.
| Hearsay: |
It turns out Professor Dawkins and I disagree on more than genetic determinism. The prominent scientist has plans to write a book about “anti-scientific” fairytales.
“The book I write next year will be a children’s book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking.
“I haven’t read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children’s author that one might mention and I love his books. I don’t know what to think about magic and fairy tales.”
Prof Dawkins said he wanted to look at the effects of “bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards”.
“I think it is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don’t know,” he told More4 News.
“I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s something for research.”
My son loves it when we pretend my hand is a frog. He has no trouble understanding that my hand is two things at once: a talking frog and his mother’s hand. In fact, the dual identity makes the interaction more fun. Why can’t we give kids more credit? Their innate understanding of the imagination and the role it plays in fiction is a perfectly rational state of mind.
It was announced yesterday that James Moore will be the new Heritage Minister. With scant evidence of interest in the arts, it’s hard to predict how the MP for Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam will handle his new portfolio.
But, perhaps we can predict the future by looking at the past? To assist you in doing so, I’ve collected some facts:
Known lacrosse fanatic, 32 years old (Globe & Mail)
Launched a talk-show on 550 CKPG in Prince George called ‘Behind the Headlines’ with James Moore (Moore’s bio)
Owns a Bernese Mountain Dog, or borrowed one for a photo (Moore’s website)
Cares about fighting crime (parliamentary video clip)
Appears to be quite tall (here and here, looming over Don Cherry)
Does not feature in the official Conservative party wallpaper for your computer desktop (unless that’s half his face on the right, but I don’t think so)
Lowered taxes and invested in the armed forces (Moore’s website)
You read up on the facts and decide what’s in store for the future of the arts in Canada. Meanwhile, I’ll scour the internet for a recording of Moore’s radio show. I’m dying to hear it.
In case you didn’t see it, the Torontoist has a story on the covers competition.
Despite my elaborate attempts to trap George in 1985, I see he has managed to log on (post below) and reveal my evil plot. Okay, okay, I confess. I bribed George’s mother-in-law to stop her upgrading to broadband, the grainy footage was the really a beast more elusive, the note was actually an invitation to the Little Lebowski urban achievers club and no one sneezed on my copy of The Road. It was all an elaborate ruse I cooked up in a bid to become top Ninja of the Internet.
George wants to settle the matter for once and for all. He has challenged me to a duel in a dark alley in Chinatown just before dawn. May the victor live to control his or her log in for eternity.
Yes, my “vacation” is going well. Yes, dial-up was a painful return to the 1200 baud days of 1985. Yes, I am bursting with news and smarmy remarks. But most of that has to do with having recently been in the company of family… How about the sheer awesomeness of guest blogger Claire Cameron?
Despite her numerous attempts to have me bumped off, I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon and may even have some Friday linkage for you. I’ll also have a sheet of tips for Claire on how to hire assassins that don’t use rubber chickens and spinning bowties as their primary weapons.
End Communication.
Addendum: The first person who says Cameron’s a better blogger than me will be made into a messy, painful example.
Speaking of Jackson Pollock, the CBC reports that a Pollock, bought for $5 in a thrift store, is on sale in Toronto for $50 million US.
Highlights:
After the painting was dismissed by major auction houses, [Teri] Horton turned to Paul Biro, a Montreal forensic expert, to authenticate it. Biro found a fingerprint matching one on an already-authenticated painting and matching paint in Pollock’s studio in New York.
The Toronto gallery’s acceptance of the authentication was the main reason Horton said she wanted the painting sold in Canada, but also so she could stay in the background.
“It’s become an albatross around my neck,” said Horton. “If I were younger I’d say I’d keep my fight up with it but time’s creeping up on me and I’ve got to take some of these principles and stick it and do what’s right for my family and the people I want to help.”
Horton: “Do I personally think it’s worth [$50 million]? Hell no. It’s worth the $5 I gave for it. It’s ugly.”
The real story here is that Teri Horton is a 76-year-old female, retired truck driver. Speaking as someone who has been to quite a few truck stops in my time, this is truly rare. I did meet a few husband and wife teams and a younger woman, but Teri Horton, I believe, was before her time.
The good people at Pinnacle Sports (registration required) have opened a book on the Giller Prize. As of today, the odds are as follows:
4 Rawl Hage (Cockroach) +100
5 Joseph Boyden (Through Black Spruce) +562
6 Anthony De Sa (Barnacle Love) +581
8 Marina Endicott (Good to a Fault) +562
15 Mary Swan (The Boys in the Trees) +537
I’m not a gambling man, so consulted my good friend Hayden Kelley, who is a master in the dark arts of Niagara. He offered the following pithy little explanation:
+200 means that if you bet $100, your total win would be $300 (equivalent to 2/1 or 3.00)
-200 means that you have to bet $200 to win $100 (equivalent to 1/2 or 1.50)If you put a $100 dollar wager on Cockroach you’d win $200 (your $100 wager + $100). If you put a $50 wager on Barnacle Love (which is +581) you’d get back $340.50 (581 x .5 = $290.50 + initial wager of $50). Based on the odds it would appear that Cockroach has it in the bag.
