from The New York Times

Dead for a Century, Twain Says What He Meant

By LARRY ROHTER

Wry and cranky, droll and cantankerous — that’s the Mark Twain we think we know, thanks to reading “Huck Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” in high school. But in his unexpurgated autobiography, whose first volume is about to be published a century after his death, a very different Twain emerges, more pointedly political and willing to play the role of the angry prophet.

Whether anguishing over American military interventions abroad or delivering jabs at Wall Street tycoons, this Twain is strikingly contemporary. Though the autobiography also contains its share of homespun tales, some of its observations about American life are so acerbic — at one point Twain refers to American soldiers as “uniformed assassins” — that his heirs and editors, as well as the writer himself, feared they would damage his reputation if not withheld.

“From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out,” Twain instructed them in 1906. “There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see.”

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

Just What Can’t Betty White Do?

Can social media be focused to achieve a specific goal? It’s a question a Canadian author Catherine McKenzie asked herself when she saw the successful Facebook campaign to get Betty White to host Saturday Night Live.

McKenzie’s goal is to see if a Facebook group can be used to turn a book into a bestseller, and accordingly named her group “I bet we can make these books bestsellers”. Since starting the group in mid-May, it has grown to almost 800 members, and a related group on Goodreads has over 160 members.

The first two books McKenzie chose are Wyoming author Shawn Klomparens’ Jessica Z. and Two Years, No Rain. Of Jessica Z., Jeff VanderMeer of Ominovarious and the Huffington Post wrote that it “combines the concerns of literary fiction about sex and relationships with the kind of paralyzing sense of dread fueled by the continuing erosion of civil liberties. (…) Klomparens’s particular gift is to embed the details of our self-induced dissolution into an erotic coming-of-age story that’s not only slyly funny at times but has aspects of a thriller.”

I joined this group and am curious to see how it turns out. The more books people buy, the better.

Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=113149048727107

Goodreads group:
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/33611.Make_a_book_a_bestseller

Shawn Klomparens’ website:
www.shawnklomparens.com

Catherine McKenzie’s website:
www.catherinemckenzie.com

from The Guardian UK

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

from AP via Google News

Flashy book dealer in limo for Shakespeare trial

(AP)

LONDON — A flashy British book dealer accused of stealing a rare first edition of Shakespeare’s plays appeared for trial Wednesday in a silver limousine, sporting a Panama hat and flashing victory signs at reporters.

Raymond Scott was accused of stealing the 1623 folio from England’s Durham University in 1998. The 53-year-old was arrested after a man took the volume to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, claiming he found it in Cuba and asking for verification that it was genuine.

Scholars consider the folio one of the most important printed works in the English language.

He arrived Wednesday at northeastern England’s Newcastle Crown Court in a silver Chrysler 300. For an earlier court appearance, he wore a kilt and came in a horse-drawn carriage led by a Scots piper.

[ click to read full article at Google News ]

from The Nervous Breakdown

Three Older Women Stand in Line to Yell at the Author James Frey when Malcolm-Jamal Warner Stops By with a Two-Liter of Cherry Coke Under his Arm

by GREG BOOSE 

Helen: I’m really going to let him have it.

Susan: Oh, Helen, you’re too much.

Helen: He deserves it for what he did.

Rita: Well, don’t just get up there and immediately blow up at the jerk. You have to take him by surprise by being nice and sweet, and then you can let him have it.

Helen: He just makes me so mad!

Susan: He’s a liar.

Rita: Despicable.

Helen: Absolutely. I told you ladies about my brother, right…?

click to continue reading Greg Boose at TheNervousBreakdown.com

from The Independent

After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all

The great American writer left instructions not to publish his autobiography until 100 years after his death, which is now
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles

Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain’s dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.

The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.

That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.

