News

It was a delightful surprise to find out that Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits has been assigned by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville for its Life of the Mind program in 2006. All incoming freshmen at the university will read my book over the summer, and participate in group discussions during the first week of classes. I’ll also be visiting UT for a reading in the fall.

(Last year’s selection was Mark Haddon’s A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.)

This was a nice way to start off the week: an Oregon Literary Fellowship in fiction.

The New York Times‘ Edward Wyatt reports on Doubleday’s response to the allegations made by The Smoking Gun that large portions of James Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, were made up. In essence, Doubleday thinks Frey’s misrepresentations do not matter, because memoir, as a genre, “is highly personal.” (Didn’t you know facts are personal? Well, now, you know.) Says Wyatt:

Doubleday’s response underscores the gap that has emerged between book publishing and the rest of the media, which in recent years have been under increasing scrutiny over the accuracy of their reporting. Other high-profile media outlets have been criticized for reports whose truth was later questioned, including Stephen Glass’s fabrications at The New Republic, Jayson Blair’s reporting for The New York Times and CBS News’s reporting on President Bush’s National Guard record.

Meanwhile, on Amazon.com, an enterprising reader is suggesting that people send the book back and ask for a refund, because he “wanted non-fiction, not fiction.”

If you’re new to Chinua Achebe, you might like this restrospective on his career, which appeared in the East Africa Standard.

In an essay addressing the decline of reading among college students, Mark Schurmann argues that “literature seems to come from the dysfunctional edges of culture and society” and therefore “it’s society’s outcasts who will continue to treasure and reproduce literature.” Agree? Disagree? Let us know.