Just in case you think this a chance to finally make money in publishing: Pinnacle Sports is based in the Netherlands, but you are tied to the laws of your land. I believe online gambling is illegal in Canada and the U.S., even though most people don’t think so.
Anyhoo, do you agree with the bookies?
A place where Dull Men, and the people who love them, can share thoughts and experiences, free from pressures to be in and trendy, free instead to enjoy the simple, ordinary things of everyday life.
Hints: The Dull Men are tabulating the direction of luggage carousels around the world. So far — 376 airports have been reported in. 44.8% are counterclockwise, 29% clockwise, 7.5% go both ways, 3.2% other, 15.5% have no carousels. While you are wasting time, make yourself useful and check to see if your local airport has been reported.
Also worthy of your wasted time, dull collections, recipes and safe excitement.
Doubleday in the US has laid off 10% of employees. This amounts to 16 people from its editorial, publicity, advertising, marketing and administrative staffs. There is much speculation that Dan Brown’s undelivered manuscript is the reason, but the company denies this:
“It’s not a great year,” said David Drake, a Doubleday spokesman. “We’ve had a lot of best sellers, but does that translate into the numbers that we need and that everyone is looking for? Obviously not.”
The Buttonwood column in The Economist this week offers what probably amounts to background for the layoffs that are happening at many companies:
Profits tend to fall very rapidly in recessions. This is because of the “operational gearing” of businesses. Most companies have high fixed costs; once those costs are covered, profits can surge. When economies contract, revenues fall and firms are usually slow to cut their fixed costs (by closing factories or laying off workers) so the effect on profits is savage.
Remember The Corporation, a film that was out a few years ago? It made the point that corporations are legally bound to put the financial interest of their owners, or shareholders, above other competing interests. I wonder how much profit is preserved from a lay off of 16 people? I don’t know the math, but it can’t be more than a few pennies for each share holder.
Call me Sarkozy, but I question these priorities. The people who were let go at Doubleday were probably higher-rate tax payers, some with families and many with mortgages and weekly grocery bills in the triple digits. In other words, the people who fuel the economic engine of the U.S. economy. I am not picking on Doubleday, rather questioning how we all work. Wouldn’t the economy as a whole be much better served by keeping these people employed?
I also wonder if it’s in the best interests of literature to hold publishing companies to this model. In a business where supply is shaky at best (a writer–ahem–spends countless hours blogging, rather than writing her next book) and demand is unpredictable, it is extremely difficult to increase profits reliably each year.
I’m reminded of an article that appeared in New York Magazine last month. It is specifically about Jane Friedman, the ex-CEO of HarperCollins, but more generally about the state of publishing. This quote, which appears on page 3, has stuck in my mind:
Morgan Entrekin [publisher of Grove/Atlantic] remembers meeting Larry Kirshbaum, then-CEO of Time Warner Books, right after two of Kirshbaum’s books had been anointed by Oprah in 1999. “It’s like winning the lottery twice,” says Entrekin, “but Larry didn’t seem that happy. He said, ‘Now my bosses are going to expect me to do better next year.’’’ Kirshbaum eventually left to become an agent.
I’m too upset to talk about George this morning. Again, someone slid something under my door at dawn. But, it wasn’t George’s toe as I thought it might be. This time it was a book. The pages were dog-eared, the cover was torn and I’m sure someone had sneezed right in the middle. All an obvious threat to a book-lover like me. Title? The Road — the winner of our covers contest. Coincidence? I think not.
One woman’s crisis is another woman’s publishing opportunity — Time Magazine predicts the next wave of finance books is about to come in.
If you are choosing from those already published:
Hints: The red, round letters cue the music. D is my favourite, but F is Footloose. You can use the keyboard, or hover with your mouse, to pull the moves.
Scientific American, in Jacking into the Brain*, waxes nostalgic for cyberpunk sci fi and imagines the fantasy of inputting a calculus text—or even plugging in Traveler’s French before going on vacation—into your brain.
If a man with electrodes implanted in his brain can use neural signals to control a prosthetic arm, is it also possible to send messages the other way?
Primitive means of jacking in already reside inside the skulls of thousands of people. Deaf or profoundly hearing-impaired individuals carry cochlear implants that stimulate the auditory nerve with sounds picked up by a microphone—a device that neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has characterized as the first successful neuroprosthesis in humans. Arrays of electrodes that serve as artificial retinas are in the laboratory. If they work, they might be tweaked to give humans night vision.