[ click to continue reading at The Independent ]

from Shmoop

10. It’s Paining Men

Who: Alice Walker

What: The Color Purple

When: 1982

Why: Rape, incest, homosexuality, and an unfavorable portrayal of men

How: Cutting right to the chase, The Color Purple famously opens with a graphic firsthand account of an incestuous rape. After bearing (and being separated from) her father’s children, Celie is forced into a loveless marriage where she is beaten and suffers spousal rape by her husband.

Her freedom eventually lies in having a lesbian affair with her husband’s mistress and leaving him to start her own business. For many readers, the mother/daughter/lesbian lover dynamic leaves little room for any male protagonists, which critics argue reinforces negative stereotypes about black men.

11. Still Haven’t Found What They’re Looking For

Who: Salman Rushdie

What: The Satanic Verses

When: 1988

Why: Irreverence toward Islam

How: In addition to other offences, Rushdie refers to the prophet Muhammad as Mahound, a derogatory, Crusader-era term, and names various prostitutes after Muhammad’s wives.

Initial backlash included rioting, bombings, and book burnings. In 1989, the Ayatollah of Iran issued a fatwa against Rushdie and “all those involved in its publication,” resulting in the assassination of one of the book’s translators and attacks against others.

Although Rushdie was unharmed, he spent the next nine years living in undisclosed locations under police protection, reportedly even staying at Bono’s house in Dublin from time to time. You know you’re in trouble when Bono’s letting you hide out in his mansion.

12. Lady in Red

Who: Bret Easton Ellis

What: American Psycho

When: 1991

Why: Extremely graphic descriptions of torture, murder, mutilation, cannibalism, and more

How: Although American Psycho can be characterized as a satire of American machismo, odds are you’ll be too distracted by the detailed first-person accounts of a serial killer to really appreciate the underlying message.

After Simon and Schuster backed out of the project, Vintage Books got the publishing rights to the novel – as well as a lot of heat from feminist groups for its portrayal of violence against women. (To be fair, the narrator also kills a few men and a dog.) As with guns, spray paint, or huff-able glue, many stores require that you be 18 in order to purchase this novel.

13. On the Origin of Pieces

Who: James Frey

What: A Million Little Pieces

When: 2003

Why: Intentionally deceptive marketing

How: Famously dubbed “A Million Little Lies,” James Frey’s so-called memoir incurred a horrible retribution after it was revealed that many of the more scandalous events in the story never actually happened.

Particularly damning was the fact that Oprah, who’d previously featured the novel in her book club (and bolstered its sales by about n-teen percent), made it her personal mission to rip Frey and his publisher into a million little pieces on national television. The media carnage and book returns that followed taught Frey one of the most important facts of American life: don’t mess with Oprah.

[ click to read full list at Shmoop.com ]

from the LA Times

Jacket Copy

BOOKS, AUTHORS AND ALL THINGS BOOKISH 

The unfortunate spread of James Frey

May 17, 2010

On Saturday, the French Consulate, with assistance from UCLA’s department of French and Francophone studies, presented a day of literature from France and Los Angeles. The events, which were either in English or in French with English translation, were nevertheless packed full of French expatriates — there are more than 30,000 in Los Angeles. The star of the show was onetime memoirist James Frey.

Other American authors who participated, such as Steve Erickson, acclaimed author of 10 books, and Richard Lange, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, are both published in France. But as French writer Jean Rolin noted, it’s Frey who has caught the attention of French readers, particularly teenagers. Moderator Olivier Barrot, a well-known French literary critic, introduced Frey’s most recent book, “Bright Shiny Morning,” as being like John Dos Passos’ work in ambition and scope.

This is hardly the reception the novel received in Los Angeles. “‘Bright Shiny Morning’ is an execrable novel,” wrote Times book editor David L. Ulin, “a literary train wreck without even the good grace to be entertaining.”

[ click to continue reading at The Los Angeles Times ]

from Robert Smartwood

And The Winners Are …

By Robert Swartwood

First, I want to thank everyone again for helping spread the word and participating in the contest. We had a great turnout this year, with just over 350 stories submitted, which isn’t too bad considering the contest was open for just two weeks. There were a lot of great entries and it was hard to pick a top 12, but pick I did and then those were sent to James Frey who picked three winners and two honorable mentions.

click to read the winners at RobertSmartwood.com

from Fameology

Despite Little Chance of Commercial Success, Average People Still Want to Write Memoir

With the memoir boom of the 1990s over and the legacy of James Frey still lingering, why are memoir writing classes so popular?

