Etgar Keret Editor and critic Parul Seghal has left Publishers Weekly to become an associate editor for NPR. “If you’re going to hit somebody, hit a professor”—poet Geoffery G. O’Brien defends Occupy Cal during a confrontation between police and UC Berkeley students. As O’Brien reports: “The cop said, ‘you want some?’ It was a rhetorical question, and I was hit viciously in the ribs and went to the ground.” Tonight at The Tank in Manhattan, author Jeff Sharlet will be joined by performance artist Reverend Billy (Bill Talen) to discuss Occupy Wall Street, Talen’s new book The Reverend Billy
University of Chicago Press director Morris Philipson Congratulations to our friends at New Herring Press, who celebrated their launch on Sunday in Brooklyn with readings by Parul Sehgal, Lynne Tillman, Nitsuh Abebe, Amanda Davidson, and Francis Richard. And with a piano bar. Random House in Canada is testing out a new, ticketed model of book tours that includes the cost of a book in the price. New York Times critic Janet Maslin excoriates Haruki Murakami’s opus 1Q84, and the Onion’s AV club gives the book a “D” rating. Morris Philipson, the former University of Chicago Press director responsible for
Graphic novelist Alison Bechdel The Second Pass founder John Williams has been hired to oversee online books coverage at the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times goes behind the scenes at a company dedicated to filming book trailers. Why would spy novelist Q. R. Markham plagiarize dozens of passages in his new book? The Book Bench’s Macy Halford investigates the discovery that led Little, Brown to recall the novel, and pushed Assassin of Secrets’ Amazon sales ranking up from 62,924 to 174 in a single day. “My father and I grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town
Jonathan Lethem, Jennifer Egan, and Lynn Nottage at Occupy Wall Street. Christopher Hitchens is dominating a Publisher’s Weekly readers poll for favorite book of the year. His essay collection Arguably has garnered 91.55 percent of the votes. Aside from the “other” category (2.63%), the closest contender is Tina Fey’s Bossypants (1.83%). Meanwhile, The Marriage Plot hasn’t even broken the 1 percent barrier. Novelists Jonathan Lethem and Jennifer Egan and playwright Lynn Nottage held forth at Occupy Wall Street this week, with Lethem telling the crowd: “Even those who sneer or berate . . . they’re one of you—one of
PG Wodehouse, with pipe. The Dec/Jan issue of Bookforum won’t be in stores (or mailboxes) until the end of the month, but, early issues are being handed out at the People’s Library at Zuccotti Park this afternoon. Head down to grab a free copy! David Lodge’s A Man of Parts, Rosa Luxembourg, and T.S. Eliot’s letters round out the Atlantic’s list of the best books of 2011. Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, Karl Marlantes’s What It Is Like to Go to War and Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography make Amazon’s list of the top books
Ai Weiwei Jonathan Lethem pens a takedown in the Los Angeles Review of Books of a tough but positive review New Yorker critic James Wood wrote of Lethem’s novel The Fortress of Solitude, while at The Millions, Alan Hollinghurst slams Wood’s review of his latest book as “so pathetic that I stopped taking it seriously.” Slate’s staff selects its “new classics”: books, movies, songs, and even typefaces that staffers think will stand the test of time. Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Volume 1, and Aleksandar Hemon’s Nowhere Man get nods in the books department. How publishers handled illustrating “The Joy of
Young Steve Buscemi Readers! The Dec/Jan issue of Bookforum hits stands this week, featuring Jeff Sharlet on Occupy Wall Street, Natasha Vargas-Cooper on Norman Mailer and Marilyn Monroe, Dennis Lim on Haruki Murakami, and lots, lots, more. Also, it’s Occupy Wall Street week on Bookforum.com—throughout the week, we’ll be running essays by Will Bunch, Sarah Leonard, and Aaron Lake Smith. Jonathan Lethem will be at the Occupy Wall Street Library today at 3:30 for a teach-in. Lethem recently contributed the story “Tickling the Corpse” to the Occupy Writers blog. Steve Buscemi is directing an adaptation of William Burroughs’ novel
Alexis Jenni, the very happy winner of the Prix Goncourt. The Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary prize, has gone to a high school biology teacher from Lyon, Alexis Jenni, for his six-hundred page debut novel, The French Art of War. He might not be quitting his day job soon, though: The Goncourt only comes with a ten euro honorarium. Self-publishing websites are huge in China, attracting more than forty percent of all Chinese internet users every month. The New York Times profiles the Wilde Boys Salon, a “roving salon for self-described queer poets at which attendees lounge fetchingly and
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’ After weeks of negotiation, Cooper Union has agreed to give East Village bookstore St. Mark’s Bookshop a break on its rent, reducing their monthly payments from $20,000 to $17,500 for a year, and forgiving $7,000 in debt. This is half of the $5,000 monthly reduction St. Mark’s owners say they need to stay in business, and there are no plans yet to rehire laid-off staff. New Yorkers: If you’re free this this evening, you should head to the 92nd Street Y to hear Nuruddin Farrah and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’—two of the most accomplished African novelists working
Joan Didion will be the subject of a new film by Griffin Dunner. GQ and Farrar, Straus Giroux are teaming up to produce The Originals Series; events that will pair writers and musicians for conversations in “an intimate West Village loft space.” The series will debut next Tuesday with John Jeremiah Sullivan and the Brooklyn band Cavemen, and will be hosted by David Rees. Last we checked, only eight tickets were left. HarperCollins is buying religious publishing imprint Thomas Nelson, which according to the press release, is “the world’s leading provider of Bibles [and] inspirational books.” In the Rumpus,
