The Guardian posts a list of hidden gems from the last year. Glad to see lit god Aharon Appelfeld in there.

After Gordimer expresses frustration with her biographer, American and British publishers pull the plug. Is this right?

How this author-biographer relationship ran aground is a drama as rich as any to come out of post-apartheid South Africa. Yet Gordimer’s admirers abroad have had little chance to read Roberts’s unvarnished, at times hostile portrait. Although the biography was originally under contract to Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the United States and Bloomsbury in Britain , both houses — which also publish Gordimer — declined to publish it after Gordimer expressed objections to the manuscript and accused Roberts of breach of trust. “We weren’t satisfied with some aspects of the book,” said Jonathan Galassi, the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus, who acquired the book in 1998. “We asked for revisions and we haven’t heard from him.” Instead, Roberts published the book last fall in South Africa with STE, a self-described black empowerment publishing house.

Canuck and Bookninja fav Andrew Pyper gets a day in the sun in the NYT for The Wildfire Season – but what’s with the floating, cropped Pyper-head that looks like a design element from a 1965 book cover? He’s head and shoulders above everyone else in the thriller biz. Well, in this case, mostly head. (The guy could give George Clooney a run for his money in the looks department. Why the bad crop job?)

It seems the key to self publishing is to make your work about The Beatles.

They range from meticulous descriptions of the Beatles’ recording process to multi-volume examinations of the group’s American releases, to evaluations of unreleased studio and concert recordings now on the bootleg market.

Like indie rock bands rebuffed by major record labels, some of the self-published authors tried getting publishing deals before deciding to go it alone. But a growing number are saying: Why bother? Self-publishing, on top of giving the authors all the profits, gives them editorial and design control too, which they feel outweighs the drawback of having to research on their own dime rather than on a publisher’s advance.

Boy Ninja (almost four), asked for, and got, Rubber Soul for Giftmas. But if I find any evidence of reefer in his room, he’s getting a hair cut and headed for military school!!

Novels outlining the cutthroat worlds of publishing.

Ginsberg’s recently published “Blind Submission” and Clark’s “Because She Can,” which will come out in February, are set in the ferocious literary jungle. They lampoon two larger-than-life characters in the book business for whom the authors have previously worked: Ginsberg with Sandra Dijkstra, a prominent literary agent based in Southern California who has nurtured many bestselling authors, and Clark with Judith Regan, the publisher who was recently fired by HarperCollins for allegedly making anti-Semitic remarks after cooking up the aborted literary and television package on O.J. Simpson.

“I think everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of the boss from hell, the over-the-top person who can ruin your professional and personal life,” said Clark, 29, who worked with Regan in New York for almost a year. “I’m sure this happens in many jobs, but you do hear a lot of stories about it occurring in the world of publishing.”

The difference between these people and me is that they’re smart enough to stick around and get material when they come up against a semi-psychotic boss.

Please, shoot me now… Oh, wait, that’s what they WANT to do… The NRA has funded a Jehova’s Witness-esque comic book about the menacing liberals who threaten the American way of life… and taking of said lives. Please tell me that this if fake. Or, if not, please tell me that this wil be the straw that breaks a whole fucking bunch of camel backs.

WTF? I know it’s been a half-decade since I submitted unsolicited work to lit journals, but this makes me feel like Buck Rogers waking up in the 25thC — lamentably without the cool leather jacket and midget speech-challenged robot to greet me. (Diggadiggadigga, Hey Buck! God, could I use a midget robot butler.)

Proponents of online submissions say the process saves money on postage and paper and cuts down on response times, since it curtails much of the administrative work involved in logging, assigning, and distributing manuscripts once they are received by a magazine. It also reduces the chances of submissions being lost. Online submission systems usually notify writers once their work is received. After setting up accounts, writers can also log on to the journal’s Web site, determine whether their work is still under consideration, or review what they have previously submitted.

