Christian Lorentzen as illustrated by Joanna Neborsky, from n+1’s What Was the Hipster? Animation. During his short tenure as culture editor at the New York Observer, Christian Lorentzen wrote and edited many memorable pieces, including a profile of Tao Lin perfectly imitating Lin’s style, and a column written as the voice of snow. He’s now leaving the Observer and heading to the UK to become an editor at the London Review of Books. When asked to confirm the move, Lorentzen told Adweek “No time to talk. Working.” But reliable sources have since conformed the rumor. For now, we hope
2011 Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan, photo by Chad Batka for The New York Times. The Los Angeles Review of Books launched a test website yesterday, with an essay, “The Death of the Book,” by Ben Ehrenreich, an impressive list of contributing editors, and an intriguing list of forthcoming articles, including essays by Jonathan Lethem (on Norman Mailer), novelist Grace Krilanovich (on Californian suburban youth) and work by many other literary stars from around the world. The Review was founded by editor and University of California professor Tom Lutz, and will have a full website online by the end of
The 2011 Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. The book awards are: Jennifer Egan (in fiction for A Visit From the Goon Squad); Siddhartha Mukherjee (in general non-fiction for The Emperor of All Maladies); Ron Chernow (in biography for Washington: A Life); Eric Foner (in history for The Fiery Trial); and Kay Ryan (in poetry for The Best of It).
L.J. Davis in 2009, photo by Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times. Greg Morten’s best-selling book Three Cups of Tea, about his experiences performing charitable work in Afghanistan, may be exaggerated. 60 Minutes investigates, with author Jon Krakauer opining: “It’s a beautiful story, and it’s a lie.” Author book signings have long been a staple of literary culture. But how do you sign a Kindle? This May, Autography offers a solution. A round up of tributes to Brooklyn author L. J. Davis, who recently died at the age of seventy. Davis was best known for his prescient 1971
Barry Hannah First, James Frey wrote memoirs (or, you know, “memoirs”). Then he shifted to fiction. Now, apparently seeking out new genre territory to pillage, he’s writing scripture: Next week (on April 22, which is Good Friday), he’ll release his new book, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. An excerpt at Vice presents a modern-day gospel set in contemporary New York City. Mother Teresa, George W. Bush, the Bible, and much more come come under fire in this list of Christopher Hitchens’s “most provocative quotes.” Plus: a preview of a video featuring the brothers Hitchens debating Iraq, Christianity,
On Monday we mentioned that the title of Steve Jobs’s new authorized biography, iSteve, might be problematic since “iSteve” is the web name of the well-known far right-wing blogger Steve Sailer. It turns out Sailer might try to stop Jobs’s use of that title; he put out a “request for pro bono legal help”, claiming, “I’ve been doing business under the name ‘iSteve’ since the 1990s [and it is] essential to my business strategy.” Commenters at Sailer’s blog are more conciliatory, though, one telling Sailer, “Just think of all traffic you will get when people search for his book.”
Janet Malcolm Media commentators are weighing in on the class-action lawsuit that unpaid bloggers have filed against the Huffington Post. “Why the Huffpo Class Action Suit Is a Legal Long Shot,” reads one headline. Another: “Why Tasini’s Blogger Lawsuit Against the Huffington Post Makes No Sense.” WWD reports on the Paris Review’s annual fundraiser fete, which editor Lorin Stein called “the best party in town.” Guests included Robert Redford, Simon Doonan, Gay Talese (“I’m one of the oldest people in this room”), Fran Lebowitz (“I tend to look on the dark side of things”), and James Salter (who won
Rae Armantrout A group of bloggers—estimated to be more than 9,000—has filed a class-action lawsuit against the Huffington Post and AOL, seeking payment for past contributions to the site. Jonathan Tasini, the lead plaintiff and a former HuffPo blogger, says that he will make Huffington “a pariah in the progressive community.” Amazon has announced a new Kindle deal: A model that’s only $114, but includes advertisements along with literature. An intrusion, no doubt, but not a new one—as Paul Collins writes, there has been a long history of ads in books. Today is Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout’s birthday;
Thomas Bernhard Dale Peck famously wrote that Rick Moody was the “worst writer of his generation.” Tonight, they share the stage at the Austrian Cultural Forum. Things may still get a little bit contentious, but that seems appropriate, given their discussion topic: Thomas Bernhard. Joining them to discuss the brilliantly bilious Austrian author will be translators Susan Bernofsky and Carol Brown Janeway. Notes on Cairo’s Tahrir Square’s recent book fair: “Indeed these [revolutionary] events don’t just happen. . . . It’s writing that pushed the people out [on to the streets] and vice versa.” Tax.com explains why the New
Rumor has it that an authorized biography of Steve Jobs tentatively titled iSteve: A Book of Jobs will come out in 2012. The title could turn out to be problematic, however, since “iSteve” is the tag name of one Steven Sailer, a self-described “journalist, movie critic for The American Conservative, VDARE.com columnist, and founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute.” And just what are VDARE.com and the Human Biodiversity Institute? The Southern Poverty Law Center has described VDARE.com as an anti-immigration “hate site” and the HBI as a “neo-eugenics outfit.”
