Imre Kertesz Do you enjoy page-turning simulation that happens when you “flip” through a book on an e-reader? If so, we hope you own an iPad, because under a patent that was granted this week, Apple now owns the exclusive rights to that effect. If fundraising efforts work out, a very low-budget adaptation of Tao Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel may be coming to a theater near you. The San Francisco-based literary magazine McSweeney’s has commissioned writer Richard Parks to write an hour-long radio drama about Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne. Well, sort of: The event will be a

TS Eliot In the first extensive interview since he revealed that has stopped writing fiction, Philip Roth talks to the New York Times about what he’s doing with all his free time (”Every morning I study a chapter in iPhone for Dummies…”), the process of working with biographer Blake Bailey, and the Post-it note that motivates him to enjoy his retirement. When he decided to publish his new book with Amazon, bestselling author Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Body) knew that he’d have trouble getting bookstores to carry it. So, with the book coming out soon, Ferriss is taking a

Minna Proctor has submitted a letter to the Wall Street Journal in response to the paper’s interview with her ex-husband, author Benjamin Anastas, about his new memoir, Too Good to Be True: “I am not ‘okay,’ as [Anastas] says, with what he wrote…. I did not approve of the project, know of the project when it was in formulation, or agree to it vis a vis its eventual impact on our young son.”

Katherine Boo, author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers The screenwriter behind Slumdog Millionaire is writing the film adaptation of Ben Fountain’s award-winning Iraq war novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. The novel is about a group of American soldiers who survive a firefight in Iraq and return home to a hero’s welcome, and has been called the “Catch-22 for the Iraq War.” Also, in the New York Times, John Williams talks with Ben Fountain and The Yellow Birds author Kevin Powers about their approach to writing war novels. Professional misogynist Tucker Max has some advice for writers looking to

After years of archival research, Lawrence Wright’s long-awaited book on Scientology will be coming out with Knopf this January. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief includes more than two hundred interviews with Scientologists, and will expand on the explosive article Wright published about the religion in the New Yorker. College students be warned: Digital textbooks can now track whether you’re doing your reading. “Not surprisingly, Professor Thurston J. Moore gave no final examination”: At the Poetry Foundation, Logan K. Young recalls what it was like to study at Naropa with Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore. In

Jack Gilbert, 1925-2012 Award-winning poet Jack Gilbert, whose Collected Poems was published in March of this year, has died at the age of 87. With a list of guests that includes not just publishers but also Molly Ringwald and DJ Rabbi Darkside, the organizers of this year’s National Book Awards dinner—which will be held tonight at Cipriani Wall Street—hope “to add more sex appeal to an industry that’s not exactly known for it.” While the merger between Penguin and Random House has mostly been met with cynicism and dismay, the consolidation of big publishing might actually be good news

Paula Broadwell Four days ago, Paula Broadwell’s biography of General David Petraeus was No. 126,995 on Amazon. Now, after the two were revealed to be having an affair, All In has jumped to No. 111 overall on Amazon, and is No. 3 in the categories history/Middle East/Iraq and history/military/Iraq war, and No. 6 in biographies memoirs/leaders notable people/military. The hardcover came out in January, and to ride the media wave surrounding the affair, Penguin has pushed the publication date for the paperback edition up to November 21. At Dissent, Andrew Ross and Seth Ackerman consider the Strike Debt movement,

Philip Roth: ex-novelist In an interview with the French magazine Les InRocks, Philip Roth announced that he’s done writing novels. “To tell you the truth, I’m done,” Roth remarked. “Nemesis will be my last book.” Roth, now 79, has given biographer Blake Bailey access to his letters and papers. But Roth does not plan to grant this privilege to anyone else: The novelist says that he has instructed his executors to destroy his archives after his death. It has been a busy year for the Oxford American. First, two of the Southern magazine’s editors were fired after being implicated

Tom Robbins What kind of books will emerge from the 2012 presidential election? The Los Angeles Times wagers that in addition to narratives about the race itself, the internal collapse to the Republican party, and emergence of Latinos as a major voting bloc, “there’s also a good biography waiting to emerge from the second big story of last night’s election: how gay marriage and gay rights moved to the mainstream of American politics.” At the New Yorker, music critic Alex Ross celebrates this election’s gay-rights victories in an addendum to his excellent and eloquent essay on gay rights and

Nate Silver Statistician and author Nate Silver proved his aptitude for political forecasting again on Tuesday after correctly predicting how all state races would turn out in the presidential election. Silver was off the mark by a mere 19 electoral college votes (only pundit Josh Putnam was closer). As Rachel Maddow quipped on MSNBC, “You know who won the election tonight? Nate Silver.” Silver’s book, which Chris Wilson reviewed in our last issue, has spent the past month in the Amazon Top 100 rankings, but in light of the election, it’s climbing the ranks. It’s currently the top book