Last August, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) unveiled Submission Manager, an online software system that makes submitting manuscripts a cheaper, less protracted process for writers, while offering greater efficiency to literary journal staffs. Designed by One Story webmaster Devin Emke, the software allows writers to submit electronic manuscripts and enter their own contact information directly into a journal’s database—in effect, logging their own submissions. A number of magazines, such as A Public Space, Fence, jubilat, and Ploughshares, are using the software. Others, like Glimmer Train Stories, use customized online systems.

Ow. My Time Travel bone hurts. Is Atwood behind this? (Is it just me or does anyone else out there suspect that those of us who make it to 2075 are going to find a 25-year-old Margaret Atwood there, stepping out of her time machine and laughing at us geezers.)

Well. It’s almost over. Boy Ninja has been Tinker-Toyed and craft-supplied, Lady Ninja has been Ani-DiFrancoed and fudged. I myself have been Indian-Cookbooked (biryani, my house, January — be there!) and am now the proud filler of a black shirt with a small grey dot over the caption “goodbye pluto”. Cryptic crosswords have been lined up and knocked down, as have cases of a local dark beer aptly named after a motor oil. Naps have been taken, showers eschewed, sleeping stomachs lept upon by nigh four-year-old feet.

I’ll prepost a few things tonight to appear tomorrow morning. But real communication will resume in earnest next week. I have tonight and tomorrow left in dial-up purgatory, and then, I think, when I shack up with my novelist buddy and his family for the new year, I may actually get some proper baudage (2400 baud!?! It’s like LIGHTNING! Wait ’til I tell the guys on the BBS) under me. I assume so. Those novelists are all filthy rich and well-connected, right?

Maud examines the recent trend of some big time authors to go with smaller presses.

Increasingly, even established writers like Kurt Vonnegut are looking beyond big-name publishers. They’re signing small press deals that guarantee heightened publicity and higher royalties; in return the authors accept drastically reduced advances.

I just switched from a fairly big name press to a small one for my next book. It’s a different story for us poets, but it comes down to the economics of the whole thing. The decision was partly political, partly practical. If you’re treated like afterthought dirt at even the largest press, you’re still just afterthought dirt. Besides the increased production values and care given by smaller presses, you also get more personal attention from the people trying to sell books. They really care about what they’re publishing and do nothing out of habit. This is the advantage of living so close to the edge. It keeps the senses sharp. At my former press, poetry is really just a charity program that’s now done out of habit. They do believe in it, in principle, but have no resources or time to devote to it when there are lucrative fiction and nonfiction titles to promote. So four books a year get published and left to stand on their authors’ reputations. However, if you’re still developing that reputation….. So, what’s the point of having all that name-brand muscle behind you if no one lifts a finger to help? And regardless of where we poets go, we all have drastically reduced advances.

Bring a book you love or hate and let the sparks fly. Sigh. My knees quiver with longing. Longing for a day when people didn’t need others to manufacture an environment in which the discussion of books was cause for falling in love.

Harry Potter VII has been named. My skin positively tingles with apathy.

…always an anti-Semite? Apparently, Dirty Judy had a history of questionable relations with Jewish co-workers. Hear that, Bert?

According to the executives and another person involved in the incident, Ms. Regan was investigated in the spring of 2003 after an editor complained that she had boasted of removing the scrolls from her neighbors’ mezuzas and replacing them with torn pieces from dollar bills.

She may have been fired under the cover of anti-Semitism, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t an anti-Semite.

This time for the proceeds from the book that was recently pulped. That money is so already gone, you can bet.

Why is Martin Amis so angry? (My guess is: the reviews of Yellow Dog…) (From Maud)

Regan and Rupert, Queen and King of the Ugly Bug Ball, have drawn weapons and are counting off paces. The only good thing about this is that in the end at least one of them will be ruined. Guess which one. Guess.

That feeds you or strangles you? British kidlit author George Walker has demanded Amazon quit selling his book so people must buy it at independent bookstores.

A children’s author has drawn attention to the plight of independent bookshops by demanding that his book be removed from sale on Amazon’s UK website.

