It’s become a bit of a tradition. Every year, before the Nobel Prize in Literature is announced, people start throwing around the name of Syrian poet Adonis (or Adunis). They did it in 2003. And in 2004. And now in 2005. I’m tired of getting disappointed every time. I’m just going to assume it’s NOT going to be Adonis this year.
Over at The Stranger, Christopher Frizelle offers: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at ‘On Beauty’.”
Simon Blackburn’s Truth has been on my TBR pile for weeks. I’m still reading for work at the moment, but hope to finally relax in a couple of weeks and start going through the books. Anyway, this NPR piece on the book revived my interest.
NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to librarian Nancy Pearl about her favorite short story collections, two of which are perennial favorites among my writer friends: Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America and T.C. Boyle’s After the Plague.
Publisher Richard Nash counters the argument posted yesterday regarding the Authors’ Guild vs. Google Print lawsuit.
I participate in Google Print for Publishers, where I do get kicked back some of the moolah, in exchange for them allowing larger snippets of text.
The money, he says, is negligible so far. He also adds:
From a legal standpoint: the fact that Google is For Profit does not eliminate the Fair Use argument. That is but one of the tests Congress established and that the Supreme Court has explored. Soft Skull is ‘for profit’ and we quote other books in the books we sell. So if we make $0.0000003 off someone else’s book we’re not going to pay royalties. Google simply happens to be aggregating a vast number of close-to-but-not-quite worthless books and I’m thrilled they’ve the resources to do this, because no one else has. And, because they’re conveniently using the Fair Use argument, nothing will stop others from aggregating that content also.
We all make money (or sometimes not, but we try) creating culture. Libraries may not, but I do, and Oxford University Press does. The culture product is incidental of course! Google is simply greasing the process of making culture products available the fact that that is incidental to their goal, doesn’t make it any less real that it is useful.
For earlier comments on the lawsuit, see this and this.
Tingle Alley and Rake’s Progress top off their weeklong conversation about The People of Paper by inviting author Salvador Plascencia and editor Eli Horowitz to answer their questions.