Public contact listings challenged
A lawyer for Universal Studios is arguing that Everyone Who’s Anyone, Gerard Jones’ compendium of contact information for (and correspondence with) agents, editors, publishers and producers, violates his provider’s anti-spam policies and should be shut down.
Not a SLAPP, exactly, but it still seems like a case of Goliath pounding on David.
The Smart Set: Lauren Cerand’s weekly events
The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that appears Mondays and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please submit details to lauren@maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, with the date of the [...]
Lynne Cheney’s lesbian romp pales in comparison
Lauren Collins surveys Scooter Libby’s fiction: “‘He asked if they should fuck the deer.’ The answer, reader, is yes.” (Via #1.)
What will Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum say?
Update: Sadly for Libby, his publisher, St. Martin’s, has decided not to reprint the book.
Phil Campbell’s asthma-inducing book jacket quest
I’ve said it before, but my friend Phil Campbell’s Zioncheck for President: A True Story of Idealism and Madness in American Politics is a blunt, hilarious assessment of an idealistic and ultimately ill-fated city council bid he managed. Campbell indicts not only his own small-time Seattle campaign but the race-to-the-middle mindset that pervades all [...]
Austin novels
In a review of Karen Olsson’s Waterloo for the Austin-American Statesman, Russell Cobb wrings his hands over an alleged dearth of novels set in Austin. Apparently nobody thought to tell him about James Hynes’ Kings of Infinite Space, one of the best novels published last year. It begins:
One brutally hot summer’s morning, Paul Trilby [...]
Halloween Doré overdose
Spending too much time with Gustave Doré’s drawings actually makes me wistful for my childhood terror of demons. Back then the spirit world seemed so dangerous and immediate, like a place the Devil would emerge from with his scythe and suddenly drag you off to.
The image at the top of this post is taken from [...]
When the press fails, our justice system comes in handy
Digby on the Plame leak investigation:
Can there be any doubt that the Bush administration bet the farm on the idea that the press would keep their mouths shut? And can we all see that they were very close to being right? If Fitzgerald hadn’t been willing to take it to the mat, they would have [...]
No Disgrace for Fiennes
When reports surfaced in January that Ralph Fiennes had signed on to play David Lurie in the film version of Coetzee’s Disgrace, I thought he was too young. Fiennes ended up thinking along the same lines.
“I wrestled with that for a long time, I just felt in the end that I was too young. [...]
Coetzee, and suffering in fiction
In the current New York Review of Books, John Lanchester tracks some of the concerns that have increasingly preoccupied J.M. Coetzee since Disgrace, and considers the function the author character, Elizabeth Costello, serves in the latest novel.
When a writer turns up in his own fiction it is often to pose questions about the arbitrariness and [...]
Writers sought; literacy optional
“Books for people who don’t read books by people who don’t write books.” (Not the actual title, but an apt one proposed by Arts Journal.)
A rejoinder from Dave Weich of Powell’s Books
Earlier this week, I briefly interviewed Dave Weich of Powell’s Books about the store’s dual focus on traditional and Internet customers.
In the exchange, I mentioned that I worry, particularly as neighborhood bookstores (traditional outlets for used books) fall by the wayside, and the cost of new books at the chains continues to skyrocket, [...]
In case you just awoke from a two-week nap
Libby, indicted on five counts, resigns. Rove escapes indictment for now, but the investigation will continue — a situation the right-wing’s favorite talking action-figure Barbie calls the “worst possible scenario” for the White House.
Americablog summarizes the special prosecutor’s press conference as it happens. The upshot: Libby compromised national security and lied about [...]
Not for the squeamish among ye
The diagram of Patrick Hughes’ anal fissure may be the most memorable Breakfast of Champions reference I’ve ever seen.
Details, if you dare, are available in the latest diary of indignities installment.
Related reading: Vonnegut used to sign books with drawings of assholes, but in his later years reportedly declined a signing request, “saying, ‘Too [...]
Friday morning
Annie Reid normally steps in on Fridays. Unfortunately, she’s still technologically challenged and slightly under the weather, so today it’s just you and me — and the stacks of jargon-laden pages that’ll be awaiting me at the day job when I straggle in. (It’s just after 2 a.m. now.)
Until I have a free minute, [...]
As the indictments draw nigh
Alternet compiles The Fitzgerald Investigation Reader.
keep looking »