George Walker, author of Tales from an Airfield, was horrified to find that his new title was featured on the site without his permission, following good sales in bookshops. “What they are actually doing is getting the independents to do their market research,” said Mr Walker, a passionate advocate of independents. “When a book gets a certain amount of attention, they will attempt to stock it and cut the independents out. Not with my book!”A children’s author has drawn attention to the plight of independent bookshops by demanding that his book be removed from sale on Amazon’s UK website.

George Walker, author of Tales from an Airfield, was horrified to find that his new title was featured on the site without his permission, following good sales in bookshops. “What they are actually doing is getting the independents to do their market research,” said Mr Walker, a passionate advocate of independents. “When a book gets a certain amount of attention, they will attempt to stock it and cut the independents out. Not with my book!”

Given that we mainly link to Amazon, I didn’t think linking to his book would be the good kind of irony, so I haven’t. Go order it from your local.

At. Relatives’. Can’t. Blog. At. Normal. Speed. So. Slow. Must. Decrease. Blogging. Load. Or. Commit. Suicide.

Choice. Is. Clear. (They. Don’t. Have. Rope. And. Rafters. Here. Either.)

• Nathan points to Regan Books funnies
• Hey, Moe! Bookstore moidid!
• Top arts news makers
• Torstar cutting jobs – Merry Xmas!
• Steffler sticks up for the little guys… us.Steffler had initially planned to continue the tradition of posting a poem of the week, written by a Canadian poet, to the position’s official website – a practice begun by Bowering and continued by Pauline Michel – but he has put that idea on hold. “When I first realized I was going to take up this job, I was going around saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll maintain the poem of the week,’ but I’ve discovered that there’s no money for it – that is to say, no money to pay the contributors – and I’m not really pleased with that.” (Thanks, JD)

Your rep as a pseudo intellectual and caring person is on the line. Be careful!

Atwood Live! Penelopiad gets a dual performance schedule, in Canada and the UK.

An early Ondaatje title, some argue the definitive Ondaatje, to get big screen treatment.

The copyright expired world of kids books is where the NYRB gets to play. Frank lived a couple doors down from me in New York and we had dinner a couple times. I’m not just name dropping. I’m saying this because he’s genuinely one of the most dedicated, selfless book people I’ve ever met. A fantastic guy who just lives to keep good books in print.

Science Fiction books are getting in on politics. Wait a minute… this is news?

Two years from now, terrorists under the banner of the “Progressive Restoration” will take over Manhattan in a larger attempt to overthrow the government. Thirteen years later, President Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Michael Moore will haul out the good White House china for Osama bin Laden’s state visit. By fiddling with your radio, you may be able to catch an underground broadcast by Sean Hannity. If you own a radio, that is; folks living in states that are under Sharia law won’t even be that lucky.
These aren’t my fantasies or nightmares. All of these vignettes are ripped from science fiction thrillers that have hit shelves in just the last 18 months.

The NYT and LAT are both reporting (but LAT has the details) about Regan’s bigotted tirade, which Rupert has used as an excuse to completely cut the wires tying Newscorp to OJ. Now, this was a firing offense, no doubt, but it’s a suspiciously convenient time. One wonders how many such tirades went before, ignored because this foul hag was bringing in money.

In its account of the conversation between Regan and HarperCollins attorney Mark Jackson, News Corp. said Regan had declared that Friedman and Executive Editor David Hirshey, along with literary agent Esther Newberg, “constitute a Jewish cabal against her.”

Regan also complained, according to the account, that Friedman had not given her enough support during the recent controversy over the aborted O.J. Simpson book and TV deal she had promoted, saying: “Of all people, the Jews should know about ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie.”

Sven Birkerts on reviewing.

It was time. I had weighed Western civilization in the balance and found it wanting. Now I lay down on the couch, set a pillow on my stomach — the novel really is that big — and actually opened the cover. I read the first sentence: “A white Pomeranian named Fluffy flew out of a fifth-floor window in Panna, which was a brand-new building with the painter’s scaffolding still around it.” And I thought, “This is not ‘Stately, plump Buck Mulligan,’ nor is it ‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad.’” But I also thought “This has a certain appeal,” so I read on. This is what we do.

