- This may very well be a first. Dan Wickett has launched an Emerging Writers Network Short Fiction Contest, in which he’ll be reading all of the short stories and passing 20 finalists on to Charles D’Ambrosio. Talk about using the Internet for an innovative purpose. The prize is $500. And the rules seem more ethical than most literary fiction contests I’ve seen.
- Robert Birnbaum talks with Alberto Manguel. Borges fans should check it out.
- The Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship has been announced. (Thanks, Tayari)
- Wordstock, which has no relation to a flighty yellow bird or flighty hippies, is happening on April 21-23, 2006 in Portland. Word on the street is that Chuck Barris may challenge Dave Eggers to a fistfight, with Ira Glass as referee.
- And speaking of literary festivals, Frances digs up this Leah Garchik item: “Books by the Bay, the 10-year-old Yerba Buena Gardens book festival sponsored by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, is kaput. The association’s Hut Landon said the festival, featuring author talks, panel discussions and displays by various vendors and publishers, had cost $20,000, and organizers felt it didn’t get enough attention to warrant the expense.” Frances opines that if Debi Echlin were still around, the NCIBA would have figured out a way to make up the shortfall. I’m inclined to agree. Last year’s Books by the Bay (interested parties can find my report here) happened to take place on a beautiful and sunny day, but I don’t recall seeing flyers or posters, much less heavy promotion, in indie bookstores to get people there. If there was any lack of attendance, I blame the NCIBA for failing to get the word out. It’s almost as if the organizers wanted Books by the Bay to die. I think enough individual donors or even a few more sponsors could have picked up the slack. I’ll be very sorry to see Books by the Bay go, but hopefully Litquake will be able to pick up the slack.
- Over at Mark’s, a number of the smart and lovely women contributing to the forthcoming anthology, The May Queen, are guest blogging. A substantial chunk of the contributors are going to be at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place on April 3. I’m almost finished with the book and I’ll express my thoughts (less rushed this time) in a future 75 Books post.
- Laird Hunt on “Nonrealist Fiction.”
- The Morning News Tournament of Books continues, although Kate Schlegel is out of her mind to say no to Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica.
- The Rake faces a dynastic contretemps just before his 30th birthday.
- A.S. Byatt: “I shall never write an autobiography. The fairy stories are the closest I shall ever come to writing about true events in my life.”
- More patriarchal bullshit: “the indispensible literary spouse.”
- “The Dreamlife of Rupert Thomson.” (via Maud, who I understand has a Thomson interview of her own coming soon)
- Gideon Lewis-Kraus on Black Swan Green: “Most recent bildungsromans stock tinseled epiphanies and fresh-baked-bread redemptions. Though they’re ostensibly about the character coming of age, the bad examples tend to be about coming-of-age itself. But Mitchell has refused the scaffolding on which he might hang a climax. By allowing Jason the stumbling progress of a novel in stories, Mitchell has given him an actual youth, not one smoothly engineered in retrospect.”
Category / Birnbaum, Robert
Roundup/Update
- Podbop: Enter your city and listen to MP3 snippets of bands touring in your town this week. (via Irregardless)
- C. Max Magee, having now shifted to a more RSS-friendly home, offers a thoughtful take on the future of the book and gets a surprise response from George Saunders.
- Robert “Prolfiic Is My Temperament, Prolific Is My Interviewing” Birnbaum talks with Andrew Delbanco.
- Well, I guess Jessa Crispin hates such “desperate” works as James Joyce’s Ulysses, e.e. cummings’ No Thanks, Lord Byron’s early poems, Willa Cather’s One of Ours, Waltman’s Leaves of Grass, Thoreau’s Walden, Virginia Woolf’s early novels, and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (which was initially self-published).
- Haven’t forgotten about the Black Swan Green discussion with Megan. It’s coming. The ball’s in my court. But there are many things currently going on. Hopefully, we’ll get up the copious correspondence next week.
- I have a little under ten books to log for the 75 Book Challenge, including my long and long-delayed thoughts on Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity. Again, spare moments, hopefully soon.
- Segundo: Three podcasts to finalize, some very special authors (including one HUGE surprise!) coming in the upcoming weeks, including Jonathan Ames, who also got a chance to talk with Pinky’s Paperhaus when rolling through Los Angeles.
- Nor have I forgotten about the Naughty Reading Photo Contest. I apologize to all the entrants for the delay.
- Do you have any more coffee?
Birnbaum Watch
Okay, an effort at moving forward. It won’t be easy.
For now, check out Birnbaum’s interview with James Lasdun. Lasdun’s latest book is Seven Lies, which somehow made its way into my hands at BEA. I don’t really remember how this happened, but, for the most part, I dug the book, even if it seemed to borrow just a tad too much of its feel from John O’Hara and Christopher Isherwood for my tastes.
Needlessly Snarky (Due Possibly to Being Subjected to Fourteen Listens of “The 12 Days of Xmas” Over the Past 72 Hours) Roundup
- Ready Steady Book has a comprehensive Books of the Year 2005 symposium.
- Another year, another end-of-the-year panel, another set of pages that isn’t formatted properly for Firefox. But despite the usual platitudes from the usual people, Mr. Birnbaum maanages to offer a defense of Hitchens that many of his naysayers (including this blogger) might wish to consider.
- Question: Will the moralists now go after Chuck Palahniuk with the same vigor that they go after music, films, and video games? Come on, you fundies, you’ve got your smoking gun!
- First, Orhan Pamuk. Now Abdullah Yildiz. In Turkey, it’s all literary persecution, all the time! Note to the hypersensitive Turkish nationalists: Georgie Porgie only served you pudding and pie and kissed the girls and made them cry! Let the little fucker run away and learn to deal.
- Rodney Whitaker (aka Trevnian), author of the source material for the worst Clint Eastwood movie ever made, has passed on.
- Do crime writers get a bad rap?
- An interesting review of Park Honan’s Marlowe bio, wondering how much of biography is fiction.
- The playwright Gary Mitchell has received serious death threats and was attacked by men with baseball bats and gasoline bombs. Serious shit.
- Another million dollar debut deal. This time, for Diane Setterfield, a Yorkshire French teacher whose turned out a gothic novel in the vein of Jane Eyre, et al.
- Jack Anderson: last of a dying breed?
- Dan Green wonders why critics are picking on John Barth.
Birnbaum Watch
Missed it while my legs were locked under wintry work, but Bob-B has talked with Marc Estrin and Barbara Ehrenreich.