In Ballast to the White Sea, a novel by Malcolm Lowry thought to have been lost in a fire, is being published in Canada in a scholarly edition by the University of Ottawa Press. Jan Gabriel, Malcolm’s first wife, had apparently kept an early version of the manuscript, which she gave to the New York Public Library in 2000.
Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Alan Hollinghurst, and others will auction off the right to name certain characters in their novels. Atwood offers the chance of appearing as yourself in the book she’s currently writing or in the retelling of The Tempest that she has plans to do next. The auction will take place on November 20, and is a benefit for the charity Freedom from Torture.
The Chicago Sun-Times plans to launch “mobile-first” editions in seventy cities. The sites are intended to mimic Buzzfeed and Deadspin, and will aggregate content from Sun-Times writers and others.
Matt Taibbi is on a leave of absence from First Look, the umbrella media company started by Pierre Omidyar last year. Taibbi had been hired by Omidyar to head up a satirical magazine, Racket, which was supposed to launch this fall. Plans for Racket are still going forward, but the launch (which at one point was slated for October) has been delayed.
The Doubletake reading series features three pairs of writers on three subjects, respectively. Tonight, at apexart in Manhattan, Alexandra Chasin and Robert Lopez on horse-racing; Filip Noterdaeme and Rick Whitaker on the primal scream; and J.C. Hallman and James Marcus on Nicholson Baker’s classic phone-sex novel, Vox.