The more ambitious goal of linking Amazon.com directly to the hippocampus, a neural structure involved with forming memories, requires technology that has yet to be invented. The bill of particulars would include ways of establishing reliable connections between neurons and the extracranial world—and a means to translate a digital version of War and Peace into the language that neurons use to communicate with one another.
* Sean Dixon sent a request that I jigger the links so they open in a new window. Better, yes?
All this and I am still left to wonder where in the world George Murray is this week.
A curious thing happened yesterday. Someone slid a piece of paper under my door just before dawn. The words in the note were made from letters cut out from newspaper headlines. It said this: “You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o’clock this afternoon…with nail polish.”
At first, I didn’t know what to think. Does George even wear nail polish? But, with much diligence, I think I’m starting to unravel the code behind the message. Remember back in August, when the Globe & Mail books section went on hiatus? We all worried, with good reason, that it might be a sign of things to come? George isn’t next on the book coverage chopping block, is he? Is George on the run?
Judge a book by its cover is a nifty little game by a chap named Jack. It pits your judgment against Amazon ratings (via Condalmo).
Jack doesn’t say if he was inspired by the rebranding contest or not, but it does make you think about ratings. For writers who are tormented by those little stars, take heart! Apparently, one star is actually good.
The Guardian has taken inspiration however. The British newspaper is running their own version of the rebranding contest. Their website includes a gallery of the Bookninja covers. How many of your fifteen minutes does this take up?
In 1978, Stephen King wrote a novel called The Stand. Salon.com has an interesting article about the book:
…it’s “The Stand” that strikes me as the cornerstone of his legacy, an oft-criticized epic of a uniquely American apocalypse, a quasi-religious vision that has cast its shadow over everything from Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” to the “Left Behind” series of the Rev. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Its traces can be felt in the Hellmouth horrors of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and has been cited by the creators of the ABC series “Lost” as a model for their dystopian island fantasy. The late David Foster Wallace cited the novel as one of his favorites.
Mr. King, in the interview portion, takes the time to tell us how it’s all going to end:
Nuclear weapons. No doubt about it. There are days when I get up and say, I cannot believe, I cannot fucking believe that it’s been more than 50 years since one of those things got popped on an actual population. There are too many out there. One will get away, or someone will make one from spare parts and put it in a knapsack or blow it in Bombay or New York or San Francisco.
The Book Examiner makes suggestions for pairing books with wine, beer and cocktails, coming up with recommendations for drinking Pinot Grigio with Emma, Guinness with Ulysses or The Great Gatsby with Gin.
Their rationale:
Classics, high-brow travel writing, brainy literary-type tomes, history, historical novels, food writing, and anything with a reference to Provence in the title are perfect with your red wine of choice; however, to be totally authentic, it’s best to try to drink the wine the characters are enjoying.
I like the idea, but disagree. It’s a much better idea to drink the tipple that the writer, rather than the character, is enjoying. A few suggestions:
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood = Laphroaig whisky
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje = Château Pétrus ($1,500 a bottle)
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson = Sex on the Beach (recipe)
The Rush to Here by George Murray = Blue Star beer
On the countdown to the Gillers, Steven W. Beattie (review editor of the Quill & Quire by day) has started his yearly coverage of the short list on his personal blog, That Shakespeherian Rag. For each title, Beattie gives a snap shot of reviews, a sample passage and his own assessment of the work.
First on the block, The Boys in the Trees, by Mary Swan:
Swan’s novel contains a pleasingly circular structure — it opens with William Heath climbing up a tree to escape a beating from his father, and closes with Eaton, William’s son, climbing another tree for another, archly ironic reason. But the subtlety of the book’s structure is undercut by a narrative that is relentlessly bleak and cold, and that gives off the peculiar mustiness of historicity that is the hallmark of so much lauded CanLit.
If you haven’t had time to read all the books, or feel like taking him to task, follow along as Beattie works his way through the shortlist.
Also:
Congratulations to Ingrid Paulson, our winner of the covers contest, for her inspired rebranding of The Road. She made most of the rest of us look like amateurs. Oh wait, we are!
As you read in George’s post yesterday, my co-blogger Andrew Pyper never did make it out of hair and make up. He won’t be able to join us this week, which is a shame as I was looking forward to teasing him mercilessly. And his reasons have nothing to do with the pimple. He will be thought of and missed.
Speaking of Mr. Murray, thank you to all who sent in reports of George sightings ‘in Ontario‘ yesterday. While I appreciate the diligence, none of the sightings quite rang true. I can’t think why George would be in a pink unitard in Wawa, or how he would have lugged a tuba all the way to Kenora. Only one tipster was able to offer hard evidence, but I’m having trouble making a positive I.D. George, is that you?
