That’s about it for me. The lovely and amazing Randa takes over tomorrow, so do check back. Next week is likely to be busy with a wrap-up of the PEN celebrations for the new Best American Short Stories, a post about the election, a review of either Snow or three debut novels that have been sent to us, and of course the usual lit news.
Some 60,000 ballots in a mostly Democratic county have gone missing. Absentee ballots missing the names of John Edwards and John Kerry were mailed to Ohio voters. In Milwaukee, a flyer has appeared that tells people who have had traffic violations they are not eligible to vote. In a break with 80 years of tradition, the New Yorker endorsed a candidate for President. (NYer link from Maud Newton.)
A University of Victoria English professor is scheduled to teach a new course titled “Hockey Literature and the Canadian Psyche.” The class is reportedly full, and a few students are hoping to audit.
Wal-Mart has returned 3,500 copies of George Carlin’s book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops, which were shipped by a distributor. The chain hadn’t placed an order for the book, presumably in an effort to protect its fragile audience from good comedy. Last week, Wal-Mart also cancelled orders for John Stewart’s America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction.
Tod Goldberg, who’s been guesting at TEV these past few days, provides this dead-on impression of Bookworm‘s Michael Silverblatt
Michael: Tod, in your transcendent novel Living Dead Girl, you stretch the boundaries of fiction in such a way that the world seems to lack…order…and love, like that poem by Rilke, becomes something like an infection of the soul, a commentary on the socio-economic role we all play in that God and money and danger and the all-encompassing nature of what I like to call “the bukakke” becomes almost a parable from the Bible; or a tone poem; or perhaps it’s like a song you hear on the day your dog dies and that song become synonymous with the death of your dog, until dog, becomes…God. Is that what you were trying to do?
Tod: Uh. Yes.
Silverblatt will be interviewing Dan Chaon today at 2:30 PST.
Francisco Goldman was interviewed on NPR about his new novel, The Divine Husband, which is so far getting rave reviews.
When Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty won the Booker last week, nearly every headline mentioned it was a ‘gay novel’. He talked to The Telegraph about his reactions.
Does he mind? “It really took me back, I have to say,” he says, fumbling to pour our tea through a dainty silver strainer. “I thought we’d gone beyond that sort of talk. I think when newspapers give you those sort of headlines they’re really trying to create a shock which isn’t there. The book’s principal character is gay, of course, but that’s really only one part of the story.”
People love to put labels on writers, it makes things neat and simple. In “Entr’acte,” the article I posted earlier about book prizes, there was this little snippet about this year’s NBA:
This year, the jurors for the National Book Award for fiction provoked groans by shortlisting five little-known women writers living in New York City, two of them first-time novelists. Further, of the five novels, none had sold more than 2,500 copies before it was shortlisted.
Sure, they’re little known writers, but what does their being women have to do with anything?
A piece by Ghanaian poet Nii Ayikwei Parkes will be available on iTunes, making him the first African poet on the service.
Alan Riding files an article about “book award season” as he calls it–the Nobel, Booker, NBA–and asks who benefits from the prizes. The authors, sure, but mostly the publishers, who are eager to sell more copies, and who go to great lengths to court juries. Riding cites a new book by a French journalist, which alleges that prizes are nothing more than scams.
Guy Konopnicki, claims the Goncourt is the most blatant example of conflict of interest: he says that it bends to pressure from publishers (who nominate books for consideration) and that some jurors are themselves writers with close ties to leading publishers. Further, the jurors, appointed for life and in some cases in their eighties, are out of touch with public taste.
I doubt the problem is restricted to the Goncourt, and given the current trend, we can’t be too far from the Harveyization of publishing. Somewhere, a lowly assistant is probably working on putting together gift bags for jurors.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has recalled its ambassador to Belgium after critical remarks made by the Belgian foreign minister ruffled feathers, the BBC reports.
While visiting Africa, Mr de Gucht said Congolese politicians were unable to introduce democracy or end corruption. (…) Henri Mova Sakanyi said in a statement that the minister was treating Belgium’s former colonies like children and was “completely ignorant of the basic rules of diplomacy”.
The comments border on “racism and nostalgia for colonialism”, the minister said. “It’s Tintin in the Congo all over again.”
Thanks to Jonathan for the link.
