- Lee Goldberg reports some potential legerdemain pertaining to Simon & Schuster’s new indentured servitude policy. The Authors Guild claims that S&S is more interested in a “revenue-based threshold” as opposed to a reversion of rights. The problem with such language is that this is precisely how Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were screwed over by DC Comics regarding The Watchmen. As the famous story goes, Moore and Gibbons agreed to let DC Comics keep the rights to The Watchmen once it went out of print. Alas, DC Comics has never permitted The Watchmen to go out of print. Thus, Moore and Gibbons have not seen royalties. If “revenue-based threshold” is a replay of such diabolical tactics, then the Authors Guild (and any writer striking a deal with S&S) should probably pay serious attention. Writers may be little more than prostitutes to some moneymen, but even whores should stick up for themselves. I will look into this story later in the week and try to clarify these questions.
- Another reason why technology is fun: You can track down the subjects of Dorothea Lange photos if you want to. (via Bill Peschel)
- Ron Hogan has a detailed report on the Crisis in Book Reviewing panel, including a few minutes I missed. And it’s even more absurd than I reported: “When National Book Critics Circle president John Freeman finally got the show moving, he started off by announcing that the NBCC had decided to create a new award honoring book review sections as a class. (As Hail Mary conciliatory gestures to the newspaper industry go, I have to say I was rather underwhelmed, but I imagine section editors who are also Circle members will strive keenly to earn the shelf decorations.)” Take that, you corporate vultures! Self-aggrandizement from the inner circle! This is too close to some of Mailer’s stunts to be taken seriously.
- I seem to have the same crap cough that Maud has. Can someone explain this respiratory perdition to a sudden East Coast transplant? I hope Maud gets well. She will be reading on Sunday, June 10, at 5:00 PM.
- Cormac McCarthy isn’t the only one on TV this week.
- Slushpile interviews Mark McNay.
- More grim news at the Baltimore Sun.
- Terry Brooks is heading for the big screen.
- Again, Reuters gets it wrong about Andrew Keen. Various people have been rightly lambasting this decidedly unkeen specimen of the monkeys because he is decidedly not an intellectual. Keen is, as I observed a few months ago with considerable supportive examples, an indolent and idiotic thinker who wouldn’t know a nuanced argument even if James Wood holed up with him in a motel room for a week to “deprogram” him of his sophist tendencies. The only reason he gets column inches is because there is nobody else out there attempting a civil argument and because many print journalists have a vested interest in protecting their turf from the online upstarts. The real gonzo come lately is Keen himself.
- Happy Antipodean observes that more books are being banned in Malaysia.
Roundup
– June 6, 2007Posted in: Roundup
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
I don’t want to get in the way of a good feud, but the panel report on the Critical Mass website – which seems likely to be accurate on this point – talks about a prize for “excellence in a book-related publication, web site, or section“, rather than a prize just for newspaper book reviews. You’re probably eligible.
Ed is eligible already as a fine, upstanding member of the NBCC! Wait, I forgot “proud.”
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons haven’t been shut out of royalties for WATCHMEN, although it’s been argued that they’ve been denied their rightful share of royalties on the book and on certain spinoff products, like the blood-specked have a nice day button. The real key issue is the rights reversion based on the book’s in-print status; basically, Moore and Gibbon are unlikely to ever be able to assume control of the work and negotiate their own deal for it with another publisher.