Hi guys, some good news and bad news. The bad news first. Andrew’s had some personal issues come up and can’t blog this week, so you’re in the hands of Claire Cameron alone. I’m sure she’ll take good care of you. The good news: here are your winners. As I mentioned earlier the spread between number one and two was very slim, but the masses have spoken. What surprised me most was that every single title got at least several votes. So you all did quite well. Winners after the jump. First, second and third place will each get a Bookninja shirt and coffee mug. Everyone else just gets bragging rights.
All these links make me miss the great George Murray. Where is he this week?
George told me, you see, that he can’t post because he is ‘visiting in-laws in Ontario.’ Apparently they only have a dial-up connection ‘in Ontario’.
As a long time reader of Bookninja, I can only remember a day or two when George didn’t post. Once on a hot sunny day in August (there was only one of those in St. John’s) and once when he was felled by a minor variant of the H5N1 virus. So, it’s all very uncharacteristic. Suspicious even? What do you think George is really up to this week?
Speaking of George, he will stop by soon to announce the winner of the Literary Novel Rebranding Contest. Apparently, the Internet connection ‘in Ontario’ is sufficient for this purpose. Hmm…
Each Friday, George posts links to YouTube in an effort to waste your time. I think this is selling you short. In a bid to improve the service, I am going to introduce a daily time waster. First up:
The website looks like a fake Windows desktop. Short stories, poetry and novels are rendered in Power Point presentations, so you can click and read the works of Tolstoy, Twain or Orwell, all while looking like you are working up the third quarter numbers. Hint: Hit ESC to exit.
An aside: I just saw Andrew Pyper, my co-blogger for the week, is in hair and make up, so he should make an appearance shortly. His foundation was looking a bit orange for my taste, but I understand his point that appearing on a computer screen can flatten the features. Watch this space.
The Guardian runs a regular feature called Writers’ rooms, which has a photo and a few words from the writer about his or her work space. Al Alvarez, whom I admire for his poetry, but more for his climbing exploits and online poker habit, is the most recent subject. I only wish they had solicited the cleaning lady’s thoughts on Alvarez’s original organization:
Some years ago, a very enthusiastic cleaning lady took all my books out to dust them while we were away and put them back in such a strange order I’ve never been able to find anything since. But the shelves make a very good place to display pictures.
If you haven’t seen it, Evie Christie’s Desk Space blog shows the working conditions of many Canadian writers. You can peep in on the wall art of Tony Burgess, see the lofty heights of Zach Well’s piles of books and admire the simple elegance of Stephen Henighan’s shutters.
Julia Cheiffetz, at HarperStudio, weighs in on an old hot button topic here at Bookninja.
An article in O Magazine points out that Malcolm ‘The Tipping Point‘ Gladwell’s new book Outliers, about extraordinary achievers, does not include a single woman. Cheiffetz speculates why, wondering if the omission of women in Outliers says more about the nature of “big think” books than it does about Mr.Gladwell:
It is hard to know whether women are better at telling stories than propagating ideas (I’m thinking of Susan Orlean, Mary Roach, Karen Abbott), or whether the intellectual audacity required to sell our hypotheses about the world simply isn’t in our genetic makeup. But until we get in the ring and start claiming our own big ideas in book form, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised if current discourse leaves us on the sidelines. Still, Malcolm Gladwell is one of the most influential public intellectuals of our time and it’s a shame he didn’t use his platform to celebrate a few women outliers.
Considering Cheiffetz’s thesis about “big think” books, Galley Cat chimes in:
We’re not entirely convinced—right off the top of our head, we thought of Susan Faludi and Naomi Klein in the “explain-it-all” category—but we did find Cheiffetz’s distinction between “storytellers” and “big thinkers,” and the suggestion that these two types of writing might play out along gender lines at least as far as what sells, intriguing.
Here at Bookninja, I have developed an alternative theory about how we roll in Canada. Developing this theory involved taking my own bias in hand, crafting a thesis to suit and proving it by plucking a few favourite examples, all while ignoring any evidence that doesn’t fit.
This is it: Canadian “big think” books are written by women – Noami Klein, Jane Jacobs, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Visser…
Hey all, I’m away this week as you know, but posts should still be coming. We have two guest bloggers this week: novelists Claire Cameron and Andrew Pyper will be around bringing you their own brand of Insane Ninjocity.
As for the Cover Rebranding Contest (that was featured in the Toronto Star this weekend), we have a weiner. I’ll announce later on Monday. But I can tell you, despite many many votes, it the spread between number one and number two was three votes. A little lesson for you Americans, one way or t’other. Three votes. I’ll let in on who designed what, who the winners are and who the runners up are. Stay tuned.
[BUMPED AGAIN]
[There'll be an article in tomorrow's Toronto Star Ideas section that highlights the contest and includes some of the covers you sent in! Check it out, and remember to vote if you haven't already, by SENDING AN EMAIL at the link below! Clear favourites are starting to emerge.]
