Category: publishing

“Scavengers obsessively comb through page after page of Google Books, hoping to stumble upon some glitch that hasn’t yet been unearthed. This phenomenon is most thoroughly documented on a Tumblr called The Art of Google Books, which collects two types of images: analog stains that are emblems of a paper book’s history and digital glitches that result from the scanning.”

“Among this year’s conflicts, presented here in rough chronological order, a few themes emerge: clashes over the function of online literary criticism, questions about gender and literature, and struggles over who controls an artist’s legacy and fortune.”

Sara Marcus: “I remember putting On the Road down the first time a woman was mentioned. I was just like: ‘Fuck. You.'” Emily Witt: “”I read the [coming-of-age novels] by men instead, until I was like, ‘I cannot read another passage about masturbation. I can’t.’ It was like a pile of Kleenex.”

“In particular, the obsession with codifying, regulating, recording, reviewing, verifying, vetting, and chronicling, with assessing achievement, forecasting achievement, identifying weak points, then establishing commissions for planning strategies for regular encounters to propose solutions to weak points, and further commissions empowered to apply for funding to pay for means to implement these solutions, and so on.”

Do you think the editor’s decision to refrain from intervening in the text was an instance of the dereliction of standards in the publishing industry, or was it an indication of lingering prudence and respect for the practice of literature within what the author would invariably refer to as the “military-industrial publishing complex”?

“The moment I unwrapped my present I knew something had gone horribly wrong.”

“Not only did Ms. Kaufman genuinely like writers, but early on, she may have sensed that when one coddles them, one tends to get written about.”

“That impulse — to find out more about minor or secondary characters — has inspired many books over the years.”

“Even mediocre plots have a way of sinking their hooks into you, until you find yourself concerned for the fates of characters who aren’t even fully convincing. But even so, there were moments when I began to doubt the whole enterprise of fiction writing itself.”

Richard Brody: “Her mechanistic view of Eichmann’s personality, as well as her abstract and unsympathetic consideration of the situation of Jews under Nazi rule, reflect her inability to consider the experiences of others from within.”