Remainders: a prize, and questions

March 9, 2005

• This year’s shortlist for the 100,000 euro (£69,000) Impac prize includes works from Jonathan Lethem, Shirley Hazzard and Damon Galgut.

• “Would Dostoevsky have got additional material for The Idiot if he’d had to spend a week mixing with sycophants at the St Petersburg Festival of the Writer?”

• Are left-wing writers bolstering right-wing media consolidation when they publish books with major houses? (Via Mr. Maud.)

• As Edinburgh celebrates its World City of Literature status, The Scotsman asks why Dame Muriel Spark shouldn’t have a statue in her honor. (Okay, J.K. Rowling’s name surfaces, too, but it’s patently ridiculous to call the Harry Potter books literature.)

• No doubt you’ve seen this article mentioned elsewhere, but: does the Orange Prize, awarded to women’s books, aid or belittle women’s fiction? (This reminds me: sometime I need to go back and read all of the dismissive things Charlotte Bronte said about Jane Austen’s writing.)

• Where can I take a look at one of these book-shaped hard drives?

• Who, aside from my mother, really buys this shit?

• Will Oxford University Press’ successfully sell its £7,500 Dictionary of National Biography when it can’t “get the facts right“?

• How can I call myself a Graham Greene fan when I’ve never read his short stories?