A two-volume e-book claiming to contain images of one hundred previously undiscovered drawings by Caravaggio has been pulled from Amazon in the wake of suspicion over its scholarly legitimacy. While art historians Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli say that they found the lost sketches at a castle archive in Milan, archivists contended that they had no record of working with the pair. “A serious scholar doesn't produce an e-book,” said former archive director Maria Teresa Fiorio.
Serious scholars may not produce e-books, but apparently the Vatican does.
Neil Gaiman has signed a five-book deal with HarperCollins, and will publish three novels and two picture books over the next several years.
In case you were wondering, David Foster Wallace voted for Reagan—at least according to details leaked from D.T. Max’s forthcoming biography.
The New Yorker’s Page Turner blog recounts how Mavis Gallant and W. Somerset Maugham’s literary agent Jacques Chambrun—a man described as “grandiose and very French”—swindled thousands of dollars from his clients, and in some cases, managed to continue working for them even after they learned of the con.
MobyLives predicts that 50 Shades of Gray will single-handedly cause Random House’s profits to double this year. And they’re not being glib: So far, the books have brought in $145 million and account for “one in five adult-fiction physical books sold in the U.S.” While one Random House staffer told MobyLives that he wasn’t sure about the exact figures, “let’s just say we could take the rest of the year off and still make our numbers.”
The TLS differentiates the Jonathans—Franzen and Lethem—with the help of film critic Manny Farber’s distinction between “elephant” and “termite” art.
