Laila Lalami

Today I’m giving away a copy of Tod Goldberg‘s new collection of short stories, Simplify. This is the inaugural title for OV Books, the new imprint put out by Other Voices Magazine. Simplify has been praised by Pam Houston, Aimee Bender, Dan Chaon, and the LA Weekly, and has been generating some good word of mouth.

To make this giveaway a little more interesting, I’m asking that you answer the following question: “What are the titles of Tod’s first two novels?” The first person to email me with a correct answer wins the book. (Please include your mailing address.)

Update: The winner is Laura C. from Chicago.

As has been reported elsewhere, the Authors’ Guild is suing Google Print. The basis of the suit is that:

“This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law,” said the Authors Guild president, Nick Taylor. “It’s not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied.”

The lawsuit demanded the court block Google from copying the books so the authors would not “suffer irreparable harm” by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works.

In its retort, Google claims that:

it only shows brief snippets of pages containing searched-for phrases unless it has permission from owners or copyright laws allow.

“We regret that this group chose to sue us over a programme that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world, especially since any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program,” said the company’s product management vice-president, Susan Wojcicki.

Agree? Disagree? We’d love to hear from you. Please note that I may quote your email on the blog.

Novelist Ernest J. Gaines says that, after Hurricane Katrina, he had to put aside the novel he’s been working on for ten years.

“Since the storm hit, I haven’t done much writing,” says the 72-year-old Gaines, best known for “A Lesson Before Dying” and “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” the imagined life story of a former slave.

Gaines’ stories have focused on personal struggle rather than political themes, and he sees Katrina in a similar way. He is not interested in discussing who is to blame for the tragic flooding. He thinks instead about individual acts of bravery and hopes that displaced hurricane victims, including family members, will return.

Gaines, a Louisiana native, has a collection of stories and essays coming out next month.

And the Word Was
Bruce Bauman
Other Press
350 pp.

In Greek mythology, Castor, son of Zeus and the mortal Leda, was a soldier and champion athlete who was killed in a battle that was not his. In Bruce Bauman’s And the Word Was, Castor is a precocious New York City teenager killed in a Columbine-like school-shooting rampage. Names are important in this book, although the conjured associations are left incomplete. Mythology’s Castor had a twin brother, Pollux, granted immortality by Zeus in compensation for Castor’s death. Here, Castor has no siblings, let alone an immortal twin. In Hindu mythology, Holika, sister of a maniacal king, could not be harmed by fire but still burned to death when the king tried to use her to murder his disloyal son. Here, Holika is a fiery Indian heiress who also finds herself at the center of a palace controversy, but escapes unhurt the fire that incapacitates her corrupt, power-crazed brother.

Neil Downs (the name is a silly pun, given the character’s atheism) is an emergency room physician in New York City. His wife, Sarah, is a modestly successful artist. After their son’s murder (by disaffected students shouting ethnic slurs), and the revelation that Sarah was with another man at the time, Downs runs as far away as he can, and finds that he feels at home in chaotic Delhi, a “city on the verge of collapse.” The U.S. ambassador to India, Charlie Bedrosian, happens to be an acquaintance who feels beholden to Downs for saving the life of his only son, and appears to favor Downs by introducing him to Holika, the niece of a prominent industrialist. But Holika eventually helps Downs see Charlie’s venal motives and the truth about his ties with both her uncle and the CEO of a palm-greasing American conglomerate.

(more…)

This week, Powells.com unveils its Bookcast, an online radio show for book lovers. It’s a nifty idea. I think people who love to read but don’t necessarily like to go to readings or have lengthy discussions about the state of fiction will particularly like it. The first episode features a brief chat with Aimee Bender, book news, a contest, and trivia. The site also includes and RSS feed, so you’ll know when there’s a new installment.

If you live in St Paul, rejoice! Print and online mag Pindeldyboz will host a stellar reading this coming weekend. Here are the details:

Saturday, September 24th
5:00 pm
The Turf Club
1601 University Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104
(651) 647-0486
admission $3
For more information, go to www.pindeldyboz.com

The readers include Alex Lemon, Leonard Pierce, Charles Baxter (yes, that Charles Baxter), Claire Zulkey, Jason DeBoer, and our pal Jim Ruland. Be there.

The LBC unveils its fourth nominee: Elizabeth Poliner’s Mutual Life and Casualty. Hop on over there and see why the book was picked. (I liked it quite a bit, myself.) The LBC also gets a nice mention in a culture column at Business Standard.

UPI reports that the Finnish translation of a book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is missing passages that are critical of Islam.

Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament, said that the Finnish publisher of the book, Otava Publishers, had asked for permission to omit the passage in which she described Mohammed as a ‘pervert and a tyrant’ because it might be found to be offensive by Muslims, Helsingin Sanomat reported.

However, she did not give permission for any such omission.

At Otava, Tero Norkola, head of publishing at the company`s non-fiction department, was unaware of the missing passage when Helsingin Sanomat contacted him. He said that he is certain that Otava did not deliberately order the cut.

I personally don’t agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but I do not believe that her opinions should be excised from any book bearing her name. The case is a little muddy, since the book in question is actually a collection of articles that originally appeared in two different books, but if it turns out to be true, then it’s a clear violation of freedom of speech.

Fareed Zakaria’s getting angry (at last??). In his latest editorial for Newsweek, “Leaders Who Won’t Choose,” he writes:

People wonder whether we can afford Iraq and Katrina. The answer is, easily. What we can’t afford simultaneously is $1.4 trillion in tax cuts and more than $1 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next 10 years. To take one example, if Congress did not make permanent just one of its tax cuts, the repeal of estate taxes, it would generate $290 billion over the next decade. That itself pays for most of Katrina and Iraq.

Not that Bush will listen.

Over at Eight Diagrams, Wayne Yang wonders which of the big literary magazines regularly make it in The Best American Short Stories or in The O. Henry Prize Stories. With BASS, he finds the usual suspects (New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, etc.) but also a very strong showing for Ploughshares. For O. Henry, Wayne finds that the same glossies appear at the top, but Zoetrope: All Story seems to be doing quite well. (Note that the sample sizes differ.)