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Getting the Word Out

post from The Millions on 03 November 2009 04:16:36 PM. © The Millions

In his write up here of an important, but overlooked essay on copyright by Lewis Hyde, guest contributor Craig Fehrman noted that the Hyde essay had been downloaded only 746 times in nearly four years. Now, after the piece here about it, and subsequent linking by Boing Boing, the essay is the second most [...]

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rd-out.html

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Castellanos Moya on the Bolaño Bubble, Part Two

post from The Millions on 03 November 2009 04:09:37 PM. © The Millions

Horacio Castellanos Moya, the author of Senselessness [review], again tackles the commodification of Roberto Bolaño, this time in a lengthy piece in Guernica. “It’s the landlords of the market,” he writes, “who decide the mambo that you dance.”

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America's Top Cellphone Novelist

post from mediabistro.com: GalleyCat on 03 November 2009 03:23:43 PM. © mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Today the twenty semifinalists were announced in the "Next Best Celler" contest, a search for the best cellphone novel on a serialized writing site.

The contest is being held on the cellphone literature site TextNovel, a socially networked community created by Soper Literary Agency. The shortlist was created by counting total votes and subscriptions by readers. Dorchester Publishing editors will determine the ten finalists by November 16th, and choose a winner early next year.

The most popular book on the shortlist was written by Lillie Spencer, who has racked up hundreds of votes for her cellphone novel-in-progress, "Manhunt." Here's the ultimate prize: "The winner will receive the $2,000 prize as an advance and a publishing contract with Dorchester."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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A FINE MESS

post from About Last Night on 03 November 2009 02:29:00 PM. © About Last Night

"The main problem with Homer & Langley is that it fails to bring the Collyers to fictional life, mainly because Doctorow is unable to supply a dramatically convincing account of how and why they became hermits and compulsive hoarders. Their retreat into the twilight world of madness is simply something that happens bit by bit. Needless to say, this may be what actually happened to them--real life is rarely as neat as art--but it is not the stuff of which compelling novels are made, especially when they're written in the etiolated, blandly coy prose to which Doctorow has accustomed us..."

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Bookbinders' Row

post from Light reading on 03 November 2009 02:26:00 PM. © Light reading

Matthew Battles on Daniel Lord Smail's account of the street address as meme in early modern France. I haven't read On Deep History and the Brain - sounds well worth a look, anyway...

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GalleyCat Mingles with Library Lions

post from mediabistro.com: GalleyCat on 03 November 2009 02:23:26 PM. © mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

"Press? I could tell by your clothes..." sniffed one greeter at the New York Public Library's black-tie Library Lions gala last night, analyzing this GalleyCat editor's corduroy jacket, wrinkled slacks, and uncharacteristically snazzy leather shoes. The guests sipped cocktails in a lavishly decorated salon inside the library, the room decked out with candles, ten-foot-tall floral arrangements, and a paparazzi crew. For one glitzy night, NYC high society dined alongside media moguls like Si Newhouse and novelists like Colson Whitehead.

Once inside, this GalleyCat editor quizzed guests about the one thing that really matters in this world: books. Actor, author and host John Lithgow recalled his favorite library book: "At my library in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I checked out the entire short works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," he recalled. "It was great storytelling."

Author Fran Lebowitz reminisced about checking out a John O'Hara book with her mother's library card. The librarian forced the young reader to call her mother to confirm that she could check out the racy title: "She didn't care!" exclaimed Lebowitz. "That ruined my mother's reputation at that library."

continued...

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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TT: Very strange bedfellows

post from About Last Night on 03 November 2009 01:42:00 PM. © About Last Night

I've been keeping an amused eye on the books, CD, and DVDs purchased by people who order an advance copy of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong from Amazon. Some, like The Skeptic, Gary Giddins' Satchmo, and Robin Kelley's new biography of Thelonious Monk, seem reasonably plausible. Others are...well, less so.Here are some of the items that have been paired with Pops on Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" module:? Brian Kellow's Ethel Merman: A Life? Bob Dylan's Christmas in the Heart? Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective? Douglas G. Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America? Dave Eggers' Zeitoun? The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2? William Maxwell: Early Novels and Stories? Michael Burleigh's Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism? Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War? The Letters of Noël CowardAnd here's the weirdest co-purchase of all:? James Wood's How Fiction Works

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"Like a long fat leech"

post from Light reading on 03 November 2009 01:13:00 PM. © Light reading

At More Intelligent Life, Tom Shone considers what happens when novelists sober up. (Courtesy of The Rumpus.)

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A NaNoWriMo Home Base for New Yorkers

Yesterday, we shared some tips from a toolbox for National Novel Writing Month participants no matter where they may be—but here's an opportunity of special significance to GalleyCat readers in the New York City area: The Center for Fiction is opening up its Writers' Studio at 40% off the usual membership fees. The Studio is located on the top floor of the Center's midtown headquarters, and members can make use of "a desk, a personal locker, access to an up-to-date reference library, comfortable chairs, electrical outlets for portable and laptop computers, wireless access to the internet, access to a refreshment lounge located on the premises, and all the privileges of general membership—including access to our 75,000 volume library, discounts at our bookstore, and marked down tickets for all our events, reading groups and writing workshops."

Membership options extend from an evenings-and-weekends plan (usually $100/month) to full access from 9 a.m. to midnight or 6 p.m. on weekends ($130); to snag the discount any time this month, email programming director Kristin Henley and put "NaNoWriMo" in the subject line.

Meanwhile, here's some of the best advice for NaNoWriMo participants we've seen yet, from Merlin Mann: "Read the next sentence out loud to yourself three times. No, do it: When I?m reading about writing, I?m not writing." As Mann points out, the top habit of amazing writers is pretty simple: "They write."

(Note: Senior editor Ron Hogan curates a reading series at the Center for Fiction.)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Hynes’ Aspern Papers: one for the Hollywood
wish list

James Hynes, literary-horror storyteller extraordinaire, writes to second The Aspern Papers love — and reveals that he once wrote a screenplay based on the Henry James novella.

“It got kicked around by a few people in the film biz (the way a cat kicks around a piece of prey before he snaps its neck),” he says, “but nothing ever came of it, and I never saw a dime from it. But it was fun to do. It’s a great piece of storytelling.”

Reaffirmation, just in case your conviction was flagging, that Hollywood has no taste.

The image is of Agnes Moorehead in the 1947 Aspern Papers adaptation The Lost Moment, which I haven’t seen but will track down now.

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http://maudnewton.com/blog/?p=9650

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