By April Rueb

BookCourt, a charming bookstore in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, is usually a calm oasis for browsing and relaxing. But on this warm Wednesday night in March, about 20 women and five men sit anxiously in folding chairs. Young and old, black and white, college-educated and not, these people are all here for the same reason: to learn how to write a memoir.

This night BookCourt is hosting a free memoir writing workshop with the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Taught by Melissa Febos, 29, a teacher, writer and author of the just-released memoir, “Whip Smart,” the class is meant to be a quick introduction on memoir writing, a little taste of what the Gotham Writers’ Workshop offers for almost $400 in a 10-week program. Febos begins the class with an assignment: write your life story in five sentences, in five minutes.

She calls time and hands shoot up. Febos asks a young woman to share what she wrote. The girl tells the class that she was raised in the Chinatown ghetto of Boston, a bilingual nurse chose her English name and that despite leaving China, her parents return often to visit. Febos gives another assignment: write your life story in five completely different sentences. A young man with a thick New York accent says he was born in the Bronx, raised by an Irish mother and a drunken father. The class quickly turns into a competition, each person trying to outdo the last with his tales of hardship.

[ click to continue reading at Fameology.net ]

from Media Bistro’s eBookNewser

Amazon Launches “Most Highlighted Passages of All Time” List

By Jason Boog on Apr 29, 2010 10:23 AM

Do you want to share your digital book underlines with the world? Amazon is testing a new program that will tabulate and rank underline passages like a scoreboard.

Amazon recently launched a ““Most Highlighted Passages of All Time”” feature that showcases the book passages underlined by Kindle readers–a 21st Century twist on literary quotation. So far, the list has been dominated by bestselling books: The Shack by William P. Young, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, andThe Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

Here’s more about the program: “AmazonKindle also introduces a “Popular Highlights” feature that identifies the passages that are most highlighted by the millions of Kindle customers. We combine the highlights of all Kindle customers and identify the passages with the most highlights.

[ click to continue reading at MediaBistro.com ]

from Tobi Elliot

oooooh, James Frey gets me riled up – which is exactly what he wants!

25apr10

In the time betwixt when I eat my palate-cleansing pre-dinner salad and my platter of mouthwatering lamb and quinoa tonight, I will be mulling three things. First, which questions I’ll ask Ezra Winton (of Cinema Politica fame) tomorrow about the state of Aboriginal filmmaking in Canada, following up on a story I’ve been writing for about a month now (and which I’m shopping around, if anyone is interested.) Secondly, how attractive apparel on a woman – namely 4-inch heels – will draw second and third glances from men in direct proportion to how painful said apparel is. And thirdly, why I cannot abide James Frey and will never read one of his creations, no matter how much we mutually dislike Oprah Winfrey.

(Oh and I will also be thinking about recent conversations with documentary filmmaker Magnus Isacsson, most of which are highly confidential but I’ll tell all here. Kidding! I’ll write what I can. In a bit.)

Meanwhile, to the despicable James Frey…

The Fourth Horseman of the literary world – a term coined by greater minds than mine – is in Montreal hawking his latest novel Bright Shiny Morning. Yes, that man, the Million Little Pieces guy the world couldn’t get enough of after he was outed on national television for having fabricated (or embellished, as he prefers to call it) his first book. That guy, who flouts every convention known to English writing, doesn’t use quotation marks (“ooooohhhhh!” cries the admiring public. “How very brave!”) and thinks he’s more bad-ass than Hustler S. Thompson. Yes, I said Hustler, because they’re both just that: masters of cheap literary tricks and good at playing fast and loose with the world around them.