I bumped this up to remind you to , and to send you to this link where someone has done something similar, except exactly opposite: taking existing romance covers and providing them with new titles. Funny as HELL!
Well, you guys rock. Thanks for sending in. I can’t obviously choose all of the entries, and there were many many more, but I tried to pull out a representative sample and include some new ones you haven’t seen yet as well as those already posted. Here’s how it will go: by Friday you should send me your top three picks from this list, in order of preference, to . I’m headed to Ontario for a family visit as of Saturday morning, but I’ll tally over the weekend while I’m away and try to post something for Monday of next.
The entries you haven’t seen are at the top and all the others are thrown in below. I’ll release the names of the designers after the contest is over. If you don’t want your name attached to your entry, . Choose wisely!
[All the entries are after the jump at the "more" link below]
A few funny videos for your Friday procrastination pleasure.
- Roy didn’t vote…
- Obama and McCain settle it old skool – dance fight! (you know, this is so well done it’s scary)
- Literary football
- Poetry, by Rik Mayall (I’ve been to readings like this, but they were serious)
With the financial crisis looming large and the cost of travel ever increasing, will publishers have to tone back how they tour their authors and their advances, or just find other ways of promoting and paying? Is the blockbuster mentality on its way out? David Ulin investigates at the LAT.
“A frost is coming to publishing,” wrote the paper’s publishing correspondent Leon Neyfakh. “And while the much ballyhooed death of the industry this is not, the ecosystem to which our book makers are accustomed is about to be unmistakably disrupted. At hand is the twilight of an era most did not expect to miss, but will.”
Neyfakh’s piece went on to suggest that, with money getting tight, publishers might start to consider only books or writers they see as sure things, and that for lesser-known talent — the so-called mid-list authors — “the advances are going to be lower and it will be that much harder to sell them.”
Maybe so, although this is hardly a new argument; I’ve been listening to it for 20 years.
What’s more likely, I think, is that publishers will scale back some of their higher-end advances, especially in regard to certain risky properties: books blown out of magazine stories, over-hyped first novels, multi-platform “synergies.” At least, I hope that’s what happens, because one of the worst trends in publishing — in culture in general — over the last decade or so has been its air of desperate frenzy, which far more than falling numbers tells you that an industry is in decline.
What happens when you’re moving to a smaller flat and you have to halve your book collection to fit. How do you choose what comes and what goes into storage? Will your bets pay off?
When I moved to London, my new flat had space for half my bookshelves. They were already double-packed, so that meant leaving behind half my books. So I resolved to ignore the flimsier justifications for a personal library - as a satisfyingly thick form of wallpaper, or as an intellectual display that you hope will cause visitors to confuse your to-do list with your CV – and be strictly practical.
But I was pretty awful at predicting what, in this sense, would be practical. I have yet to need the biographies of Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Beaverbrook, or the multi-text scholarly edition of Pope’s Dunciad, all of which came with me. But, for reasons that I hope to make clear later, it turns out that I did need The Bedside Guardian 16, which stayed at my parents’ house.
Atwood was quite visible during this last election, and her work with PEN and other causes keeps her at the forefront of social justice issues. That said, her first duty is to her art—-but part of what makes art interesting is how it deals with societal ills.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood said Wednesday that while it was not her “mission” to highlight social problems, a fairy-tale world would be tedious for readers.
“There are aspects of my books that are there because they are present in real life. It’s not my mission to carry out this task or else I wouldn’t be a writer, I would be a leader of some movement or a propagandist,” she told a news conference in the northern Spanish town of Oviedo.
“It would bore us all to read something where everything is wonderful, where everything goes well, without any problems,” she added.
Which character has the worst name in fiction? (Didn’t Orson Scott Card have an alien villain named Swishy McLiberalstein?)
Before David Baddiel turned literary critic, he suggested that the problem with Dickens was that all his characters were called “Mr Nasty Bastard” or some other wholly descriptive moniker. He had a point. The 19th century is chock full of characters with unlikely, highly imaginative names – most of which came from Dickens’s pen. But his facility with names makes his stories fizz, which is necessary when you want to keep people reading over the course of 20 instalments. Who wants to meet the Black family or the Smiths of Camden, when you can hang out with Micawber, Pecksniff, Chuzzlewit or Toots?
I’m headed to Ontario next week to visit family and show off the new Ninja baby, and I’m running like mad today to get things done. Next week we’ll have novelist Claire Cameron (The Line Painter) guest blogging in my absence, though I may pop in here and there to add things, and announce the contest winners, as I get the chance.
- Daniel MacIvor profile at CBC
- Alan Bennett admonishes Oxford for charging more tuition and accepting money from Rupert Murdoch
- On Yaddo
- Kundera is gearing up to sue paper for informer allegations
- Librarian fined for promoting his daughter’s book
- Asian Booker race
- Urban fiction makes its way from the streets to libraries
Will giving it away get them reading? The great experiment continues.