Former literary super-agent and the new director of literature for the National Endowment for the Arts, Ira Silverberg. Literary agent and onetime editor of Grove Press Ira Silverberg is leaving his position at Sterling Lord Literistic—where he represented authors such as Sam Lipsyte, Adam Haslett, Rene Steinke, and Neil Strauss—to become the new director of literature for the National Endowment for the Arts. The Wall Street Journal debuts its e-book bestseller list, which—surprise, surprise—looks just like regular old print bestseller lists. Nicholas Sparks, Bill O’Reilly and James Patterson rank high on both. E-readers actually get heavier—by about a molecule—with
St. Mark’s Bookshop Despite the exhortations of marquee writers and the Cooper Union community, the St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York will not get the rent break it had been petitioning for, Publishers Weekly reports. “They’d like to rent the space for twice what we’re paying,” said St. Mark’s co-owner Bob Contant. “They’re going to have to answer to the community for the decision they made. We’re extremely disappointed.” ‘Twitterologists’ claim that the microblogging service can gauge the ebbs and flows of global moods; Maud Newton parses Twitter regional slang. Books They Gave Me: A (Tim O’Brien inspired?) Tumblr
Robert Moses: coming to a cable-equipped TV near you. On Tuesday, NYU hosted a panel discussion titled “From the Publishers’ Perspective” that featured Dutton’s Brian Tart, HarperMedia’s Ana Maria Allessi, and FSG’s Sarah Crichton. As PW points out, one of the major themes was uncertainty. According to Tart, “You learn to fail really quickly.” HM is launching a new clothing line based on the fictional stylings of Lisbeth Salander, the anarcho-hacker heroine from Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. We were thrilled to see the lineup of authors who will be at Page Turner 2011, the third annual Asian American Literary
Hunter S. Thompson In the wake of news that Bibles are among the most frequently downloaded Apps, the New Yorker’s Book Bench blog contacted heads of several New York City religious institutions to ask how the digital age is transforming worship. The Baffler has just signed a $500,000 deal with MIT Press guaranteeing three issues a year for the next five years. Surveying the deal, the Observer catches a new name on the masthead: twenty-four-year-old hacker Aaron Schwartz, who made headlines this summer for leaking four million JSTOR articles. Legendary book designer Chip Kidd, most recently known for designing
Joseph Heller Triple Canopy excerpts artist David Wojnarowicz’s journals: “May 7th spent the afternoon developing photos—most in the Rimbaud series—others from the ‘shoot-from-hip’ series—excited about them, they’re fine images semi-ghostly bald men in leather eating in restaurants faces whirling with darkness reflected in opposite mirrors… four o’clock rolls around—½ hour till the meeting—I finished up in the darkroom I rent on Prince Street from some old walrus ex-ship captain fella who has tons of shots of Mexico on the studio walls. A real grumpy fart. Paid him his fee and split to a nearby Cafeteria for some coffee and
Young Joseph Heller Triple Canopy excerpts artist David Wojnarowicz’s journals: “May 7th spent the afternoon developing photos—most in the Rimbaud series—others from the ‘shoot-from-hip’ series—excited about them, they’re fine images semi-ghostly bald men in leather eating in restaurants faces whirling with darkness reflected in opposite mirrors… four o’clock rolls around—½ hour till the meeting—I finished up in the darkroom I rent on Prince Street from some old walrus ex-ship captain fella who has tons of shots of Mexico on the studio walls. A real grumpy fart. Paid him his fee and split to a nearby Cafeteria for some coffee
Chinua Achebe Jeffrey Eugenides’s vest (you know, the one on the Times Square billboard) now has its own Twitter account. Roland Emmerich’s new film Anonymous promises to irritate English professors everywhere by suggesting that Shakespeare wasn’t really Shakespeare. Forbes magazine names Chinua Achebe “Africa’s most influential celebrity.” The New Yorker excerpts part of It Chooses You, Miranda July’s forthcoming book about “adventures” she’s had with strangers met through local classified ads. Underworked scientists prove that there are relatively few health risks associated with reading on the toilet. From the LRB archives, Richard Sennett explains how his interest in sexuality
Steve Jobs’s authorized biography comes out today. Among the highlights, Jobs wanted to revolutionize the $8-billion-a-year textbook industry by giving textbooks away for free with iPads; he declared “thermonuclear war” against Google for copying iPhone features in its Android phone; and he regretted waiting to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer. In an echo of the Juan Williams affair, NPR has fired freelancer Lisa Simeone for her involvement with the Occupy Washington D.C. movement. Simeone hosts the World of Opera program, and works for the show Soundprint, both of which are produced by NPR-affiliate stations and distributed through National
Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! With a little help from their friends at Random House, Politico is launching an online bookstore that will carry a curated selection of books on politics, history, current events and biography. HBO is adapting Karen Russell’s Florida-set novel Swamplandia! into a miniseries. Here’s a 21-minute video of Michael Winslow recounting the history of the typewriter—by imitating the evolution of their sounds. Simon Schuster’s author portal now lets its writers see their all their sales data, broken down by format. Now that his journals are out, read Spalding Gray’s 1986 interview with BOMB. Apple’s new