Political journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann have signed with Penguin Press to publish a book about the 2012 election, with the working title Double Down: Game Change 2012. (This is not to be confused with their earlier book, Game Change). The book will come out next fall, and has already been optioned for an HBO series. In case they’re in need of an early blurb, here’s one from Bookforum editor Chris Lehmann: “An important addition to the growing list of reasons to pray for the Mayan apocalypse.”
At eighty, V.S. Naipaul is as irascible as ever. The now-retired writer sits down for an interview with The New Republic.
A bill that’s making it’s way through Britain’s House of Commons could make it illegal for employers to advertise for unpaid internships. Moreover, if it passes, the bill could give the government the power to prosecute companies that do so. “This idea, particularly at a time of high unemployment, that you are exploiting and taking advantage of young people is just not acceptable,” remarked Hazel Blears, the representative backing the bill. For more on the subject, read Roger Hodge’s review of Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation, from our Summer 2011 issue.
New Yorkers: If you're free on Wednesday, stop by the ISA in Williamsburg for "Bookshopped," a talk with four independent booksellers about "the inner workings and psychologies behind these establishments." From the press release: "Kate Garber from the Strand will present some of the ways that bookstores can use interesting retail tactics to manipulate customers into buying things; Daniel Nelson and Sandeep Bhuller of McNally Jackson will give an overview of bookshop life; Jenn Northington from Word will randomly draw topics submitted by guests for a live, in person, totally off-the-cuff anti-Google search; and Marissa Levin from Book Court will do a geographically-oriented talk on the writers (present and past) who have made their mark on the literary landscape in both Book Court’s neck of the woods (Boerum Hill) and ISA's (Williamsburg)."
“I should explain—if nothing else, explanation is my birthright”: from “Fat,” a new short story by Bookforum contributor Joshua Cohen at Tablet magazine. And while you’re there, read “Gregory’s Story,” another original work by fellow Bookforum contributor Justin Taylor.
Federal judges have ruled that the six-toed cats that roam Ernest Hemingway’s Key West estate must be properly regulated by the house’s caretakers. After a ten-year legal back-and-forth, officials stated this week that the animals must be locked in cages, or confined to the property—which is now a Hemingway museum—at night. “One added irony in the cat case,” notes the Christian Science Monitor, “is that Whitehead Street [where the home is located] bisects a section of Key West well known for the large number of chickens and roosters roaming freely through the streets.”