In one slim volume. How Language Works.

Using Dickins to diagnose.

No, not a new novel by Dan Brown, but a collection of documents at McMaster University. I think the Nancy Drew ones went to Vassar.

Apparently the reason for firing her was an ant-semitic remark. Hm. You let it get all the way to that?

• NYT
• NY SUN
• Gawker
• E&P
• ECanada

Okay, I DO feel sorry for you schmucks who are still trapped at work six days before Giftmas, but I’m on vacay and have some last minute shopping to do. Would you deny my child his rightful capitalism-mandated booty from the fat saviour? I will post something later in the day today, with a roundup of the latest book action. Check back after lunch, maybe around 2pm. In the meantime, I encourage you to bring the system down from the inside by reducing your productivity, shirking responsibilities and engaging in pre-Giftmas shenanigans and pranks on colleagues with better work ethics. But no sex in the handicap washroom with co-workers. You’ll regret that. Seriously.

Judith Regan: fired. You know it’s bad when Rupert thinks you’re too scuzzy to keep around.

Hey everybody in NFLD (this means you, Russell): I’m in Toronto, living out of a suitcase at Ninja K’s, so push all expected posting times ahead an hour and a half. Sorry no posts today. Business as normal on Monday, ok? Here are a few things to tide the end of your work week over.

• Australia’s vanishing book culture
• William Blake-a-thon! As exciting as oatmeal! (Well, you didn’t eat Ninja K’s oatmeal this morning, so don’t judge.)
• More power to Powers
• Walker talks
• Limits on celebrities!? God is truly dead!
• Oprah to get the Kitty Kelley makeover. I don’t dig anything that puts “Oprah” and “revealing” in the same sentence, but this could be real fun.

More on Homer’s possible Homerella status.

The book’s most headline-grabbing claim is about authorship. Dalby argues that the composer of The Iliad and The Odyssey was a woman. Initially, this idea seems pretty silly, and not even original. Samuel Butler (author of Erewhon) argued in the 19^th century that The Odyssey is by a woman, on the grounds that the poem is set in a nonmilitary world, and shows deep sympathy with female characters. The argument is a weak one: The whole point of imaginative literature, some would say, is that it allows poets, writers, and audience to participate in alien forms of experience.

But Dalby deploys a much stronger set of arguments for female authorship, based on comparative anthropological analysis of how women preserve songs, stories, and folk tales.

For being a bookstore.

I have a great live recording of an Oasis number where at the end, the two main coke-heads get into a tiff on stage about the drummer and keyboardist doing a bit of jazz improv. The text goes something like this, Noel: “Oi, oi, oi. Cut that fooking jazz nonsense out…. Seriously, I hate that fooking shit.” Then Liam chimes in with a fed-up “Awright, this will be our last song. We’d play more, but it’s been a bit of a topsy fooking year.” There’s a pause before Noel says matter-of-factly, “Same as the last one.”

That’s how I see this kind of article.

A fantastic resource is wasting away! Save it! Somebody save it!

Working entirely on her own, spending her librarian’s salary and later her Social Security checks, Mayme Clayton amassed one of the finest collections of African American history in the world — and stored it in her garage.

“I got to warn you, it’s scary in here.” This is Mayme’s son, Avery Clayton, talking. He’s jiggling his keys and opening the door. He reaches, finds the light switch, clicks. Inside? It is amazing .

“Originally,” Avery apologizes, “there were tables and chairs, like a library, and you could sit down. But as you can see — ”

The roof sags, it may leak. There are books, floor to ceiling on shelves, but the passages between the stacks are blocked, with storage cabinets and film cases and cardboard boxes overflowing with photographs, journals, cartoons, correspondence, playbills, magazines, all dusted with a soft fungal dander. Mold.

Some riffing on the importance of Tintin.

