This guy has constructed a timeline of Fight Club entirely with legos, tracking the character development of all the characters by chapter.

In a development that should infuriate all midlisters starving and shivering in hovels right now, the Book Standard is now reporting that Barbara Walters walked away from a $6 million advance on her memoir. Walters was in a contract with Miramax Books, only to ditch the contract in question. Now she’s shopping around for a sum closer to Alan Greenspan’s $8.5 million advance. Of course, seeing as how Greenspan’s advance was contingent upon writing about some kinky moments with Ayn Rand, it remains to be seen what Walters could possibly pen to top Greenspan. Unless, of course, the two memoirs were to become illicitly involved, eventually morphing into one extremely salacious memoir to hit the stores later in the year.

Margaret Atwood’s Hay Journal: “Due to bureaucratic foot-dragging, things weren’t quite finished. The parking lot was a bog of squelchy red mud, the consistency my cholesterol-thickened bloodstream would be, I feared, after the binge of cheese-gobbling, double-cream feasting, and sheep’s milk ice-cream I knew I would shortly not be able to resist. Grimly smiling Welshmen were vacuuming up the standing water with giant water-sucking machines, while others spread woodchips wherever possible, singing mournful Welsh woodchip-spreading songs.”

Pictures within pictures within pictures within… (via Rory)>

For those who have emailed me about this story, know that I am still pursuing it. I spoke with Millenia Black this morning and I have several calls into many parties pertaining to this matter. There is a forthcoming podcast in the works devoted exclusively to this issue, but here’s what I can tell you now:

The Great Betrayal, the novel in question, is being released by NAL Trade on December 5, 2006. The novel will feature the characters as Caucasian, rather than the suggested change to African-American.

Black claims that recent legal maneuvers spawned the book’s release as is. She told me that, outside of the change in race, she had no problems with any of the editor’s changes. (I also finally got through to the editor today and hope to hear her side of the story.)

The Great Betrayal was accepted in outline form with the characters as white. Black then wrote the novel based on this outline. It was just after Black had finished the manuscript when the character race change was requested by her editor.

Communications on this matter between Black and the editor came through her agent. The editor broached the race change question with the agent; the agent then relayed this to Black. Black said no and there began an email volley between Black and the editor. Curiously, the matter was never taken up by phone directly between Black and the editor.

There is a lot more I’m following up on here and I will present the results as they come in.

Dan Wickett serves up an e-panel with six literary translators.

It all depends upon your definition of “normal.”

Sven Birkets writes lovingly of Cynthia Ozick: “Ozick is not repudiating her literary mentor, but she cuffs him, and in doing so suggests — as she does in these engaged and deftly turned essays — not only that great literature can withstand sharp inquiry from readers but also that such inquiry is vital.”

1966: Mao Tse Tung, at 73, claims to swim some 9 miles across the Yangtze River.

2006: Pat Robertson claims to have leg-pressed 2,000 pounds at the age of 73.

One would think that Robertson’s people would have vetted this hilarious irony with their dear leader. But I like to think that there’s an insider working at The 700 Club with a marvelous sense of humor.

The BBC is reporting that Charles Webb has sold a sequel to The Graduate to Random House. Webb was initially reported by the BBC to be facing eviction. The book will be published in June 2007. Unfortunately, since Webb signed away any and all film rights for sequels based on The Graduate, it remains to be seen whether or not Hollywood will bestow Webb with a small stipend, assuming that someone decides that a cinematic sequel is worthwhile.

A quick reminder to all that, this week, it’s Television week (and I refer not to that ignoble, phosphor-flickering box you have sitting in the corner threatening to abscond with your time, but the novel by Jean-Phillipe Toussaint) over at the LBC. On this end, a podcast featuring translator Jordan Stump will be posted on Friday that you really won’t want to miss — particularly if you’re interested in the current state of translators in the publishing industry.

MSNBC: “The head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association urged the government on Saturday to take action against a sherpa who reportedly stripped off on top of Mount Everest.”

