Laila Lalami

According to these breathless reports and baseless hysteria, some have convinced the American Library Association that under the bipartisan Patriot Act, the FBI is not fighting terrorism. Instead, agents are checking how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel.
Now you may have thought with all this hysteria and hyperbole, something had to be wrong. Do we at the Justice Department really care what you are reading? No.

That’s Attorney-General John Ashcroft, defending his department’s ability to look at library records. Boy, that remark just makes me feel great. Especially when he uses the word “hysteria” in reference to people like the ALA. I mean, aren’t librarians just the kind of people that you think of when you think of hysteria and hyperbole?
Link via H20boro Lib blog.

Bustamante is getting a little creative with the Terminator-who-won’t-debate-others:

The latest ambush came at a candidate debate here Wednesday that featured four prominent candidates sitting next to an empty chair that had been reserved for Schwarzenegger, who has shown no interest in attending any forum but one scheduled for next week in which he and his rivals will know the questions in advance.
After asking repeatedly, “Where’s Arnold?” Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante, the only major Democrat on the recall ballot, proposed that all the leading candidates in the election skip next week’s debate and instead try to embarrass Schwarzenegger by holding their own unscripted session outside of the site where the forum will be held.

Link via Daily Kos.

Anthonia Hodgson’s book, a bestseller in Norway and now in the UK, is running into some PR trouble. The man whose life is chronicled by Hodgson, and who risked his life for years selling books in Kabul, is threatening to sue. Hodgson and Publisher aren’t scared.
Via Publishers’ Lunch.

I have to run to a meeting and then I have to run to a doctor’s appointment. Why don’t you entertain yourselves with this open thread? Use the comments section to post, rant, or link.

This is unsurprising. After all, a good percentage of Americans thought the hijackers were Iraqi (or Ai-raqi, I suppose.) Anyway, David Ploz has a piece in Slate on what you think you know about September 11 but don’t. Check it out.

The Guardian has the latest on Salam Pax’s blog experience and how he became the Baghdad-blogger-with-a-book-deal.

The latest issue of the Missouri Review came in the mail yesterday. It contains the winning story from their contest last year, “Custodian” by Daniel Coshnear. It also has a story by Steve Almond called “Wired for Life”. (By the way, Almond is guesting on Bookslut and he’s got a message for you if you write fiction from the neck up.)

LanguageHat has a post on the lengths to which publishers go to “localize” a novel. If the novel was originally published in Britain, say, some changes might be made prior to its U.S. publication. But in the case of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, the differences seem to go beyong localization efforts. Here are two paragraphs that he cites:

The U.K. version:

…he saw himself as a failure and felt vaguely responsible for this. He was a small man, with very soft, startling black hair and small regular features. Val called him Mole, which he disliked. He had never told her so.

The U.S. version:

…he saw himself as a failure and felt vaguely responsible for this. He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often in these difficult days, into a smile of amused friendliness and pleasure which aroused feelings of warmth, and something more, in many women. He was generally unaware of these feelings, since he paid little attention to what people thought about him, which was part of his attraction. Val called him Mole, which he disliked. He had never told her so.

Why the extensive changes? You’ll have to hop on over to LanguageHat to find out.

And what I’d like to know is: Can I get that on a T-shirt?

The Booker shortlist has been announced: Margaret Atwood, Monica Ali, Damon Galgut, Zoe Heller, DBC Pierre, and Clare Morrall have made the cut. The BBC has brief profiles of the authors.
If you’re in the L.A. area, you can hear Monica Ali read from Brick Lane at Dutton’s Brentwood on Thursday.