Publisher Tor has made another book available for free download: it’s Brian Francis Slattery’s “Spaceman Blues,” described as “a literary retro-pulp science-fiction-mystery-superhero novel.” The book was originally fished out of a pile of unsolicited manuscripts, and it caught the eye of Liz Gorinsky:
When I think back to why I first picked up this book and started reading it, I can’t help recalling a line Brian wrote on his cover letter when he first submitted the book to us a bit over five years ago: “This book is painted in browns and grays, sparked by sudden fires. I suspect it is not for everyone, though I hope it is for you.”
Looks like the Booker committee is kissing and telling sooner and sooner every year. Was Sebastian Barry the runner up for the prize? Often juries complain that jockeying and politics leads to everyone’s second or even third favourite book becoming the winner.
Blogging on the prize’s website, Portillo has revealed that although the judges made it through the process without “blood on the floor”, they were far from unanimous. Sebastian Barry “is entitled to be disappointed”, he says, calling The Secret Scripture “the most beautiful book” on the shortlist, “a glorious piece of writing with not a word misplaced”.
The Nobel committee apparently uses code names to refer to candidates in advance of the announcement. I guess they aren’t great, because as we learned earlier, there was probably some sort of leak that lead to a run of bets on Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, whose code name was “Chateaubriand”. I’m guessing they think he’s a hunk. I wonder what some of the other contender’s names would have been. Like Roth, Atwood, etc. Any guesses?
This year’s winner of the literature prize, French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, was praised for his “new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization”. But his codename was Chateaubriand – a gourmet dish of fillet steak cut from the tenderloin. Last year’s winner Doris Lessing was the oldest person to win the literature prize at 87, but that did stop her being code-named after the young and angelic character in Dickens’ novel.
- Yeats’ Easter poem sells for whopping sum
- Three history profs, $75,000, one exciting race to the finiszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
- Moby Dick to become Massachusetts’ state book (I always have to copy and paste “Massachusetts” to be sure I spell it right because as a kid a bunch of us had a joke that ended in the punchline “Mass-of-two-shits”… to this day I have to pause before I say the word, just in case. Especially when I’m in Boston. Hey, we were 11.)
- British Library releasing CD of great writers speaking and reading
- Gay author banned from addressing students at NB schools addresses same community outside school—-at A CHURCH! Must be United. Go United! (Newsflash to principal: this isn’t a “moral” issue. It’s a basic respect and human rights issue. Calling it a moral issue in order to duck it is a cop out. Shame.)
- Baiku: biker poetry (It’s been a good long while since we’ve had a cowboy poet article around here, which in the early days fo Bookninja seemed to be a staple. Where have all the cowboys gone, long time passing?)
- Time waster: the iPhone killer (takes a while to load, but things move slowly in Nova Scotia)
What role should arts and culture funding play in the US election?
New York public radio host Brian Lehrer is in the midst of an experiment. He’s invited listeners to help shape his talk show on WNYC by posting to a public wiki for upcoming programs.
This Friday, the show will look at arts and culture funding in light of the coming presidential election. Listeners — local and Internetty — are invited to collaborate by suggesting guests, examining the positions of Obama and McCain, contributing ideas on how to frame the issue and even writing an introduction for Lehrer to read at the beginning of the show.
“Surprise” Giller nominee Endicott profiled at the CBC.
A latecomer to novel writing, Endicott got her start in the theatre. Raised in Vancouver, Nova Scotia and Toronto, the daughter of an Anglican priest, Endicott initially embarked on an acting career, then switched to playwriting and directing. After a period in London, England, she came to Saskatoon in the 1980s, where she served as dramaturge for the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre. That experience is evident in Good to a Fault’s page-turning narrative, which builds dramatic tension out of Clary’s emotional tug-of-war over the children of the cancer-stricken Lorraine Gage. “It’s not a plot-heavy book,” Endicott says, “but the life-and-death stakes in these minor domestic situations are as important to these people as murders and car chases and wars.”
Setting up MySpace accounts and web pages for your books’ characters in an effort to direct traffic to your pages? Too far, says this blogger.
It’s disconcerting. The web 2.0 phenomenon is weaving a fictional web that can carry on where a book finishes – how can you tell who’s real and who’s made-up?
I’m not convinced readers are bound to fall for it, or even have a passing interest. It’s baffling to contemplate why we would sign up for updates from someone who isn’t real anyway, and whose book we may not even have heard of.
While it’s now accepted that media-savvy publishers and authors are harnessing the power of online marketing, when it comes to fictional characters, surely that’s going a little far.
A review of the molotov-cocktail-magnetic Jewel of Medina wonders what all the fuss is about.