Richard Nixon President Obama and Elie Weisel are co-authoring a book, the 84-year-old Holocaust survivor told Haaretz last week. What the book’s about is anybody’s guess: Weisel has been tight-lipped about the project, calling it only “a book of two friends.” To commemorate superstorm Sandy, n+1 has reposted Chad Harbach’s essay on the post-catastrophe novel. These novels “liberate the violent potential of technology (and its enemy, nature) to create an altered world whose chief characteristic is a bewildering lack of technology… Our future, like our past, may be virtually free of oil, and global culture, and many of the

Actor Paul Dano will be kicking off the first-ever Moby Dick reading marathon at Word Books in Brooklyn on November 16. The event isn’t for the faint of heart—it will be running until November 18. Amazon may be creating the future of bookselling, but it doesn’t have much control over it. The latest sign of the company’s troubles comes in the figure of Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, who signed with Amazon for his latest book, The 4-Hour Chef. So far, Barnes and Noble has refused to carry the book, others major stores have followed suit, and

Rumor has it that Britney Spears is writing a novel: According to the Hollywood Reporter, the pop star is in talks with publisher It Books. Amazon has settled with the state of Arizona over unpaid sales taxes from 2006 to 2010. Last year, Arizona sued Amazon for million, claiming that the company had neglected to pay taxes that would have been standard for brick-and-mortar establishments. The amount of the settlement wasn’t disclose, but the agreement is similar to ones reached in California and Virginia. While the ruling is a victory for the states, many consumers aren’t so pleased: starting

Truman Capote Six pages of Truman Capote’s unfinished novel Answered Prayers, which consists partly of stories published in Esquire in 1975 and 1976, has been discovered among his papers in the New York Public Library. The story, “Yachts and Things,” features characters loosely modeled on Capote and former Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, and has been described as “vintage Truman.” “Yachts” will be published in the December issue of Vanity Fair. “You have to be a terrible monster to write,” Colm Toibin recalls telling a class of aspiring novelists. “I said, ‘Someone might have told you something they shouldn’t

Ayn Rand At the New Yorker’s Page Turner blog, George Saunders makes asurprising confession: “Not many people know this, but I was once Ayn Rand’s lover. That’s right. The year was 1974. I was a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old, she was a prominent international author—and we were lovers. By ‘lovers’ I mean: we were constantly raping each other.” Speaking of Ayn Rand, Publishing Perspectives talks with the man who singlehandedly translated and Atlas Shrugged in German. As the interviewer puts it, “Rand’s thoughts don’t sit well with a typical German understanding of reality.” That said, Atlas has already sold out its

Peter Mountford Lorin Stein considers the reasons that “short stories fell off our radar”—and explains the important role they play in his life now. While the rest of the East Coast was preparing for Hurricane Sandy, the Supreme Court convened on Monday to hear a case that’s likely to have serious implications for international publishers and book pirates. Publisher John Wiley Sons took student Supap Kirtsaeng to court this year after catching the Thai graduate student selling international textbooks online. These textbooks, while nearly identical to American ones, are significantly cheaper, and have netted Kirtsaeng roughly $100,000 in profit

Yesterday, executives from Random House and Penguin announced their plans to combine the two companies. The combination, which will be called Penguin Random House, will, the two companies hope, “be better able to deal with the digital transformation of the book industry.” The Wall Street Journal also points out that the decision comes at a time when Penguin is still fighting the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust suit, which alleged price-fixing on e-books. Well, the worst of Hurricane Sandy has passed, and New York is now assessing the damage. So how are things looking on the indie bookstore front?

Cultural historian Jacques Barzun Is Rupert Murdoch planning to buy Penguin? Last week it was reported that the publishing giant was in talks about merging with Random House (a deal which would “create a combined entity that would control nearly 25 percent of the United States book market”), but this weekend, news emerged that News Corporation will likely make a bid on Pearson, Penguin’s parent company, for around £1 billion. Murdoch already owns HarperCollins, one of the other “big six” publishers. J.K. Rowling and Hilary Mantel have both taken the UK government to task for rolling back welfare benefits.

Seth Rosenfeld The Financial Times reports that Penguin and Random House—two of the “big six” publishers—are in talks about merging. Pearson, which owns Penguin, confirmed on Thursday that they have been meeting with Bertelsmann, which owns Random House, about the possibility of a consolidation that would “give Bertlesmann more than a 50 percent stake in the mega-publishing company that would form.” But according to Pearson, this is not a done deal: “the two companies have not reached agreement and there is no certainty that the discussions will lead to a transaction.” Why do American novelists take so long to

Publisher Benedikt Taschen Restructuring at Simon and Schuster means that all of the publisher’s imprints will be lumped into one of four groups: Atria, Scribner, the Gallery, or the Jonathan Karp-led Simon Schuster. It also means that at the Free Press—which is being folded into the Simon and Schuster group—publisher Martha Levin and editor-in-chief Dominick Anfuso have lost their jobs. Dissent has launched its snazzy new website. In a characteristically frank conversation with the Huffington Post, publisher Benedikt Taschen discusses the books that have lost him the most money—including books on Diego Rivera’s murals, car crashes, and the Crusades.