Perhaps it’s a sign of urban living that I’ve seen altercations as strange as this one on MUNI. Of course, nobody has, to my knowledge, claimed to have his penis attached to anyone’s mother. (via MeFi)

Reported on Toth’s site.

Early reviews are coming in on Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly and they’re not promising.

The Book Standard: “Visually, this Scanner is no phantasmagoria, unlikely to inspire comparison to great animated head-trips of the ’60s past. The film’s muted pallet of pastels, while immensely suited to bath soaps, is less dynamic as a filmic eye-grabber.”

Eric Synder: “I think some people will be tricked by the unusual visual style into thinking the film is more interesting than it is. I say look beyond that at what’s actually happening and you’ll realize that without the rotoscoping, the movie would be completely undistinguished, competent but only mildly entertaining.”

Tim Ryan: “…if ‘A Scanner Darkly\ doesn’t match ‘Waking Life”s wonderfully fluid meditation on the nature of existence, it’s still a remarkable visual experience and an involving drama…”

I have no idea what I did to earn your good graces, but..

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for the package.

At Gonzaga University, to celebrate L. Frank Baum’s 150th birthday, an exhibit entitled “Oz and Beyond” is on display in the library rare books room.

Do check out the LBC site today for a podcast featuring Carrie A.A. Frye and Yannick Murphy. I should have things squared away by mid-morning.

Poets and Writers: “Despite one interruption by a young man who asked why he didn’t get a thank-you for once sending Tanenhaus cookies….” (Emphasis added; thanks Sarah!)

From a review of An Inconvenient Truth: “Fundamentally, this is a film about communication– the failure to communicate in the past, and the mission to truly communicate before it’s far too late.”

Richard Pryor’s FBI file.

New York Times: “Ms. Didion, tiny, quiet and quick-speaking, keeps her hands mostly in her lap. One gets the feeling that the room is impressing itself on her.”

The time has come for the literary world to move well beyond the terms “chick lit” and “lad lit” and add more literary pejoratives to the lexicon. After all, if we can’t find a way to take the piss out of every book turned out by the publishers, how can the literary world be counted upon to sustain its vitriol? Crouch-Peck altercations in restaurants simply aren’t cutting it these days. The book review sections continue to play it safe. The time has come to step up the enmity with a brand new set of ad hominen terminology!

What follows is a running list of terms with which to flood your blogs, your essays, your literary cocktail party banter and your term papers with. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

• Brit Lit: Any novel published by the Granta 20 authors. Should be used as a pejorative particularly when the author is very friendly (e.g., Sarah Waters and David Mitchell).
• Clit Lit: Any steamy but ultimately banal memoir relying upon explicit description of sexual conquests to boost sales. (Example: Toni Bentley’s The Surrender.)
• Corp Lit: A bland memoir ostensibly penned by a former CEO, but actually ghost-written by someone else, often masquerading as a self-help book or a source of empowerment. (See Jack Welch’s oeuvre.)
• Geezer Lit: Any novel that is published to placate a Very Important Author along the lines of Mailer, Updike or Roth. Ideally, the book features an affluent protagonist over 50 who is (a) going through a midlife crisis, (b) having an extramarital affair, or (c) living in a spacious New England home.
• Thick Lit: Novels that are ridiculously long and are announced by publishers as “a major literary event.” (See Paul Anderson’s Hunger’s Brides and Suzanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.) Also applies to more credible long-winded novelists along the lines of David Foster Wallace and William T. Vollmann.
• Trick Lit: Novels that frame or recontextualize their stories through a common tale or mythology because the novelist can’t come up with anything particularly original on his own. (See Gregory Maguire.)
• Wonk Lit: Any memoir or political volume published by a former politician. Often, wonk lit titles are desperate ploys to restore credibility and/or standing with a public who has rapidly forgotten of the ex-politician in question. (Examples: Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Gary Hart’s Restoration of the Republic.)

