Benjamin Schwarz, the Atlantic‘s literary editor, will move the magazine literary editorship to Los Angeles in September. And no, it’s not because of the weather, people. There are actually smart and talented and cool people and ideas in this town.
What’s it like for first-time authors? Alex Williams writes about it in this article. Here’s an excerpt:
“Amy Koppelman had always wanted to be a writer, even after all those years she spent slogging away on a first novel in her closet the only “office” space available in her cramped Upper West Side apartment. (…) For seven years, she hunched over her manuscript, a tale of post-partum depression and infanticide. The work spanned the course of two pregnancies and several thousand nagging doubts. Even after Koppelman, now 33, finally made the cut at Columbia in 1998, the doubts would grow so thunderous that she considered giving up and opening a coffee shop. During the darkest of those spells, she happened across a “Page Six” item in the Post concerning noise complaints in Cindy Crawford’s apartment building; it mentioned in passing that Koppelman’s idol, Joan Didion, served on the building’s board. Although she had never met Didion, Koppelman tracked down the handsome East Seventies prewar and left a copy of her manuscript with the doorman. Tucked in the package was a note, meekly asking Didion if she should just quit altogether. Three days later, Koppelman received a reply on solemn gray stationery that started, “Yes, you are a real writer . . . ” And so Koppelman pressed on. It was only when she tried to sell the book, however, that she learned what it means to be a “real writer” these days.” Read on.
Link via Moby.
California news today is dominated by the talk of the recall of Governor Gray Davis. Recall backers say they’ll turn in 1.5 million signatures to county election offices today, more than enough to force the recall. If the recall does indeed go through, a bunch of Republicans are only too happy to run, with Congressman (and Arab-American) Darrell Issa being the front-runner. I’m weary of the recall. Besides being a huge waste of money and time, I doubt putting Republicans in the governor’s mansion will solve the $38 Billion deficit.
Tim Adams read every novel in last week’s top 10 list to see what makes it rise above the rest. Read ‘em and weep.
Three fiction books by three different Arab/Muslim Americans are reviewed in the Washington Post. The books in question are: Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and West of the Jordan by Laila Halaby. And, as is often the case with “ethnic” fiction, the review is not by a literary critic, but by a scholar in the field, in this case the Post’s Kabul correspondent.
A new survey from the University of Wisconsin (Whitewater) ranks America’s 64 largest cities by their literacy “quotient.” The magic number is crunched from U.S. census data, newspaper circulation rates, library resources, and number of booksellers, among other things. The top city? Minneapolis.
Unsurprisingly, L.A. isn’t in the top 10 or even the top 20. It’s at number 54, tied with Toledo, Ohio (gulp.)
Baghdad blogger Salam Pax has just signed with Atlantic Books in the UK for a book which is described in this report as the “ultimately embedded” account of the invasion of Iraq. Oh, and if you’re an agent who happened here from Salam’s site, feel free to email me.
already. Bush says his claim in last year’s State of the Union address (that Iraq had tried to purchase Uranium from Niger) was cleared by the CIA.
I got sick over the holiday weekend and still not feeling terribly well. Sporadic blogging may ensue.