I attended this talk at the Blue Metropolis, Montreal’s literary-get-your-book-geek-hat-on festival, titled ‘Face to Face with James Frey’. The interview was hosted by a recent professor of mine, Joel Yanofsky, who did an excellent job asking some tough questions while maintaining a civil and friendly discourse. He’s a brilliant interviewer (and I don’t say that just because he gave me an ‘A’ in Magazine writing.) You can listen to the interview on CBC radio, though I’m not sure when. It doesn’t seem to be scheduled for any time in particular on the site. Should be either on the programIdeas or Writers and Company or the Sunday Edition in Montreal.

Anyway, I have a lot to say about Frey. I’ll start with my twitterfeed as the talk unfolded:

• At BlueMetropolis watching interview of #JamesFrey by a former prof of mine #JoelYanofsky
• Opening question: how do you feel about memoirs now? Answer: I feel the term is bullshit.
• “Anyone who reads a memoir and thinks it’s truth is pretty much lying to themselves” #JamesFrey
• “I thot, F–k it,I’m gonna do James” in answer 2 ? whether it was his idea2put his name in book.#JamesFrey
• “Moved 2 LA 2 write books 2 make money.” #JamesFrey
• Million Little Pieces: was ttrying 2find his voice.#JamesFrey “wanted 2be the most controversial writer of my time”
• “I use a huge amount of profanity, I don’t use paragraph indentations, I don’t use quote marks” #JamesFrey
• He certainly does. Every third word is “profane”. #JamesFrey. And doesn’t speak in paragraphs. Seems 2think it’s cool.
• “It was mostly about making this dream come true, which was writing this book. It was supposed2be shocking in how it was written.”#JamesFrey
• “it was published in 25 languages. I got an extra 10 out of Oprah.” #JamesFrey “In a lot of ways it was awesome, it was perfect.” >>> referring to Oprah-outing controversy and how good it was for sales <<<
• Claims to have HAngels bodyguards w/him when he does book tours or interviews in the US. #JamesFrey HA leader claims “you’re like us now.”>>>> that’s Hell’s Angel’s <<<<<
• Good question: “why wasn’t the truth enough? Why wasn’t what happened to you, enough?” #JamesFrey
• “If I can fuck a reader up, make you cry, or not be able to turn the next page, then that’s truth. I’m not interested in facts.” #JamesFrey
• Talking about NormanMailer: “he said, ‘this happens when you write a book important enough to cause this kind of controversy’.” #JamesFrey
• The idea that memoir is not a legitimate form of writing is… Interesting. True that what’s important is truth, not facts. But.. #JamesFrey   >>>>my commentary starting to sneak in <<<<<
• “I’ll be back&I’m coming back with both my middle fingers up&they can all kiss my ass b/c I’m writing a book that’ll b read 50 yrs from now”   >>>>>yes, there was lots of crudeness, he seems to delight in it the way a 12 year old boy would <<<<<<
• Re: latest book ‘bright shiny morning’ about L.A. #JamesFrey. JYanofsky calls it “‘Grapes of Wrath’ with lots more swearing in it.”
• #JamesFrey:”You want me to write books that are either fact or fiction?Well F– you! I’m going to do exactly the same thing I did last time”
• “Only I’m going to do it even more sophisticated this time, so you can’t tell the difference.” about his latest book #JamesFrey
• Look for #JamesFrey’s latest attempt at fact-fiction storytelling: The Third Testament of the Bible. About Jesus in Manhatten.     >>>>>NOT a joke. <<<<<<
• Believes American fundamentalist religion will cause a war that will destroy the world in the next 50 years. #JamesFrey
• “I want to experience everything. As much of the best things and the worst things in life that I can, and everything in b/t.” #JamesFrey   >>>>>>> (Yanofsky asks if he would give his kids this advice, and he replies no, he wouldn’t) <<<<<<<<
• #JamesFrey thinks his book could work or be the biggest disaster ever.”It’s about the most audacious,absurd,ambitious thing ever attempted” >>>>> he DID qualify this by saying, “by a writer” <<<<<<
• Thankfully #JamesFrey turns down comparisons to HSThompson, Truman Capote. Says they turned into caricatures of themselves. Sure u escaped?
• Admits 2writing &commissioning other books &having them written by younger writers. Beware! There are books out there by #JamesFrey,but not!