B to B Online: “With declining circulation, a relatively flat ad market and sluggish stock prices, some analysts say the writing is on the wall for newspaper companies. In an increasingly digital age, newspapers must decide what content is better suited for online than print. Marketers say the trend is accelerating. The ongoing shifts of print content to online ‘is the tip of the iceberg,’ said Stephen Carlson, associate media director at StarLink Worldwide, whose clients include the American Medical Association and Caterpillar Inc. He added that TV listings, entertainment listings, sports statistics and weather reports might be in line to be eliminated from newspapers.”

Could book review sections be next?

Nicholas Spice on Everyman: “Everyman has none of this propulsive linguistic exuberance [identified in previous books]. Its energy is of a quite different kind. It is a funerary portrait, a short account of a man’s life cast in the bias of a preoccupation with bodily decay. The story is told in retrospect, the mood is valedictory and morose. Most stories we read or listen to are told in the past tense, but we forget this and experience them as though they were happening now; wondering what happens next is what keeps our attention. In Everyman nothing happens next, not just because the protagonist is buried in the opening scene, but because what we learn of his life comes to us mainly through what he remembers.”

Thomas Mallon on Harper Lee: “More troublesome than the dialogue, Lee’s narrative voice is a wildly unstable compound, a forced mixture—sometimes in the same sentence—of Scout’s very young perspective and a fully adult one. Phrases like ‘throughout my early life’ and ‘when we were small’ serve only to jar us out of a past that we’ve already been seeing, quite clearly, through the eyes of the little girl. Information that has been established gets repeated, and the book’s sentences are occasionally so clumsy that a reader can’t visualize the action before being asked to picture its opposite: ‘A flash of plain fear was going out of [Atticus’s] eyes, but returned when Dill and Jem wriggled into the light.'”

Houston Chronicle: “‘When college is over, you’ll think about it for the rest of your life,’ he said Saturday. Grisham joked that adulthood is overrated, and said professional life is stressful and unhealthy. One solution, he said, is to stay in school.”

Let me set John Grisham, Esquire straight. The telltale sign that Jay Gatsby is one unbearably sad dude:

“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”

Where many other bloggers have offered specific BEA reports of what transpired during last week (meaning, you know, actual encounters with human beings and the like), leave it to book editor-turned-blogger Bob Hoover to expose the real issues, which is apparently not the confluence of authors and publishers and exhibitors, nor the sightings or the conversations, but the food served at all the various parties (see May 23, 2006 entry; again, permalink unprovided):

The gold standard (for me, at least) was the HarperCollins affair at the Smithsonian Castle Saturday night where the prosciutto ($23 a pound where I come from) was spread out in yards like ribbon.

Well, thank you, Bob. So glad you bothered to go into detail on the interesting social climate.

Of course, it’s possible that Bob’s still getting his sea legs at this blogging thing. Then again, Bob confesses that he had intelligence of the Knopf party time and location, but didn’t bother to storm the gates. I must posit something: Would a real journalist refrain from crashing the gates?

Certainly Jeremy “VIP Mothefucker Ringleader” Lassen had no such qualms.

As Mr. Orthofer has observed, it’s Pulp Fiction Week at Slate. Of course, by “pulp,” Slate refers not to Robert E. Howard, Lester Dent or Erle Stanley Gardner, but to distinguished authors like Dashiel Hammett. (I suppose Stephen Crane, who self-published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets in part to cash in on the lurid popular fiction markets of the time, must be declared a disreputable “pulp” author as well. Never mind that Maggie is also one of the key novels of its time that dares to chronicle prostitutes and street life. But I digress.)

Further, Slate has asked a list of luminaries to provide their favorite beach books. Among some of the more interesting revelations:

• Rick Moody recommends the Motley Crue autobiography.
• New Yorker critic Joan Acocella actually recommends The Da Vinci Code.
• Michael Kinsley believes Evelyn Waugh to be “pretty mindless” and considers Trollope “the most mindless of the big, fat…19th-century brits.”
• Joyce Carol Oates avoids beaches and thus evades the “beach book” question.
• A “recommendation” from George Saunders that must be read.

[UPDATE: One damn thing that I missed (and surprisingly Sarvas) and that Sarah caught was John Banville on the Parker novels.]