Tintin, the journalist who somehow never managed to file a word of copy, is, in some respects, an odd hero: almost characterless in his rectitude, he nevertheless inspires devotion across the world, even among people who are not exactly boy scouts themselves. Hergé was inspired by the boy-scout code of honour and resourcefulness, but, in a flash of genius, gave Tintin the alcoholic, pipe-smoking, imprecation-roaring Captain Haddock as a sidekick.

Why is it whenever I see Andy Worhol’s face I kind of want to hit him? It’s odd, because I quite admire some of what he did, but I still want to slap him for some reason. Hm. Better look into that.

Revenge is a dish best served to a functionally-illiterate fan base. Michael Crichton, for whom we should develop a new category of scuzwad, perhaps “ecopalypse-denier” or something, has taken a shot at one of his critics by casting him as a villainous minor character in his new book “Next”. Great title. Brings to mind images of him pulling the last page out of his three-month-long ream of paper and yelling “NEXT!” before inserting another. They’re all pretty much the same, aren’t they? Danger! Pseudo-scientific technobabble approaching to digest us all gruesomely!

“Next,” Michael Crichton’s new novel about the perils of biotechnology, has not proved as polarizing as his previous thriller, “State of Fear,” which dismisses global warming. But one of the new book’s minor characters — Mick Crowley, a Washington political columnist who rapes a baby — may be a literary dagger aimed at Michael Crowley, a Washington political reporter who wrote an unflattering article about Mr. Crichton this year.

Certainly Mr. Crowley thinks so.

In a “Washington Diarist” feature that was to be posted last night on The New Republic’s Web site, tnr.com, and published in the magazine’s Dec. 25 issue, Mr. Crowley says he is the victim of “a literary hit-and-run” because of a 3,700-word article in The New Republic in March.

In that article he accused Mr. Crichton of being “a menacing figure” because he uses his “potboiler prose” to advance causes now dear to Republicans. Mr. Crowley is a senior editor at The New Republic and writes primarily about politics.

“In lieu of a letter to the editor, Crichton had fictionalized me as a child rapist,” Mr. Crowley writes.

This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife! How did I get here? The question we all surely ask ourselves at one time or another. But imagine if you found yourself gracing the cover of a schlock romance novel, Fabio-style. But really, what I want to know is, where does that highway go?

Profiled in the NYT as he climbs out of the pit of politics and back into the pit of literature.

These days Mr. Havel is leading the plummy life of a retired statesman working on reviving his artistic side. On Oct. 5 the Untitled Theater Company No. 61, in Manhattan, gave Mr. Havel a 70th birthday party that kicked off a two-month “Havel Festival” with productions of 16 of his plays, including one world premiere and five English-language premieres.

In May, Alfred A. Knopf will publish his memoir, “The Castle: Reflections on My Strange Life as a Fairy-Tale Hero,” most of which he wrote during a residency last fall at the Library of Congress in Washington. Mr. Havel said the book combined interviews, diary entries and memos from his presidential days.

If Mr. Havel is enjoying his time away from politics and closer to culture, it is long overdue. The years he spent as president of the Czech Republic, which was formed in 1993, left him with a permanent gap in his pop cultural knowledge, he said. “Unfortunately I have to acknowledge that there’s a big sort of delay, a big retardation in my development in recent years and one which I will never be able to catch up with because of those 13 years as president,” Mr. Havel said.

It’s so funny you should say those particular words in America, Mr. Havel…

Obviously Christopher Hitchens doesn’t know any of the women I know. And good thing too, cause they’d probably hand him his tiny, limp hors d’oeuvre of a package on a Vinta cracker and force him to eat it while they all laughed and laughed.

Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: “He’s really quite cute, and he’s kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he’s so funny … ” (If you yourself are a guy, and you know the man in question, you will often have said to yourself, “Funny? He wouldn’t know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce béarnaise.“) However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: “She’s a real honey, has a life of her own … [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] … and, man, does she ever make ‘em laugh.”

Now, why is this? Why is it the case?, I mean. Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.

