Happy New Year
Tomorrow I leave for Florida — mostly the Tampa/St. Pete area this time. I’ll try to pre-post a few things, and I may drop in once or twice, but it’ll stay fairly quiet around here until the 10th or so.
I hope you all have a wonderful 2006. Thanks, as always, for [...]
Jesus meets free love
My stepfather and some other people I know — used to know, anyway — were in the Children of God before they joined my mother’s church. So was River Phoenix. No one ever explained to me precisely what this meant.
Now, thanks to some surviving tracts unearthed here, I can express [...]
Eulogy for a book designer
“For years, I belonged to a book club that had only two members: me and a person I’d never met, Fred Marcellino,” says Michael Bierut.
[He's] is not a designer whose name you hear much these days. Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger, the authors of By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design, stop short — [...]
What inspired Kipling
David Morphet writes about his discovery, in a Bombay graveyard, that Rudyard Kipling’s Lurgan Sahib (from Kim) wasn’t as fictional as most people think.
The claim finds support in some 1961 notes from the Kipling Society’s Readers’ Guide to the Works of Rudyard Kipling, and elsewhere.
Turkey on Pamuk: one law, two sides of mouth
Turkey admits that the ongoing prosecution of Orhan Pamuk has “tarnished its image,” and says it will not bring new charges against the writer for allegedly “insulting the military” on a more recent occasion. It will, however, allow the current prosecution to proceed.
“If necessary we can change these laws [that make insulting Turkey a [...]
Your britches, now subway contraband
The proprietor of
Will your book sell?
Astonishingly, statisticians have not yet been able predict the success of a book with 100% certainty, despite rigorous extrapolations from bestselling titles.
This year’s runaway bestseller [The Da Vinci Code] should have had only a 36% chance of reaching the charts, according to Alvai Winkler and his team. Their model fits work by some topselling authors [...]
Shitty proofreading, circa 1869
This excerpt from Mark Twain’s 1869 letter to Elisha Bliss reveals that the incompetent proofreader has a long and venerable history.
I wish you would have MY revises revised again & look over them yourself & see that my marks have been corrected. A proof-reader who persists in making two words (& sometimes even compound [...]
Remainders
The world celebrates the centenary of Samuel Beckett’s birth next year. (Via Bookslut.)
Search for words by concept with the One Look Reverse Dictionary.
Translator Edith Grossman and Cuban novelist Mayra Montero interview each other. “I’m curious: How did you feel when you first read my translation of your work into English?” Grossman asks. “As though [...]
Innovators and sorcerers need not apply
In the current (print) issue of Poets & Writers, David Hollander (L.I.E.) takes a hard look at the MFA system that rejected one of his most talented undergraduate writing students.
“What is it, Hollander?” the student wrote. “Because I just got my last rejection notice, and I’m sick of digging holes for a [...]
Reading Hunter S. Thomson amid the Moral Majority
As a high school student in Mississippi, Donna Tartt worshipped Hunter S. Thompson, dragging his books everywhere, listing him as a reference and naming him the beneficiary of her life insurance policy. But she also devoted time to writing and winning essay contests sponsored by right-wing organizations.
She explains the paradox in the current [...]
Still more 2005 books
I wrote about some of my favorite fiction of 2005 in the weekend’s Newsday. (Scott McLemee, Laurie Muchnick, James Marcus, and Maureen Corrigan also contributed selections.)
But the best (quasi-)new book I read this year was a reprint (outside the scope of the Newsday assignment). I’ve said more about it, and listed other 2005 [...]
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 [...]
Happy holidays
As the gentile holiday approaches, my parent-estrangement holiday guilt has commenced in earnest, so it’s time for me to sign off until early next week.
I’ll leave you with Mark Twain’s observations about St. Nick and Christmas, and his Christmas Greeting of 1890.
Ms. Annie Reid, who normally takes over this site on Fridays, [...]
Inner Housewife, Strawfeminist, and other action figures
Given my heritage, I’m willing to bet five bucks that I never had an inner housewife.
If I did, she up and left years ago — see evidence above — maybe during the converted motel period, when I usually ate off of napkins to avoid doing dishes. (The water I covered them with [...]