In conclusion:

• My take on #JamesFrey & his problem with memoir, or any kind of storytelling that purports to be stick to the truth: those who don’t like it….
• … are usually the ones who have an equal and proportional issue with taking responsibility for their words, and actions. #JamesFrey…
• …just wants to write what he wants to write, and let the world be damned. Enjoy the ride while it lasts #JamesFrey. At least ur not alone

Mr. Frey’s arrogance was evident, oh-so-evident throughout the interview. He was gleeful about being labeled “notorious” and a bad boy in the world of highbrow lit. He loves being mentioned in the same breath as Norman Mailer. He’s been determined to do get to this point his whole life.

But that’s not really what bothered me in the end. Even though this whole adventure seemed like one big game to him, all of it: messing up the literary conventions, getting a reputation for being a troublemaker, making piles of money doing it, having to shelter in France because he was so reviled in the States, having Hell’s Angles bodyguards because he’s such a bad-ass, it’s not so bad. There are a lot of rich a—holes with crazy ideas about changing the entire way one field or another is played. I don’t actually quibble with any of the above.

The fact that he’s making tons of money and published in all these countries just means that he has a wider audience for his ego, but I’m sure it was always there. He can be as arrogant as his talent entitles him to, he can make as much money as the buying public will allow him to, and he can flout as many conventions as he wants. That’s his perogative.

However, I don’t buy his dismissal of the entire memoir genre as false. I get that we’re in the post-postmodern age, when everything is relative and nothing is real. Nothing you see is going to be the same as what I see, which is his argument for why the memoir is a false form of journalism. I get that. But that doesn’t mean it’s invalid. It just means you have to be extra-responsible for what you communicate. Extra careful to put things into terms that everyone can identify with, yet which are unique to your perspective and true to the situation.

Frey doesn’t seem to want to indulge in that sort of hard-won, reflective writing. He just wants to write what he wants, and “f–k everyone else.” How many times he said “F–k ‘em” today, I couldn’t count. He’s simply unwilling to take the time to write something with some semblance of truth, so he resorts to his pet creation “storytelling” that he uses to excuse any combination of fancy and fact. And he bears no responsibility for it, because it’s just a story. It doesn’t matter. Fuck em.

Nor do I buy his reasons for mixing fact and fiction so gleefully and calling it “truth”. He claims that what he’s getting at in his stories, which he says are between 75 per cent and 85 per cent factually faithful, is high art and truth. He’s not about the lowly, pedestrian communication of facts, which he seems to consider a little more base than flipping burgers at McDo’s. But as humans we are forced to make decisions every day, to do or not do, and this results in the particular circumstances we find ourselves in. It’s the story of what happened, and why it happened, that’s important, not your damn recreation of it according to how you later decided you want it to have happened.

We all embellish things in the telling. No question. But anyone who so cavalierly dismisses any responsibility to tell things the way they are, not the way they feel they should be, is not writing non-fiction. They should make their money doing something else, or pretending to do something else.

James Frey: Take your illusions elsewhere. I know some think you’re a whiz and buy up your books just because they don’t know what the hell they’re reading, and they don’t care. What’s sad is that it’s precisely those poor suckers that makes Frey laugh up his sleeve the whole time, at the whole establishment, at all of America, because he’s still got everyone playing his little game.

You poor suckers.

[ click to read at tobielliottjourno.wordpress.com ]

from the New York Post

James Frey’s second coming

James Frey is having the last laugh. While Kitty Kelley’s “Oprah: A Biography” reveals the talk queen embellished her childhood and concealed her bisexuality, her nemesis Frey was just credited with one of the “most impressive comebacks of all time.”

