James McBride, considered an “underdog” contestant, has won this years National Book Award for fiction. Other winners are George Packer (for nonfiction), Mary Szybist (poetry), and Cynthia Kadohata (young people’s literature). A week ago, Wyoming senatorial candidate Liz Cheney made news by publicly breaking with her sister over gay marriage (Liz opposes it; Mary Cheney is gay and in a same-sex marriage). In the wake of the controversy, Elaine Showalter took the opportunity to revisit Lynne Cheney’s frontier novel Sisters, which is “both a pulpy murder mystery, with cattle barons and homesteaders; and an astoundingly sympathetic treatment of Wyoming
William T. Vollmann Bloomberg News is cutting arts coverage, and very unfortunately, that includes books: The company let go of books editor and National Book Critics Circle president Laurie Muchnick on Monday. The New York Times talks with William T. Vollmann about The Book of Dolores, a creative account of Vollmann’s female alter-ego. Vollmann started cross-dressing seriously about five years ago, and he tells the Times that after a lifetime of dodging land mines and Afghan warlords, presenting himself as a woman introduced a series of new challenges: “A lot of friends who could always handle the prostitutes and the
C.P. Cavafy Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing passed away last weekend at her home in London. She was 94. Over the course of her career, Lessing wrote more than fifty novels, and won virtually every major literary award available in Europe. Accepting the Nobel in 2007, the year before she published her last novel, Lessing quipped, “I’m 88 years old and they can’t give the Nobel to someone who’s dead, so I think they were probably thinking they’d probably better give it to me now before I’ve popped off.” For more on Lessing, read her 2002 interview with Bookforum. New Yorkers, if you’re
Michiko Kakutani A New York court has ruled in favor of Google’s argument that scanning more than twenty million books and posting snippets of them online without permission from the authors does not violate the terms of fair use. The ruling is a major victory for Google, and against the group of authors and publishers who filed the class action suit in 2005. The plaintiff, led by the Authors Guild, had been demanding a payment of $750 for each book scanned. Simon and Schuster is restructuring its production and manufacturing division to “further integrate the design and creation of
Joseph Brodsky At Page Turner, Maria Bustillos weighs in on the controversy surrounding Isaac Fitzgerald’s hiring as Buzzfeed’s books editor—and his declaration to publish only positive reviews—with a bit of background context: “It bears mentioning that Fitzgerald’s views are very much in line with those of the San Francisco literary establishment whence he hails. The influential essay by Heidi Julavits, published more than a decade ago in the Believer, ‘Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!’ was written explicitly against ‘snark’ and in favor of more positive book reviewing.” Joseph Brodsky dropped out of school after finishing seventh grade, but he
Tuesday was a big day for professional shake-ups in journalism. Following news that reporters Matt Bai and Brian Stelter were leaving the New York Times (for Yahoo! News and CNN, respectively), the big story was that New York Times Magazine editor Hugo Lindgren is on the way out—and apparently not at his own volition. At the Awl, Choire Sicha names fourteen people who could fill Lindgren’s shoes. Ernest Hemingway put in a word for Ballantine Ale, Frederick Forsyth for Rolex, Mark Twain for Campbell’s soup: At n+1, Ben Kunkel responds to news of Twitter going public with a manifesto
Morrissey’s Autobiography offers very little first-hand insight into the Smiths, but fans can still learn a great deal about the Mozzer’s singing by noting the many songs he mentions throughout the book. The Manhattanchester blog has compiled a playlist of them all, complete with links to most of the tunes on Spotify. In addition to well-known Morrissey favorites like the New York Dolls, David Bowie, and T. Rex, there are some deep cuts (The Paper Dolls, Blue Mink, and The Pioneers), as well as hits (Diana Ross’s “Reflections”). To hear more about some of his sonic obsessions, check out Morrissey’s Desert Island picks from BBC radio.
