Levi Asher serves up a you-are-there report on John Updike and gets all giddy and fanboyish: “John Updike looks directly at me with his blazingly smart eyes, says ‘Thank you’ (I’m not sure if he is thanking me for my brilliant phrasing or because I’ve just tossed him a big fat softball) and proceeds to agree that, while the Rabbit novels are significant to him because they take place in a Pennsylvania small town like the one he grew up in, he is sorry to hear of his other novels becoming ‘passe’. He then lists a few other books he considers his best, and I am very happy and satisfied that he names my personal favorite, Couples, as well as his Scarlett Letter trilogy (Month of Sundays, Roger’s Version, S), which I haven’t read yet but will now check out.
Year / 2006
In Defense of Details
Scott offers a defense of Vollmann: “Yes, Vollmann gives us a lot of details–Pushkin, three corpses, the offhanded remark on the German language. Perhaps we could have stripped the Pushkin reference, gotten rid of two corpses, exed out the whole bit about the Nackenschuss. We could do all that, but then what would be left of Vollmann’s original intent, of his desire to communicate the clash of cultures during the war in Central Europe? Why, without Vollmann’s details, this war could be taking place anywhere. Besides, isn’t it interesting that whereas the Soviets have slogans, the Germans have words for executing someone through the base of their skull? And how keen of Vollmann to note that these Soviet peasants, whom all the might of the Soviet state was unable to bring together, were so swiftly and brutally stripped of their individuality by the Nazis?”
Another One Bites the Dust
A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books: “We deeply regret to announce that we will be closing A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books as soon as we can liquidate our inventory.”
[UPDATE: Frances Dinkelspiel has more and bemoans the many Bay Area bookstore closings this year. The Bay Area may be an underreported literary mecca, but the hard truth is that these literary interests aren’t always compatible with profit and there aren’t enough courageous people willing to sustain many of these pivotal conduits. The recent end of the Books by the Bay festival and the slimming down of the Chronicle‘s book review section are troublingly self-evident on this front.]
Bookstore Sales Drop
Publishers Weekly reports that US bookstore sales dropped 4.3% in April. This is the third consecutive month in which sales have plummeted. Is this the result of a faltering economy? Or is Amazon’s rising slumping stock connected to this?
Meanwhile, this guy tries to uncrack Amazon sales ranking and concludes that they probably don’t mean a thing.
Visual Tumult and Banner Heckling Doesn’t Count
New York Times Corrections: “An article on Sunday about commencement speeches around the country referred imprecisely to audience reaction to a speech by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Boston College. While some people turned their backs on her and a protest banner was unfurled during her appearance, the scene inside Alumni Stadium where she spoke did not turn tumultous, nor was she heckled while speaking.”