Its cancellation by Random House came after a scholar of Aisha, Denise Spellberg, denounced the novel as a “very ugly, stupid piece of work,” and expressed concern it would trigger violence.
That reaction now looks overwrought and tone-deaf. The Jewel of Medina, granted, isn’t Proust. No sooner do we encounter, on page 3, “Pain wrung my stomach like strong hands squeezing water from laundry, only I was already dry,” than we understand Jones is not Aristotle’s sought-after “master of metaphor.” When Muhammad replies to his cousin Ali, “Divorce my Aisha? I would rather cut out my own heart,” we miss the poetry of the sutras.
But neither is The Jewel of Medina tripe. Jones claims she read scores of books on Islam and Aisha. It shows. Jewel faithfully tracks the known story, dramatizing celebrated moments.
Its departures from solid historical facts – one of Spellberg’s chief complaints – lie within the normal ambit of historical fiction. Its sympathies tilt completely toward Muhammad and Aisha. Controversial aspects – Aisha’s possible flirtatiousness and fibbing, her jealousy, her sharp tongue (she once implied that Muhammad made up a Quranic sura only to justify marrying Zaynab) – all stem from Islamic history itself.
]Only a Muslim who rejected Muhammad’s lifelong insistence that he was a man like other men could find The Jewel of Medina objectionable or anti-Islam. They, and perhaps a scholar like Spellberg, author of Politics, Gender and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of Aisha bint Abi Bakr (Columbia, 1994), who didn’t like a mere journalist muscling in on her territory.
What’s precious about The Jewel of Medina is its unapologetic reimagining of a marriage that may outrage some, but inspire millions more. The Wall Street Journal article that stoked the brouhaha over The Jewel of Medina screamed, “You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad.”
I already thought Shane Rhodes was one of the nice guys of Canadian poetry. But after winning an Ottawa book award sponsored by ARC magazine and named for a 19th-C civil servant who advocated sending aboriginal kids to residential schools, Rhodes decided to donate half the money to Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health in Ottawa. The value of these awards is hardly ever in the money, and while he’s halved his cash, he’s doubled his cachet. A round of applause for a good poet and a truly nice guy.
“Taking that money wouldn’t have been right, with what I’m writing about,” said Shane Rhodes on Monday after winning this year’s Lampman-Scott Award, given annually by Arc Poetry Magazine to recognize an outstanding book of poetry by a resident of the National Capital Region.
It’s been an insane day here. Here’s a bunch of links I’d have hastily invented witty captions to accompany had I had the time. Well, except the Kavanagh bit.
- Jordan arrests poet for insulting Islam
- RIP: Pat Kavanagh, literary agent (and in the Times)
- Thing or magazine? (it’s funny how often I ask this question…)
- Aussie-Asia lit award long list
- Annie Proulx profile about changing gears
- Dragons in kid lit
- How to survive the financial crisis? Read Dickens
- Paul Quarrington, the filmmaker
- Finalists for Governor General’s Awards announced earlier today (three heavy-weights in the fiction category and Al Moritz in the poetry)
AN Wilson on writing about oneself.
Last week I gave a young friend Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys. She returned from an Italian holiday completely entranced by the book, and now I glow with some of that inner warmth that must possess an evangelical Christian who has brought a soul to the Lord. Why do so few people know about this great, great writer? I wonder, for example, why his Autobiography is so little known.
Autobiography is a strange art. We can all be self-obsessed. Only a very few egomaniacs have also possessed the knack of describing what has been going on inside their craniums since childhood. Many such egotists, such as St Augustine, who invented the genre, or Cardinal Newman, have been religious or – same thing – anti-religious, like Rousseau.
John Freeman, former NBCC president, defends American literature from the slings and arrows of Nobel secretary Engdahl by holding up the shielf of the National Book Award nominees, which he says represent a range of books looking out, not in.
All of the finalists are in dialogue with world literature. Salvatore Scibona, who built a sad, beautiful story around one day in Ohio in 1953, is influenced by Halldor Laxness. Marilynne Robinson, who continues the story of Gilead in Home, has written extensively about the influence of John Calvin on her thinking and work. Hemon has said he works in dialogue with Bruno Schulz, Danilo Kis, Isaac Babel and William Shakespeare, among others.
This expansiveness is not a new trend for the writers cited by this award. Previous winners have included Polish émigré Jerzy Kosinski, the great Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Canadian-born Saul Bellow and Ha Jin, who like Hemon taught himself to write fiction in English after coming to this country.
A day in the life of the Nobel Laureate at 89.
It’s lovely to have money to give away — that’s the bonus of winning the Nobel. I support Oxfam, Shelter and Centrepoint. I’ve also got a fondness for a local cat-and-dog home and an organisation to help writers. I was much too proud to write begging letters when I was broke. Miraculously, two people I’d never met said they’d heard I was hard up and enclosed some money. They were communists and told me that when I had enough I should pass on the money to somebody else who needed it. I’ve been doing it ever since.