Jesus Christ topped the list in the UK’s Independent on Sunday for his resurrection, followed by Muhammad Ali, Winston Churchill and Elvis Presley. After Winfrey attacked Frey for exaggerations in his memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” Frey redeemed himself with “Bright Shiny Morning,” which the Independent called “a triumph of a novel, vividly depicting LA and the American dream.”

Go Buy Some Books @ Skylight

from the NY Daily News

Indie bookstore set to launch literary journal

BY Elizabeth Lazarowitz

Who says print is dead?

Brooklyn’s growing literary landscape will get a new addition in a few weeks when Cobble Hill indie bookstore BookCourt launches its own journal.

“It seemed like a natural step, with all of the great ideas that flow through this establishment,” said Zach Zook, the Court St. store’s general manager and the journal’s executive editor.

The twice-yearly publication, dubbed “Cousin Corrine’s Reminder,” will feature more than 150 pages of fiction and photography from local and international artists and authors, as well as a graphics section curated by Brooklyn comic book author Dean Haspiel.

“You’ll be seeing essays and pictures, and then you’ll come to the literary equivalent of the Sunday comics,” Haspiel said.

The journal is the first publication of Zook’s independent book imprint, Cousin Corrine, named for a relative who bequeathed the seed money for the store to his parents, Mary Gannett and Henry Zook. Zach Zook is also hoping to publish first-run fiction paperbacks, pocket-sized photo books and maybe even a children’s line.

For the first edition, Haspiel teamed with “Motherless Brooklyn” writer Jonathan Lethem on a piece that chronicles Lethem’s daily walk to work along Nevins St.

Controversial author James Frey is contributing what he describes as “this weird little dictionary” of Hollywood jobs, which offers a biting commentary on the entertainment industry.

Frey said he wanted to give back to BookCourt for its support, even after the 2006 controversy over the truth of bits of his best-selling memoir “A Million Little Pieces” and his resulting feud with Oprah Winfrey. Plus, he said, he’s a fan of independent bookstores.

“They’re an important part of literary culture,” Frey said. “It’s the same reason I don’t want all the diners in New York to go away and be replaced by McDonald’s.”

[ click to continue reading at NYDailNews.com ]

from The Sag Harbor Express

BookHampton Closes Amagansett Store

After two years of business in Amagansett Square, BookHampton may have closed its Amagansett location, but its Sag Harbor store, pictured here with manager Sarah Doherty and Barry Lisee, is still going strong. Hampton owner Charline Spektor this week announced the independent bookstore would close the location, citing economics and “the surprising lack of foot-traffic in Amagansett.”

“East Hampton is a thriving store and they were too close together,” Spektor said on Tuesday. She added in addition to the East Hampton branch of BookHampton, both the Sag Harbor and Southampton locations continue to operate successfully.

BookHampton at Amagansett Square was originally conceived as a store to focus on children, keeping in character with Amagansett’s family-centric community, although the location maintained a collection of other genres of literature as well as DVDs, merchandise and CDs. Spektor said on Tuesday all three remaining BookHampton locations, in particular Sag Harbor, continue to operate with full children’s sections.

[ click to continue reading at SagHarborOnline.com ]

from Salon.com

RIP: The novel

A book that defends plagiarism, champions faked memoirs and declares fiction dead has the literary world up in arms

By Laura Miller

iStockphoto/Allkindza

David Shields’ new book, “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” is, depending upon whom you ask, a condemnation of the novel, a celebration of the sort of remixing and collage writing that often gets slammed as plagiarism, an indictment of plot, or a defense of memoirists who fabricate. Given his infatuation with playful writing (although a playfulness so earnestly willed seems an oxymoron), Shields shouldn’t be dismayed to learn that tracking responses to “Reality Hunger” across the Web is significantly more stimulating than the book itself. When you throw that many bombs, you can expect to choke on the smoke.

[ click to continue reading at Salon ]

from The New York Times

Former Book Designer Says Good Riddance to Print

craigmod.com

Craig Mod discusses a series of book “interfaces” that could make the transition from print to digital.

