Elfriede Jelinek “for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power.”

Life has us busy, but we do promise something pretty huge on this site in the next couple of days. That is all.

• Ron takes on Paul Maher again and talks with Stephanie Lehmann.
• Jennifer Weiner fends off medically imbalanced Big Media.
• The Book Babes squeal in Tanenhaus’s presence. I’ve responded.
• Amy Fisher is back and she has a self-published book where, it appears, she dispenses parenting advice.
• The Nobel buzz is purring, but could it go to a woman? Only nine women have been awarded the Nobel Literature Prize since 1901.
• Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha has given Pride and Prejudice the Bollywood treatment.
• David Mitchell gets the royal treatment over at the Independent (first seen at the Literary Saloon)
• The Washington Post takes a look at Altman’s Tanner ’88 followup.
• S.E. Hinton talks at length with the Ottawa Citizen about returning to writing after a long hiatus, movies, motherhood, and her new novel.
• Nebraskan Ted Kooser will be the next poet laureate of the United States.
• Maya Angelou has written a cookbook.
• The short story defended yet again (via Bookninja)
• Stuart Macintyre argues that historians are no longer detached observers.
• Joan Didion examines Kerry.
• The Dagger Awards have been announced. (via Sarah)
• Books on anger examined at the TLS.
• An early review of the new Atwood essay collection.

• The 56th Frankfurt Book Fair begins on Wednesday and Hannah Wettig wants to know if Arab literature has a chance. Meanwhile, publisher Mohammed Rashad shares his thoughts. [UPDATE: And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Laila has weighed in as well.]
• Attorneys for the estate of John Steinbeck’s widow want Steinbeck’s heirs to back off. Who knew that Oprah’s East of Eden pick could transmute into such a nuisance?
• Just when he got out, Mark Winegardner is pulling him back in. “At the same time I’m trying to write a novel that would be appealing to the popcorn crowd, and God bless ’em. I think literary writers can lose sight of the sheer page-turning pleasure that a novel can give,” says Winegardner of The Godfather Returns. Don’t you mean the sizable paycheck, Mark?
• The Scotsman notes that Edinburgh’s literary reputation as a murder apex is unfounded. There were only six murders in the past twelve months, and all of them were solved.
• Eduardo Gonzalez Viana has been awarded Peru’s highest literary honor.
• Four original Norman Rockwells are being unloaded to save a library with ties to Funk & Wagnalls.
• The James Joyce Bloomsbury expo hits Boston and The Globe is impressed.