Roberto Bolano Daniel Nester—a poet and the high priest of inappropriateness—analyzes data about the survival rates of literary magazines. The Paris Review announces its Spring issue, which will feature an interview with Janet Malcolm, fiction by Joshua Cohen, and the first installment of a serialized novel by Roberto Bolano. At Guernica magazine, former Harper’s editor Robert D. Hodge says, “I despair for the future of Harper’s Magazine.” To survive, he argues, the magazine will have to “exploit the full resources of its non-profit status; the magazine must raise funds on the web, it must hold galas and auctions and
Mima Simic, photo © Jelena Topcic Croatian author Mima Simić was thrilled when she heard that her story “My Girlfriend” (translated into English by the author) was selected for Dalkey Archive Press’s Best European Fiction 2011 anthology. However, she was “shocked, appalled and flabbergasted” when she received the book and found egregious errors introduced by an editor of the story (one character, whose gender is intentionally ambiguous in the original, becomes a man in the edited version). So Simić did what any angry author looking to start a tempest in the literature-in-translation world would do: She wrote an open
Elizabeth Bishop At the New Republic, Ruth Franklin answers some of the questions raised by VIDA’s recent survey, which shows an alarming disparity in the number of women reviewed or published in literary magazines. Franklin finds that the problem begins with the fact that book publishers release many more titles by men than women, and so actually, “magazines are reviewing female authors in something close to the proportion of books by women published each year.” And at Bookslut, Alizah Salario offers an engaging first-person commentary on the issue: “Twenty-Three Short Thoughts About Women and Criticism.” In a nearly unprecedented
Trinie Dalton We were excited to learn that the venerable independent press 2 Dollar Radio—which has brought out deeply original contemporary classics such as Rudolph Wurlitzer’s Drop Edge of Yonder—has announced its latest acquisition: Baby Geisha, by the consistently fascinating author, journalist, and editor Trinie Dalton, whose books include the excellent collection of So-Cal fantasia and horror Wide-Eyed. The new story collection will come out in January 2012. Magazine editor, radio host, and novelist Kurt Andersen might be able to add another skill to his resume: urban planning. He wants to turn part of his Brooklyn neighborhood’s Carroll Park
Meghan O’Rourke From the New York Times Arts Beat blog (the new home of their book blog Paper Cuts), here’s a reading list for the crisis in Egypt. Meanwhile, Atlantic contributing editor and Bookforum regular Graeme Wood continues to file blog posts from Cairo; in his most recent dispatch, he describes being dragged down the street by an Egyptian mob. The New York Times previews its e-books bestsellers list, slated to appear in print next weekend. The literary arts website VIDA has released a 2010 count of how often women are published and reviewed in a variety of large
Reif Larsen Tonight, Bookforum and Villa Gillet present “Starting from Here: Every Place Tells a Story,” at the French Institute Alliance Française in Manhattan. Panelists include American writers Reif Larsen and Peter Turchi, French author Philippe Vasset, and French geographer Michel Lussault. Moderated by Bookforum co-editor Albert Mobilio, the participants will discuss the ways in which maps and stories narrate a sense of place. Yesterday morning at the Guggenheim, Rupert Murdoch successfully launched his iPad newspaper, The Daily (the only hitch was when a reporter from a rival news organization asked Murdoch an uncomfortable question). There’s a heated debate
Atlantic contributing editor and Bookforum regular Graeme Wood is reporting from Cairo’s Tahir square, offering a riveting first-person account of the peaceful protest’s violent turn earlier today. In our current issue, Wood reviews Mario Vargas Llosa’s latest historical novel, El Sueno del celta, about the conflicted life of liberator Roger Casement.