A recent blog post by Craig Mod, a self-titled computer programmer, book designer and book publisher, offers a thoughtful and distinctive perspective on the move of books from paper to interactive devices like Apple’s iPad.

Mr. Mod summarizes his argument in the subtitle of his post: “Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused. Good riddance.”

Mr. Mod divides content broadly into two categories: content where the form is important, such as poetry or text with graphics, and content where form is divorced from layout, which he says applies to most novels and non-fiction.

This kind of thinking makes a key point: instead of arguing about pixels versus paper, as many book lovers tend to do, it is more useful to focus on whether the technology is a good match for the content.

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

from The LA Times

Book tour? More like a safari

With publisher publicity departments backing away from traditional author tours, writers are left to their own devices (and strangers’ couches).

By Carolyn Kellogg, March 7, 2010

A cat peeing in an author’s bag? A writer waking up to discover that a complete stranger has left him four jars of delicious homemade preserves? Such things are not traditionally part of book promotion. But they happened to Bill Cotter and Annie La Ganga, an Austin, Texas-based couple who celebrated the simultaneous release of their debut books this fall by jumping in their car for an 8,500-mile, 27-day, do-it-yourself tour.

They didn’t have much choice. As the business of publishing changes, book tours increasingly look like bad risks. “In 99.9% of cases,” says Peter Miller, director of publicity at Bloomsbury USA, “you can’t justify the costs through regular book sales.”

Which is why when McSweeney’s published Cotter’s first novel, “Fever Chart,” and La Ganga’s prose poetry memoir, “Stoners and Self-Appointed Saints,” came out with Red Hen Press, neither publisher was able to provide more than moral support.

La Ganga, 41, a cake decorator, and Cotter, 45, a rare book dealer, relied on many kindnesses: Relatives bought them new tires, and friends gave them Starbucks and McDonald’s gift cards. They spent only one night in a motel, staying instead with family and friends and in the crash pads they found on couchsurfing.com. The benefits: shared meals, new connections and (mostly) friendly pets.

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

from The New York Post

Frey’s names a guessing game

James Frey — the controversial author of “A Million Little Pieces” and “Bright Shiny Morning” — is using so many pseudonyms lately that any nom de plume is suspected to be his.

Frey is working on no fewer than nine projects where he came up with the idea and hired a collaborator to write it. All nine books will be published under pen names, sources told Page Six.

The literary world is now buzzing that Frey is “John Twelve Hawks,” the fake name of the author of the best-selling sci-fi series known as the Fourth Realm Trilogy. Fox just optioned the rights and commissioned a script for “The Traveler” from fantasy specialist Alex Tse, whose credits include “The Watchmen,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.

AP

The reclusive ways of Hawks, whoever he is, has helped hype the Random House line. He’s said to live “off the grid” and has never met his editor or agent.

Imitating some of his characters who battle against totalitarian surveillance, Hawks supposedly communicates with an untraceable satellite phone using a voice scrambler. He’s used stand-ins during book tours.

But James Patterson, Stephen King and even highbrow Michael Chabon have also been speculated to be Hawks. And some say Frey is an unlikely candidate because he is already “Pittacus Lore,” the pseudonymous author of “I Am Number Four,” the story of nine alien teenagers on planet Lorien, which is attacked by hostiles from another world.

Frey told Page Six, “I will neither confirm nor deny that I am John Twelve Hawks, Pittacus Lore, or anyone else . . . I will say that I have done, and I am continuing to do, projects that will come out anonymously or with invented names on them.”

“I Am Number Four,” which is due in August from HarperCollins, has been optioned by Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay.

[ click to read at the NY Post ]

from The Guardian UK

Thousands of authors opt out of Google book settlement

Some 6,500 writers, from Thomas Pynchon to Jeffrey Archer, have opted out of Google’s controversial plan to digitise millions of books

by Alison Flood

Books at the University of Michigan Library which have been scanned on behalf of Google. Photograph: Mandi Wright/AP

Former children’s laureates Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Jacqueline Wilson, bestselling authors Jeffrey Archer and Louis de Bernières and critical favourites Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith and Jeanette Winterson have all opted out of the controversial Google book settlement, court documents have revealed.