Deb Olin Unferth Roll Call has a short article about the current members of Congress who write novels. “Sometimes, during a long filibuster,” says Senator Barbara Mikulski, “I would go back to my office and write on legal pads.” We somehow forgot that last Thursday, April 7, was New York City’s official John Ashbery Day, there will still be opportunities to celebrate the man this year. On May 16, Norton will publish his new translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations. There’s a fascinating interview about it at Rain Taxi. Every weekend during National Poetry Month, poet and international journalist Eliza
Shed Simove The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has become the first e-book to sell more than a million copies. Shed Simove’s book, What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex, made it into Amazon’s top 50 bestsellers. It is a quick read, though, since every page is completely blank. Simove ponders his prank’s ramifications for authors and the publishing industry. When thinking of 1970s punk, places like London and New York come to mind, but perhaps not Cleveland, Ohio. On Saturday, the powerHouse arena in Brooklyn is hosting the Cleveland Confidential Book Tour, revealing a suprisingly vibrant late-70s
The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose incendiary blog rants were recently published in the US, was seized by police in Beijing last Sunday. Anyone wondering why he’s being held by the government should go directly to this video of a 2009 talk he gave in Shanghai; it captures one of the many occasions that Weiwei has insistently spoken out against modern China’s corruption and totalitarianism. “Because we’re talking about designing China, I think we need to start from the questions of basic fairness, human rights, and freedom,” he says through his translator. “These are concepts which China, for all its
Joshua Cohen, photo by Ilan Jacobsohn for the New York Observer. Yesterday Borders executives tried to persuade publishers that the company was on track for growth again after filing for bankruptcy; the plan was deemed “unrealistic.” How much did it cost the New York Times to build its pay-wall? National Poetry Month in in full swing, with events and activities across America, and—of course—an iPhone app and a poets’ tweet-a-thon. Andrew Hultkrans reports on a reading for the Review of Contemporary Fiction’s “Failure Issue,” edited by novelist Joshua Cohen, and featuring authors such as Triple Canopy’s Sam Frank, n+1’s
Paul Muldoon Time magazine has hired critic and editor Jessica Winter to be Arts Editor for the print publication and website. The late David Foster Wallace’s annotated self-help books are a minor but revealing component of the Harry Ransom Center’s impressive Wallace collection. What can we learn about Wallace from studying his marginalia in books like The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller? The Awl’s Maria Bustillo visits the Ransom archives and finds many telling clues, including this underlined passage in Miller’s volume, marked “Amherst [19]80-85” by Wallace: “Such a [gifted] person is usually able to ward
Javier Marias Bookstores used to put frequently stolen books (Abbie Hoffman, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, et. al.) behind the front counter, but what will publishers do to stop e-book piracy? At the Boston Globe, Alex Beam investigates, finding that filching a new book is as easy as illegally downloading an album. He reports that publishers are “not too worried. Allow me to worry on their behalf. Free is still a price that is hard to beat.” From the Electronic Book Review, Lydia Davis interviews Lynne Tillman. The Huffington Post Union of Bloggers, which is made up of HP contributors
Dorothea Lasky Jessa Crispin: “Publishing isn’t dead. Smart publishing, well, that’s a different story.” Some editions of the New York Times Book Review failed to put a marquee-worthy (and controversial) name on the marquee. Here’s the paper’s somewhat squeamish correction: “Because of a production error, a review on the cover of the Book Review, about Bismarck: A Life, by Jonathan Steinberg, omits the byline in some copies. As noted in the table of contents and in the contributor’s biographical note, the review is by Henry A. Kissinger.” “Publishing guru” Jason Epstein shares his high hopes for print-on-demand machines. A
Sigrid Nunez OK, here comes the flood: Reviews of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King are rushing in—a full two weeks before its tax-day publication date. Billy Joel’s memoir, The Book of Joel, was scheduled to come out with HarperCollins in June, but no more: The author has decided to not release the book. “It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I’m not all that interested in talking about the past.” Chipp Kidd discusses how he came up with the cover design for Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. The Poetry Foundation’s blog, Harriet, has assembled an
Reif Larsen Harper Perennial has just published the anthology Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work, edited by Richard Ford, which contains many of the authors you might expect, such as Russell Banks and John Cheever, and some you might not, like Donald Barthelme and Jeffrey Eugenides. There’s one author, though, that seems to be a particularly conspicuous omission: Raymond Carver. Not only is Carver a working-class literary icon, he’s also one of Ford’s favorites. An editor’s note at the end of the text explains that the Carver estate declined to allow his story “Elephant” to be