Nathan riffs on how ludicrous this is at his blog, making a very important point about that opening paragraph:

Zing! Snap! Seriously, if you’re trying to prove that men are funnier than women, you really ought to lead with a joke that’s actually, you know, funny.

Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons author Charles Frazier can now heat the entire damn range all winter if he likes, with chump change from his $8M advance for his second book.

The publishers at Vintage, a Random House imprint, had no better inkling of what lay in store. Before publication, Frazier asked an executive how many it was likely to sell. A typical first novel might sell 8,000 to 10,000 copies. “If it sold 20,000,” the executive said, “I’d be ecstatic.”

The novel that finally emerged, of course — Cold Mountain, an Odysseus-like epic about a wounded Confederate soldier walking home through the Civil War and modelled on Frazier’s own great-great-uncle, W.P. Inman — became a literary phenomenon. Four million copies sold in the United States alone, a National Book Award (beating Don DeLillo’s Underworld), plus an Oscar-winning film directed by Anthony Minghella.

Not surprisingly, the bidding for Frazier’s second book, Thirteen Moons, was frenzied. He received an advance of more than $8-million (U.S.), an unprecedented wager by Random House. The film rights are said to have been sold to producer Scott Rudin for another $3-million.

Frazier says he’s a still upset that details of his financial life were leaked to the press and turned up on CNN’s news crawl. “I’d still like to know who went around spouting that.”

Dude, if I made $11M on a book, my last post here would read, “Na-na, nani-boo-boo. Party at my house (the new one), by invite only” and would be followed by a detailed listing of debts paid and high-end electronics bought.

Michael Chabon defends the ack page.

Here’s a crazy reason your article did not mention for including an acknowledgment at the end of your novel: to acknowledge. If there is some kind of old-fashioned virtue in concealing one’s debt to and gratitude for the hard work of others, it’s difficult for me to see where it lies.

Gets funnier, if a little mean. I suppose some will have more invested in this than others — and I bet you can draw a direct relation between their latest book’s post-primary text word count and their side on the issue.

I can’t speak for the fiction world, but in the poetry world acknowledgments are relatively important. They’re like monetary credit. What with the journals that deigned to publish you; the friends that read your work and pretended to get/like it; the mentors you best fawn over if you hope to meet them on an awards platform one day; the publisher who decided making money was no consideration — you bloody well better have some thank yous in there.

I’m joking, but only by half. I do think notes and acknowledgments can get comically out of hand. Esp when some people think of them as money or gifts to be given and/or received. It’s classy to thank a few people who really helped along the way, but grauche (my term for both crude AND disgusting) to create a quasi-poetic who’s who for the back of your book.

That headline pretty much wraps up all my commentary on this.

A slow mental deterioration over the course of some years, delusions of grandeur, perhaps a disorganized knee joint, pain of a degree sufficient to require treatment with an opiate, and at the end, back pain followed by sudden death: there has to be a strong suspicion that Emma had been suffering for years from neurosyphilis, may well have had incipient General Paralysis of the Insane and the lightning pains of Tabes Dorsalis, possibly Charcot’s Joint. Other pathologies could of course be invoked to explain one or other of her symptoms and illnesses over her latter years, but only quaternary syphilis would accommodate all of them under a single diagnostic umbrella. The cause of death was surely not gallstones, impacted or otherwise – it was much more likely to have been a ruptured aortic aneurysm, which in 1912 was again more likely than not to have been syphilitic in its aetiology.

Poor Emma. (From Maud)

The CBC’s Andre Mayer runs down the year in books. Did all that happen this past year? Aren’t we forgetting a certain someone? Mr. Michael Look-my-eyes-are-spinning-madly Baigent? Was it not his year for embarrassing failures too? Tsk, tsk.

Bloomsbury better start thinking of what they’re going to do to fill the post-Potter gap in their gravy train. Without a title this year, their profits have plummeted.

Well, it’s more of a gentle sauté. Some readers toss him some softball lobs and he smashes them back in a pre-Giftmas love in. Kudos to the guy from Ontario who gets closest to saying, “Hey, where’s the beef?”