There’s nothing I want. We all have too much stuff. Luxury has never interested me, but I enjoyed staying at good hotels when I travelled. In Vienna, at the Hotel Sacher, I was in my room, marvelling at the rugs, eating sachertorte, thinking, “This is perfection,” when a piece of chandelier fell on the floor. I laughed — perfection is not so easily achieved.
We’re told so often that great literature helps us sort and manage our lives by providing a sort of (cathartic) experience it would often be unwise to acquire in real life. But what really happens if you try to live by the advice offered by the greats? To quote Boober Fraggle: death and pestilence.
Kenneth Burke considered great imaginative writing “equipment for living,” and for Saul Bellow poetic and philosophical words were a “poor boy’s arsenal.” Kafka declared that literature “breaks up the frozen sea inside us.” (What a mess that would make.) We now know, thanks to Allan Bloom, that reading the “classics” is the only defense against the closing of the American mind and that — courtesy of Alain de Botton — Proust can save your life. A modest question arises, however: If great literature is so great, why is it that if you act on anything great literature tells you about life, you’re in big trouble? I mean, big trouble.
…
Harold Bloom once wrote that literature’s most precious gift is to teach us to be alone with ourselves. Easy to say when you’re surrounded by adoring graduate students. I began to carry around my solitude like a trophy, cultivating anomie the way some of my friends lavished care on their pet gerbils. It was an unhealthy situation.This wasn’t just baffled adolescent desire rushing with relief into morbid tales of anger and renunciation. Uplifting writing derailed me, too. When, in 10th grade, Antonia Perella (let’s call her) — the love of my hormone-addled life! — finally chose me as her partner at a square dance, I was so afraid of not rising to the occasion that I refused, ennobling my cold feet by summoning to my mind Plato’s vision of love (see “Phaedrus”) as moist wings sprouting from the lover’s body. I just didn’t feel the wings business, I told myself. Recently, I learned from Classmates.com that Antonia had married a professional wrestler. Can you blame her?
- Author of mafia expose leaving Italy
- Medieval lit goes online
- Poetry collection wins Toronto Book Award
- Something about JK launching a beetle at a tea party?
- Wheelin’ and dealin’ at Frankfurt
- Coetzee and others up for Oz’s richest book prize
- Is translation too foreign for US publishers?
- I hear MobyLives might be coming back online…. Please?
- Happy birthday, Les Murray, at 70
Okay a few extras today since it’s Friday. I’ll pick a shortlist of about 10 to vote from as of next Monday. It’s not too late to submit until Sunday evening, so get going. You know your idea rocks. Let’s see it. For examples, see previous entries here, here, here, here, here, and here, and . Once that post is up, you send in your votes for first, second and third place.
My only caveat for today is that a few of these are by the professional designers, so don’t feel daunted. In fact, what has surprised me most during this contest is how little the untrained eye can tell between the pros and the dabblers. I think you’ve all done a fabulous job. Inundate me with your creative efforts over the weekend so we have some awesome new ones to post for Monday.
Poor Margaret really gets it today. But her titles do lend themselves rather well to this exercise.
I like how this one alludes to the one above. A series!
Of course, this is from her other series, currently in it’s four millionth printing.
A little something for the kids.
Ah, remember when I said to take it to the edge? Herewith: The Edge.
I really truly didn’t see this one coming. It was like a punch in the gut. Which is how you know it’s good satire. The endorsement blurb is especially telling.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, may actually be my favourite so far. I love it on so many levels it almost makes me weep with gratitude that it was sent in. Cormac’s The Road as parenting book. I’m just so happy.
Kureishi profiled at the LAT around his lastest Something to Tell You.
Along with London, the love of pop culture has been one of the constants of Kureishi’s work. He admits to me that now his connection with contemporary culture is mainly through his sons. “They listen to the rock ‘n’ roll music I listened to — Hendrix and Zeppelin. And they listen to the Strokes and Snoop Dogg and Lil Jon. They listen to everything. So if I want to know anything about youth culture, or what the kids are listening to, I go into their room and they’re, ‘Hey, Dad, listen to this. It’s fabulous.’ ” The boys are also Kureishi’s companions on his excursions to rock shows. Among their recent take-ins: Stephen Malkmus, Nick Cave, Franz Ferdinand, and the Malinese duo Amadou and Miriam.
Kureishi satirized Muslim fundamentalists in “The Black Album,” in his screenplay for “My Son the Fanatic” and in his collection of essays “The Word and the Bomb” (which has not been published here). In the last, he writes that the children living in the West attracted to Islamic radicalism “deserve better than an education which comes from liberal guilt.”
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