Category / Roundup

by DrMabuse

Hasty Snippets

Cathleen Schine’s new novel is (no surprise) about a woman leaving her husband for a woman. But that’s not all. Schine will also be appearing at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival on a panel with the man she left, David Denby. The festival organizers have tried to get Denby and Schine to sing “I Got You, Babe,” but Denby can’t carry a tune. Complicating things further is the fact that Schine doesn’t own a leather jacket. She also reports that she saves her provocative undergarments for the bedroom.

A new Rudyard Kipling story has been found. It will be unveiled in front of Kipling fans on April 7. The story is another part in the Stalky & Co. series. The hope was that the stalkers would touch Stalky first.

Print on demand: Comes served with vanity mirror.

Northeastern University closes shop.

The Post-Gazette catches up with Daniel Keyes.

Polanski’s doing Oliver Twist. No doubt the role of Nancy will be notably broadened.

And Jennifer Haigh has won the PEN/Faulkner for a distinguished first work of fiction. Her book, Mrs. Kimble, is about a man who marries three different women at different times in his life.

by DrMabuse

Deaths, Revivals and Roastings

Historian and one-time Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin has passed on. Boorstin was best known for his American trilogy and his fascinating books on human innovation. (I highly recommend The Discoverers and The Seekers.) One read a Boorstin book for the best of reasons: to ride a journey across human progress with an enthusiastic mind eager to make connections. Boorstin was an American James Burke, adept at showing the strange way in which the world was charted and everyday things were created. He’ll definitely be missed.

T.C. Boyle’s enemies are dying off. Less people hate Boyle now more than ever before. I remain optimistic. There will come a day when there are more Boyle lovers than haters.

Now who honestly expected to see Kate Christensen profiled in the Post? It’s difficult to say whether this is an effort to woo people who are disappointed by the increasing non-literary direction of the NYTBR. Personally, I welcome feverish Post headlines like VIDAL REVIVES BRAWL WITH MAILER or ZADIE SMITH ROASTS CHICKLIT AUTHORS OVER SPIT.

John Lescroart whines that he doesn’t get any respect. Dude, shut up. You’ve sold 10 million books.

So Chip McGrath (and literary coverage) can be found now in the magazine?

Robert Silverburg has received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He plans to address the Nebula Awards with maniacal laughter.

Dick and Jane are being brought out of retirement. This time, the books are being mined for nostalgia rather than education. USA Today insists that, “Still, in their day, Dick and Jane were cutting-edge.” I beg to differ. Unless Dick and Jane are supporting a love nest, complete with tops and bottoms, Jane getting the bukkake treatment, and Dick tied up, standing naked against a pilaster, unless Jane ends up in a halfway house and Dick has a heroin problem, unless Dick gets a mohawk, or Jane gets a nipple piercing, they will remain hopelessly unhip by-products of a more innocent time. Which is not to say that I have any specific contentions against Dick and Jane. I love their simple dorky intonations and their carefree concerns. Just don’t go around calling them the new black. That’s all I’m saying.

The Guardian on Garrison Keillor’s latest: “Misogynistic, full of literary in-jokes and unwilling to tackle real emotion, I suspect fans of this novel will be restricted to Larry Wylers the world over, which isn’t such an insignificant readership judging by the number of puffa jackets on the streets.” Ouch.

A sign that creative book coverage isn’t dead: Frank Wilson looks to be positioning himself as a qurkier Yardley. He asks the world why the 1921 novel, Memoir of a Midget, isn’t better known. The great thing is that he’s actually serious.

And Christopher Hitchens spares no words for Mel Gibson. Except Maureen Dowd was there with the association first.

by DrMabuse

Who Wants to Be a Literary Billionaire?

J.K. Rowling joins the billionaires club. Unfortunately, since writing the Harry Potter series has largely involved the act of one, there has been nobody for Rowling to downsize. So Rowling, in an effort to turn the maximum profit from her stories, has made it a habit of regularly firing and rehiring herself for 17 cents an hour, only to resell her labor for the greatest price.

The Daily News has more on the Jayson Blair tell-all: “Zuza [my girlfriend] took pictures of me prancing around the newsroom wearing a Persian head wrap that covered my face, Kermit the Frog on my shoulders and a giant fake fur coat. I did a full tour de newsroom in this ?peculiar uniform. It is hard to know what I was feeling, other than it was exhilarating to shock everyone. Perhaps I was crying out for attention.” Crying out for attention? Nah, Jayce, sounds like you were trying to recall some obscure Polynesiasn ceremony that involved Kermit the Frog. But anyone trying to invent horrible euphemisms like “tour de newsroom” needed to be stopped.

