stories!
- Early word on DeLillo’s Game 6. It’s good!
- This week’s bullshit headline syllogism: Grief led to novelist’s best-seller success. Well, okay then, color me grief-stricken!
- Who was John Fante?
- Gray Lady outsources to AP for pivotal anatomical details: “The article also omitted credit for a description of Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy model who married Mr. Marshall 14 months before he died. The quotations and the physical description were all supplied by The Associated Press.”
- A new Ezra Pound exhibit.
- Dickens’ Healing Power Keeps Middle-Aged Man In Chair for Photo.
- And perhaps most importantly, Canadian literature finally gets some respect.
Roundup
- Another day, another Robert Birnbaum interview. This time: Uzodinma Iweala.
- Concerning the Jonathan Ames testicle controversy, it seems that the testicle is ahead of the shadow by a ratio of 5 to 1. Whether this will have any long-term impact on future perceptions of Jonathan Ames books remains to be seen, but there’s a rumor floating around that Augusten Burroughs has been considering “an accidental photo” for his next book. Just remember that Jonathan Ames was the first one there.
- It seems that only John Freeman is allowed to talk with David Foster Wallace. That’s two articles in seven days. What deal did he cook up with Bonnie Nadell? Or is John Freeman part of the DFW inner circle of “approved” people? (Former Freeman link via Scott)
- The history of mustard.
- Believe it or not, Ivan Turgenev’s one and only play, A Month in the Country, is playing in North Carolina. Free Gutenberg text here. Background info here.
- It started with a harmless exchange of information, but Maud and I have been trying to figure out why the Graham Greene-Anthony Burgess relationship was so strange. I sent Maud an interview with the two authors that I had read in Burgess’ But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?. Jasper Milvain dug up more, pointing out that Greene disowned the interview, claiming that “Burgess put words into my mouth which I had to look up in the dictionary.” The two authors fell out, apparently by 1990, when Burgess published his second autobiographical volume, You’ve Had Your Time. And while I don’t entirely trust Wikipedia, the Anthony Burgess entry notes, “In 1957 Graham Greene asked him to bring some Chinese silk shirts back with him on furlough from Kuala Lumpur. As soon as Burgess handed over the shirts, Greene pulled out a knife and severed the cuffs, into which opium pellets had been sewn.” Now if that latter tidbit can be corroborated, then it’s just possible that the Burgess-Greene relationship might be one of the strangest in literary history. As soon as I get an opportunity to hit the library, I’m going to follow up on all this. Did Burgess and Greene love to hate each other? Or did they hate to love each other? Or was it a little bit of both? Perhaps some bona-fide authorities might have some answers to all this.
[UPDATE: Jasper has an update on the Greene-Burgess contretemps, with some citations. And in the comments to this post, Jenny Davidson offers some materal from the forthcoming Biswell biography, which apparently deals with Graham Greene at great length.]
Roundup
- Mountain Goats meets Lethem and Moody.
- Becoming Jane: the next Shakespeare in Love?
- The Onion: “I can write 600 words about anything.”
- Elisabeth Bumiller is taking a leave of absence from the New York Times to write a Condoleeza Rice bio. The working title: Betrayal is Easy, It’s the Legs That Take Work.
- Actor Louis Zorich thinks Chekhov has more humanity than Shakespeare. After all, there’s more heart in saying “nuclear wessels” than “If music be the food of love, play on.”
- The latest ridiculous deal: Alan Greenspan’s memoir for $7 million. The hell of it is that it’s all riding on a ten-page proposal. For that kind of advance, you’d think Greenspan would extend the proposal by at least twenty pages. If I were publishing the memoir, I’d demand details! Perhaps a chapter devoted to a spry young Greenspan shacking it up with Ayn Rand for a night of wild animalistic sex. That’s what people buy memoirs for.
- When a teenager has a “porn problem,” he’s taken aside by his parents for a stern but frank talk about sexuality. Alas, Google is no teenager. It’s a major company — indeed, one might argue, an orphan. So instead of the talk, some folks are suing them.
- I believe this was reported first at Maud’s, but the New York Public Library is purchasing William S. Burroughs’ archive. Among the acquisitions: An aborted attempt at a novel called Naked Lunch II: Naked Dinner. Of course, all those large plastic bags filled with randomly snipped text are going to be a bitch and a half for all those unpaid interns to log.
- Centuries later, folks are still arguing over how Shakespeare died. Some say a tumor over the left eye. Some say that the Bard suffered a delayed midlife crisis and attempted to shadow fence himself, with unfortunate mortal consequences. The more eccentric experts, however, suggest that Shakespare actually didn’t die at all and that his body was frozen in a primitive form of cryogenics. This last possibility was apparently where Walt Disney got the idea from.
- People are taking Atwood’s signing device pretty damn seriously.
- A paean to great sportswriting.
- Transcript of Arthur Miller grilled during the McCarthy era.
- RIP Linda Smith.
- The Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville will be getting the Book TV treatment.
- La Haggis has a rememberance of Frederick Busch.
- Can you dig it?
Roundup
Apologies for the roundup. It’s a very crazy day here. More long-form posts tomorrow.
- J.B. MacKinnnon wins the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize.
- Aimee Bender: “The short story is an older form than the novel. Like the fairy tale, you could tell the short story in one sitting. The short story doesn’t go away. There’s no chance of it. It’s part of breathing. It’s like asking, will poetry go away? Never!”
- Who is that fat novelist bastard? Alexei Sayle, of course!
- Robert Birnbaum: On Notice.
- A Pasadena-centric rememberance of Octavia Butler.
- Tayari asks: “If you love a writer, let her know!” Love forthcoming for future post on this end.
- Neil Jordan as struggling novelist.
- Toni Morrison on writing operas.
- Nora Roberts has signed a deal with Lifetime Television. The real question here is why such an inevitable development was so late in coming.
- A brief writeup of a recent Edward Jones lecture.
- Nicole Kidman has an ego? Who would have thought?
- A rave review for Daniel Handler’s Adverbs.
- This won’t mean anything if you didn’t grow up watching Superfriends, but Legions of Gotham has scored an interview with the voice of El Dorado.
- Samuel Beckett’s centenary is happening this April. Maud has more.
- Tom Wolfe “will speak at 11 a.m. on the Lawn.” The University of Virginia tried offering Wolfe a regular lawn, but Wolfe insisted on a proper noun.
- And did Sliver really need to be released on DVD?