A rare books dealer who went to Germany with two very rare and valuable Borges short story manuscripts misplaced them on his return trip and thought they might have been stolen by international literary thieves.

As reports of the missing manuscripts played on the radio, Wronoski sorted through his store, half delirious from a lack of sleep. He grabbed a Robert Mapplethorpe photo he had also taken to Germany and noticed a bulge behind the photo in the protective plastic sleeve.

Wronoski reached in and pulled out the two Borges manuscripts. They had been misplaced in the packing in Hamburg.

“Good,” Wronoski recalled saying. “Now I don’t have to kill myself.”

Turns out they were essentially in his pocket. I sympathize. This is so me. I spend 10 minutes each day searching for glasses that are on my head. Once I lost money I remembered taking out of the bank. I panicked, but eventually found it IN MY WALLET. And just forget about finding the car in the mall parking lot. One day I’ll just have to wait until the damn thing closes and then look. I’m sure Lady Ninja could chime in with more, but I’ve filed a court document restricting her from revealing gratuitous incidents of mental ineptitude.

Various “people” who nicked copies of OJ’s book before it could be destroyed are trying to sell them online. Retailers are nobly removing the listings, but it’s only a matter of time before seller and buyer scuzwads manage to hook up and supply each other with their vices — money and prurient salacious gore gossip.

Two major online marketplaces for new and used books, Alibris.com and Biblio.com, removed listings for the book Friday after it was offered at prices up to $5,499. And eBay, the online auction site, has removed at least eight listings, the latest Tuesday. At least one early eBay listing went undetected, and the book sold for $50.
…

He says he “privately” sold three at prices ranging from $2,500 to $5,000, but he hasn’t read the book.

The seller says he believes in free speech, opposes the destruction of books and doesn’t want to be identified for fear his desire to make money reselling the book will be interpreted as “evil.”

Wow, evil and prescient. Now that’s supervillatastic. And you’re full of shit, you greedy bastard. Don’t hide behind free speech and love of books. You’re hoping to make some money and that’s it. Scuz. Wad.

One man’s story of writing a play about Charlie.

The fact is, I have difficulty in thinking of myself as a playwright. On those official forms where you have to put down your occupation, I clung to “lecturer” for years after I’d retired. Now I write “writer” in a loose sort of way, with a little gap between the i and the t, connected by a squiggle. Wri~ter.

I can’t write when I’m afraid to write. When I force myself I become self-conscious, which is worse than not writing, as it makes me feel ashamed, and bogus. On the other hand, not writing makes me feel stolen from – but by whom or what? Time, perhaps. I decided to give up on the play for a while, get stuck into something else.

Stuck into what? My sense of failure with Dickens lapped into whatever I was writing, as if I were doomed to keep on repeating the experience, though in increasingly minor keys as my projects became increasingly less ambitious: attempts to convert my old stage plays into television films, for instance. Or my old television films into stage plays.

Ian Jack, we hardly knew ye.

Jack will leave in June, after an issue listing the best of young American writers. So far, there is no indication who might replace him. Rausing, with her PhD in Estonian anthropology and her interest in environmental causes and “activist non-fiction”, is advertising for someone “innovative, with a passion for world literature”. Judging by Rausing’s appraisal of Bill Buford as “shockingly masculine”, the smart money may be on someone young and female.

Wait a minute, we knew plenty. And it was pretty interesting, so far as I know.

Adapting Somerset for the screen.

IF there were a prize for authors who have had the most movies made from their work, W. Somerset Maugham would be at or near the top of the list. Jeffrey Meyers, Maugham’s latest biographer, counts 48 Maugham-based movies, and that’s not including made-for-TV movies or foreign films, in which case the total runs into the hundreds. Maugham himself felt, grudgingly, that he was better known for the film adaptations of his books than for the books themselves.

Do you know how much I don’t care about this? To quote my boy, I stretch my arms as far apart as I can and say: “THIS MUCH!”