Hemingway’s favorite daiquiri bar, the Floridita, is being recreated in London. The original Floridita created a double-strength daiquiri bar for Papa. And it was not far from the original bar that Hemingway began work on For Whom the Bell Tolls. The London managers, however, have planned to throw out all soused writers from the new place. Unless, of course, they demonstrate that they can pay their tab.

The Guardian confirms that Richard and Judy are the Oprah of the UK. Literary champions are hoping to replace Richard with Punch, just to “spice things up.”

Rynn Berry is obsessed with Hitler’s diet, believing that Hilter wasn’t the vegetarian everyone claims him to be.

Brian Greene: The Bill Bryson of physics?

by DrMabuse

On the Rebound

Perhaps consulting the will of Dr. Evil, Susanna Clarke has netted a millionaire’s deal for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, an 800-page novel dealing with the last two magicians in England. Fortunately, Clarke has staved off Harry Potter ripoff claims. Because Clarke conveniently started her book “10 years before.” News of the Clarke deal has spread far and wide across the publishing industry, with agents encouraging novelists to “backdate their drafts” for anything remotely derivative.

Is David Mitchell’s Ireland’s answer to Pynchon? The Telegraph tries to find out (user: ed@edrants.com, pw: mabuse). Mitchell is one of Granta’s 20 Best Young UK Novelists. And Sam Leith believes that Mitchell’s latest, The Cloud Atlas, will be one of the highest praised books of the year.

Judith Jones will fuck your shit up. Not only has she given John Updike at least three black eyes, but she’s also lacerated Anne Tyler several times while editing her novels. However, the Baltimore Sun concludes that Jones is an editor who balances gentleness with harsh intervention, when necessary.

Borders is tapping into inner-city neighborhoods. The Times claims that recent stores built in Detroit and Chicago are for “underserved” neighborhoods. The Detroit Free Press suggests that there’s plenty of indepdent life still left. The Detroit store was built in a downtown section that once housed sizable retail. And at 8,000 square feet, it’s apparently “the biggest store since Hudson’s closed 20 years ago.” Borders claims the Chicago store in Uptown is an effort to “revitalize” a commercial district, but it looks like gentrification to me.

Salon has a mystery round-up, which should please Sarah.

Meghan O’Rourke claims that Naomi Wolf is setting the fight against harassment back. More from the Observer.

Sean “Puffy” Combs and Raisin in the Sun? Say it ain’t so.

Chick lit, lad lit, and now Can lit. But in this case, it looks like David Solway may be Canda’s answer to Dale Peck.

by DrMabuse

Out-Blog Blogging?

Milan Kundera’s in demand in Shanghai, enough to make him the best-selling foreign author in the city. Hybrid publishers are reported to be preparing Mao’s Little Red Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

Kate Christensen, whom Ron was kind enough to alert me to, is interviewed by the Journal News. From what I’ve been able to tell, the new book involves a man diagnosed with McDonald’s disease, but who is still obsessed with eating Happy Meals. If he doesn’t stop eating fatty foods, he’ll die a horrible, miserable and stunningly descriptive death at the age of 40. Nevertheless, the allure of the de Montaigne Happy Meal action figures is enough to keep the man eating. Christensen calls her new novel part of “Loser Lit,” which is not to be confused “Laser Lit,” a recent flurry of novels that have featured protagonists taking charge of their destinies shortly after undergoing corrective eye surgery.

Woody Allen and Joyce Carol Oates are among those named by the Tacoma Tribune as talents who are too prolific.

Viggo Mortensen recently showed up in town to read his poetry. Here’s a sample:

I walk the line that Nimoy wrought
I am not Spock or Aragorn
The fangirls swoon upon my locks
The fanboys EBay off my socks
The fans behold my brawny bod
With glasses on, I hide and trod

Who shot J.R.R.? I did, of course
As I was strutting on a horse
You think he died in ’71?
Well, the geezer croaked when I was done
A bullet there between his eyes
Killed at eleventy-zero, a big surprise

They kept the news from kith and gents
The fans had Tyler to cream their pants
But Peter knew, and so did I
And Tolkien’s death did make us cry
An accident, like Brendan Lee!
And so I hid up in a tree

Political correctness has kept George Washington’s name from being properly honored. And here I was thinking that it was just because today’s United States pays little heed to its foundations.

No sign yet of the Wolf-Bloom article yet at the New York website. Keep watching the skies. The Boston Globe, however, has a precis for those who can’t wait.

[UPDATE: Whoop, there it is.]

Yahoo wants to out-Google Google. Google has responded, indicating that they plan to “out-out-Yahoo Yahoo’s out-Googling Googling outside after out-Yahooing out-Google outsourcing.” Venn diagram enthusiasts are still trying to figure out just what the hell these two giants were talking about.

And Frederick Morgan, long-time editor for The Hudson Review, has passed on. He was 81.