Apple announced that it has decided to change the rules for publishers. No surprise that this comes without an apology. Previously, the company allowed application developers to sell content over a web browser, not through the app itself. Now, Apple decides it wants a cut after all, and beginning later this year, it will traffic these sales itself—and charge a 30% toll. The Times quotes an electronics analyst who says, “Apple started making money with devices. Maybe the new thing that everyone recognizes is the unit of economic value is the platform, not the device.” But there are deeper implications
Colson Whitehead Colson Whitehead has announced that his new book, Zone One, will be published in October. It’s a disaster novel! Whitehead tweeted yesterday that it “concerns the rehabilitation of NYC after the apocalypse,” adding later, “if the book were a mash-up, it’d be Leonard Cohen’s ‘The Future’ + Wire’s ‘Reuters’ + Joy Division’s ‘Decades’.” Whitehead is the author of, among other things, a nonfiction book about the city (Colossus of New York), a satire about branding (Apex Hides the Hurt), and the most hilarious Twitter feed we know of. Is it too much to hope that this postapocalyptic
John R. MacArthur The turmoil at Harper’s continues. Last week, the Harper’s Union held an online fundraiser that they say raised $50,000 dollars to help keep the magazine from losing staff. (It’s been reported that publisher John R. MacArthur is undecided whether to accept the money, telling Forbes “I don’t want to take money from people of modest incomes, and I certainly don’t want to accept corporate or foundation money that, too often, comes with strings attached.”) Yesterday, Harper’s associate editor Theodore Ross announced on his blog, Dadwagon, that he had accepted a severance package after six years on
Haruki Murakami We’ve just heard that Sheila Heti’s second novel, How Should A Person Be?, has been sold to Henry Holt for publication in summer 2012. We’ve been praising the book since the day we scored a copy from Toronto’s House of Anansi Press this fall, and were puzzled by the seeming lack of stateside interest in publishing it. One Observer article, an excerpt in n+1, and some proclamations of Heti’s talent from literati such as n+1 editor Mark Greif and art critic Dave Hickey and—presto!—as Heti told us in an email: “There were three other houses interested, so
Colm Toibin Three Percent, the organization dedicated to international literature, has announced the nominees for its annual Best Translated Book Awards. Bloomsbury USA has signed an anonymous author to write a tell-all about his illustrious career “helping students cheat.” Ed Dante, as he’s now known, has written term papers for graduate and undergraduate students for years, and will reveal his true identity when his book is published in 2012. The union at Harper’s Magazine attempts to prevent the layoff of Ben Metcalf and others by asking for reader support. Now that Martin Amis is moving to New York, Colm
Parul Sehgal The New York Times is publishing its first e-book, executive editor Bill Keller’s Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy: Complete and Updated Coverage from The New York Times (an essay adapted from the book’s introduction will be published in this Sunday’s Times magazine and is already available online). The book will be available on January 31, at all the major e-book retailers. Keller says “The publication of Open Secrets as an e-book is the latest example of the Times exploiting the creative potential of the Web to deliver the world’s best journalism in whatever format readers
Daniel Bell is dead: The man who famously declared himself “a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture” has passed away at age 91. Bell was central among the New York intellectuals, and one of the era’s last surviving figures. He authored such seminal works as Marxian Socialism in the United States (1952), The End of Ideology (1960), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1978), and with his classmate and friend Irving Kristol, Bell helped found and edit the Public Interest in 1965, eventually departing from the journal when Kristol moved to the political right.
“The Professor Looks At Her,” by Philip Monaghan. To-do list in New York tonight: Go to the Fales Library at NYU to see authors Eileen Myles, David Trinidad, and Brad Gooch celebrate the work of poet Tim Dlugos (1950-1990). Dlugos was the author of the amazing poem “G-9” (named after the AIDS ward at Roosevelt Hospital), and—earlier in his career—a clever and almost mournful riff on Gilligan’s Island, which is the inspiration for a new series of paintings by Philip Monaghan on display in Fales’s gallery. Just when you thought Brooklyn couldn’t get any more literary, Martin Amis and
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, photo by Alex Klein from Dexter Sinister. GalleyCat has created a “mixtape” sampler of links to books nominated for the NBCC awards (announced on Saturday) with free Amazon previews, while the New Yorker’s Book Bench has composed a list of links to profiles, reviews, and other pieces the magazine has run about the finalists. Tonight at St. Mark’s Bookshop, the legendary pandrogynous musician, artist, and writer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge will read from his book Thee Psychick Bible with author Lonley Christopher, whose new story collection The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse was just published by Akashic Books.