Authors who did not wish their books to be part of Google’s revised settlement needed to opt out before 28 January, in advance of last week’s ruling from Judge Denny Chin over whether to allow Google to go ahead with its divisive plans to digitise millions of books. The judge ended up delaying his ruling, after receiving more than 500 written submissions, but court documents related to the case show that more than 6,500 authors, publishers and literary agents have opted out of the settlement.

As well as the authors named above, these include the estates of Rudyard Kipling, TH White, James Herriot, Nevil Shute and Roald Dahl, Man Booker prizewinners Graham Swift and Keri Hulme, poets Pam Ayres, Christopher Middleton, Gillian Spraggs and Nick Laird, novelists Bret Easton Ellis, James Frey, Monica Ali, Michael Chabon, Philip Hensher and Patrick Gale, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, biographer Victoria Glendinning and bestselling author of the Northern Lights trilogy Philip Pullman.

Ursula K Le Guin, who gained significant author support for her petition calling for “the principle of copyright, which is directly threatened by the settlement, [to] be honoured and upheld in the United States”, also opted out.

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

from The Huffington Post

Is This The Most Exciting Time Ever For Book Lovers?

by Jason Pinter, Bestselling Thriller Writer

Amidst all the doom and gloom (Books are dying! Print is dead! The Kindle will destroy us all! Big Publishers want to kill your pets! ARMAGEDDON IS NIGH!!!), I just want to take a moment to proclaim that this is quite possibly the most exciting period to be a reader in my lifetime. Think about it: when was the last time books and publishing were as much a part of the daily conversation as they are now? So enough with the catastrophic headlines. They might draw traffic and get people riled up, but they’re empty bloviations. The bottom line is that, in my opinion, the written word is healthier than ever. The health of the book industry is never about the success of one book–it’s a rising tide that lifts all ships. And the tide of buzz about books and publishing is perhaps higher than ever.

Sure individual books and authors have garnered their share of headlines–J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, Alice Sebold, Stephenie Meyer, etc…–but in my thirty years on this planet, I cannot remember a time when so many people were discussing books themselves, the future of books, and what it all means for everyone involved.

[ click to continue reading at The Huffington Post ]

from PopMatters

The Catcher in the Rye: The Greatest Book of Its Time

The late J. D. Salinger’s masterpiece has long been the spark of debate, but in the high school classroom it still might be the best book of its kind.

On 27 January 2010 J. D. Salinger died at the age of 91 and the world promptly began mourning him. Several eulogies were written, printed and posted in various media sources [including a eulogy of Salinger’s Seymour Glass written for PopMatters by Chadwick Jenkins (5 February 2010)]. Once again, as happens every five years or so, it became popular to wax poetic about the literary achievement that was a nice little book called The Catcher in the Rye. Accordingly, as happens every five years or so, it also became popular to talk about how overrated The Catcher in the Rye is (see Aaron Sager’s “Why I Dislike ‘Rye’: Not be-Holden to Salinger’s ‘Catcher’”, for example, PopMatters 11 February 2010)

The Catcher in the Rye holds a very singular place in the world of literature. It’s a classic to be sure, but it’s often thought of as the classic—more than a coming of age novel; more than a great coming of age novel. The Catcher in the Rye is the Citizen Kane of coming of age novels, which means it pulls off a much more difficult trick than actually being the best coming of age novel ever written; it’s widely accepted as the greatest coming of age novel ever written.

Much like Citizen Kane it is more than a work of art. The Catcher in the Rye is the answer to a poll question. “What is the greatest coming of age tale ever written?” for example, or “What is the best young adult novel ever penned?” and of course the inevitable backlash of “What is the most overrated American literary classic in history?” 

[ click to continue reading at PopMatters.com ]