Remains of the day
John Burnside on the struggle between writerly artifice and unvarnished truth in the memoirist’s art.
The Independent interviews the Irish writer Edna O’Brien.
Because I’m still feeling obsessed with the internet and censorship, I give you a blast from the past: in this BoingBoing post, which is three years old, but still hilarious, Xeni Jardin [...]
Copyright wars
The Columbia Journalism Review premieres this excellent piece on “the instability of the copyright system in a digital age.” (Via Bookninja.) And why should we care? Because, as Siva Vaidhyanathan puts it,
….in recent years — thanks to the ferocious mania to protect everything and the astounding political power of media companies — [...]
Getting tired of fighting the good fight
The LA Times reports on the hard, touching life of Delta librarian Ronnie Wise:
People just don’t realize the stress of a Mississippi librarian’s life, he says. People don’t understand what it takes to keep those front doors open  or what’s at stake if you don’t. Reading, Wise believes, is life. Illiteracy, therefore, is [...]
Flying the unfriendly skies
A New Yorker Talk of the Town item reports that two gay men were asked to stop being affectionate to one another aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to New York. When the men (and surrounding witnesses) protested the treatment, asking if a heterosexual couple would be treated in the same fashion, the [...]
Nice and slow
I admit that it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish my pornographic imagination from Maud’s, but it’s Annie here, reporting that the Kinsey’s Institute’s International Encyclopedia of Sexuality is slated to go online, in stages, over the next six months or so. Because it’s always a little more fun if they don’t take if [...]
Thursday afternoon miscellany
When your latest no-holds-barred anal sex film is a lesser draw at its opening than the unlikely appearance of your reclusive writer uncle, maybe it’s time to put your panties back on. (Via.)
The new terror bill and its predecessor, the Patriot Act, prompt Dahlia Lithwick to wonder whether “there shouldn’t be a mandatory three-month cooling-off [...]
Promotions create new excuses for today’s bookshop workers
Kay Richardson spends his nights roving from pub to pub, stopping to pee in people’s rose gardens, and trying not to get thrown out of youth hostels.
Now, to his surprise, he’s landed a job at a central London bookstore. He declines to identify it by name but has (helpfully? misleadingly?) posted the [...]
King Solomon, funny man
While working on my novel, I’ve had to reimmerse myself in various translations of the Bible. And I’ve realized something completely unexpected: the book of Proverbs, while mostly a dreary trail of exhortations to be good and work hard and beat your children regularly, can actually be funny.
Just imagine these nuggets [...]
Today, and tonight
Sorry, guys. Busy week. But I’ll be at Housing Works tonight at 7 p.m. for a discussion about blogging and book reviewing, and “what happens when the two intersect.” Lizzie Skurnick (Old Hag), Laurie Muchnick (Newsday), and Frank Wilson (The Philadelphia Inquirer and Books, Inq.) are the other panelists. John Freeman of the National [...]
Monday afternoon remainders
Toni Morrison guest-curates the Louvre from November 6 – December 11. (Image of Morrison at the museum taken from the Louvre website.)
Demystifying Kafka’s hometown.
The Chicago Manual of Style marks its anniversary with an online version.
Margaret Atwood’s long-distance signing apparatus works this time. (And Bookninja’s George Murray gives the Frankenhand a try.)
Jasper Rees talks [...]
The Smart Set: Lauren Cerand’s weekly events
The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30pm 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 send details to lauren@maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, with the [...]
Bush, Katrina, and tea parties; cookies and war protests
And while I’m on a political tear, a friend writes in to denounce the “toweringly witless lede” of a New York Times Book Review piece that very nearly led me to throw my computer across the room yesterday morning.
“What sort of tonedeaf [redacted],” says my friend, “calls the Katrina response ‘distressingly belated,’ as though [...]
First “m,” now “n”: Allen to go through epithet alphabet?
George Allen, a Republican Senate candidate from Virginia, recently mocked an American citizen of Indian ancestry who worked as a videographer for Allen’s rival and was (as is now common in campaigns) filming Allen’s “listening tour.”
Allen referred to S. R. Sidarth as “Macaca” and then welcomed him “to America and the real world [...]
Amitava Kumar, disinvited from Rushdie event, posts prepared remarks
As Salman Rushdie’s most recent novel, Shalimar the Clown, appeared, Amitava Kumar (above) wrote a review that began: “Is Salman Rushdie God? That is the question people think you are asking and they try to set you right. When all you have done is ask whether Salman Rushdie is good.”
Perhaps it was this [...]
Bill Clinton v. Fox News
Hot diggity dog. Bill Clinton smacks down Fox News’ Chris Wallace — and Fox more generally — when asked why he didn’t do more to hunt down Osama bin Laden during his time in office.
I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network… ABC [...]