Stephen Glass Michelle Dean responds to the internet backlash against the appointment of Isaac Fitzgerald as Buzzfeed’s book editor with the argument that Buzzfeed—and the acknowledgement of the internet’s role in literary culture—won’t kill book reviewing, though ”snobbery might.” Haruki Murakami has already named a novel after the Beatles’ song “Norwegian Wood,” and now he’s raiding their oeuvre again for titles. His latest short story, “Drive My Car,” was published in the Japanese magazine Bungeishunju last week. A New York Times account of the legal troubles surrounding Gore Vidal’s estate not only highlights the late writer’s family drama, but
Isaac Fitzgerald The relationship between Japan and South Korea has been fraught for years due to a history of territorial disputes. Over the past two decades, however, the soaring popularity of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in South Korea has helped mend relations between the countries. Murakami earned an unprecedented $1.4 million advance in South Korea for his forthcoming novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, and according to an essay in the Asahi Shimbum, is single-handedly “responsible for triggering and fueling the Japanese literature boom in South Korea.” BuzzFeed has hired former McSweeney’s publicity director to head its
Julian Peters’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” “Lacks discipline,” “the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school,” and “not a good novelist” are just a few of the barbs Norman Mailer directed at his contemporaries. Graphic novel imprint Fantagraphics has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $150,000 by Dec. 5 or face the possibility of having to roll back its 2014 publishing lineup. The company’s finances were put in jeopardy last summer, following the death of publisher Kim Thompson. Thirteen books planned for the spring and summer of this year did not come out as a
One of Robert Walser’s microscipts While her Facebook-founding brother continues to spread the gospel of social media, Randi Zuckerberg is making a name for herself by writing cautionary books about the dangers of living online. Her first book, Dot Complicated, is a “cross between memoir and how-to guide” about navigating the social internet, and her latest effort is a children’s book about “about a young girl called Dot who discovers the fun of playing outside when her mother takes away her tablet, laptop, cellphone, and desktop computer. “ Moby Lives reprints the totally charming form letter Margaret Atwood sends
Douglas Coupland Brad Stone, author of the new book The Everything Store, has made a new enemy in Mackenzie Bezos—the Amazon founder’s wife. In a 900-word, one-star review on Amazon, Mackenzie Bezos criticized the book for inaccuracy, bias, and failing to include accounts of the “supportive and inspiring culture” that exists at Amazon. For a more impartial take, read Astra Taylor’s review of The Everything Store in the Dec/Jan issue of Bookforum. Relatedly, in a long, thoughtful post on Reuters, Felix Salmon interrogates the belief that Amazon is a mortal threat to books, and ends up arguing that what the company is mostly shifting power
Drink coasters are shown for sale in the gift shop of the Monroe County Heritage Museum in Monroeville, Alabama October 23, 2013. REUTERS/Verna Gates Harper Lee is bringing suit against a local museum in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, for allegedly exploiting her fame and the prestige of To Kill a Mockingbird without compensating her for it. The lawsuit has divided the small town, reports the Guardian, and left many residents wondering whether Lee, who is deaf and blind, is being manipulated by lawyers. Lee’s lawyers filed a trademark application last August, and sued the Monroe County Heritage Museum
Cue the collective sigh of relief: Morrissey’s autobiography will be released in the U.S. after all. Only weeks after becoming the fastest-selling music memoir of all time in the UK, the powers-that-be announced that the Moz’s memoir—a Penguin Classic—will go on sale on this side of the Atlantic on Dec. 3.
Neil Gaiman Literary circles have been abuzz this week about an essay in the New York Times in which Tim Kreider laments the fact that it’s now culturally acceptable to ask writers to write for free. “I’ve been trying to understand,” Kreider muses, “the mentality that leads people who wouldn’t ask a stranger to give them a keychain or a Twizzler to ask me to write them a thousand words for nothing.” Responding to the piece in the New Republic, Luke O’Neill calls working for free “a necessary evil,” and argues that “young writers entering the marketplace for the first
The Los Angeles Review of Books launches a new section, “Around the World,” which is dedicated to profiling “thinkers, writers, artists, and activists in countries all over the world, whose work transcends national borders and boundaries, whether it be in painting, music, poetry, or fiction, journalism, public service, or advocacy in the public interest.” If you’ve been curious about which books New Yorkers have been checking out of public libraries, wonder no longer: The NYPL has been releasing lists of the most-checked out books, both electronic and physical. Last September, the most checked-out fiction book was Dan Brown’s Inferno,
\ A year ago this week, after tearing through the Caribbean and up the Eastern Seaboard, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, and worked its way on to New York City and beyond. The storm flooded subways, destroyed homes, knocked out power grids, left at least ninety people dead in New York and New Jersey, and became one of the costliest natural disasters in American history (second only to Katrina). In New York, the storm did extensive damage to the sleepy residential communities of the Rockaways, a thin peninsula that runs along the south shore of Long Island
Lou Reed Goodnight, Goodnight, Moon? Per the New York Times, some contemporary toddlers have highbrow (and expensive) sensibilities that go beyond mere children’s classics. “Today’s babies and toddlers are treated to board books that are miniature works of literary art: classics like Romeo and Juliet, Sense and Sensibility and Les Misérables; luxuriously produced counting primers with complex graphic elements; and even an Art for Baby book featuring images by the contemporary artists Damien Hirst and Paul Morrison.” David Bowie and Morrissey comment on the passing of rock star and icon Lou Reed, who died on Sunday at the age of
Less than three years as taking over as the head of Amazon’s publishing division (which now has 11 imprints and 27 editors), Larry Kirshbaum is leaving the company to once again work as a literary agent. Publishers Weekly wonders if this is a sign of trouble for Amazon’s publishing arm:“Amazon’s genre publishing program will not be affected by Kirshbaum’s departure although the future of the trade operation is uncertain. Among the issues confronting the publishing program has been poor distribution into bookstores.” In a statement to a fan site, Morrissey has made it clear that he was not part