Category: publishing

Wanna read some really bad writing about sex? Here are excerpts from the shortlisted nominees for the Bad Sex award. We’d print some samples, but we’re… well… too bashful.

Dale Peck on the decline of modern writing: “Even allowing for the fact that any living literary community produces its fair share of James Fenimore Coopers and Pearl S. Bucks and Henry Millers and that it takes time to separate the chaff from the wheat; and even taking into consideration the theory that cinematic and virtual media have displaced the printed word as the dominant narrative forms, and that the novel and its grown-too-big-for-its-britches sibling, the memoir, are only occasionally profitable anachronisms; and even recognizing that literacy standards and technological advances have made it theoretically feasible for just about anyone to write and publish a book–even considering all these factors, the number of Stepford novels that are written, published, reviewed, and read every year is completely out of control.”

“Phyllis Grann, who oversaw a virtual assembly line of blockbuster books as chief executive of Penguin Putnam but later lasted just six months as the vice chairwoman of Random House Inc., is returning to Random House in a new capacity.” Grann had told acquaintances that her time at Random House was “deeply unsatisfying,” due largely to the lack of real responsibility that came with the job because of the autonomy enjoyed by Random House’s various imprints. “In her new role, as a senior editor of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, Ms. Grann is expected to acquire and edit as many as 10 books a year, both fiction and nonfiction.”

“The Literary Review’s Bad Sex Prize, which reaches the parts other prizes can only moan about, was won last night by the Indian author Aniruddha Bahal, for his novel Bunker 13. His publishers, Faber and Faber, flew him in from Delhi to receive his statuette.”

Bangladeshis in East London are complaining that Monica Ali’s Booker-nominated first novel, Brick Lane portrays their neighborhood unfairly. “It is a completely stereotypical view of Bangladeshis living in Brick Lane and one we simply do not recognise. The book says we got here by jumping ships and it says we have lice and live like rats in their holes. These comments are simply untrue and hurtful.”

There are nine announced contenders for the Democratic nomination for president, and as of this week, all nine have either written a book or had one written about them. “Some are good, some are bad. Some are thick, some are thin. Some are short, some are shorter. Some are direct, some are long-winded. And that goes for their books, too.” But seriously, when exactly did published authorship become a necessity of a serious presidential campaign? And what makes them think that we’re interested in reading their largely predictable tomes?

Just how did Lynne Truss’ book about the joys of grammar hit the bestseller list? “The book tells you the rules, but is also full of jokes and anecdotes. ‘It is a sort of celebration of punctuation. You can’t help cheering it on, because it has done such a good job in its humble way.’ She speaks of the delights of the semi-colon with relish. She has listened to ‘the man from the Apostrophe Protection Society’ (yes, it exists) but does not sound like a member of any such group.”

Charged up, partisan political books are all over the best-seller lists these days. “There’s never been a time before when partisan books not only dominated the best-seller lists but also showed this kind of staying power.”

It’s been a year since Poetry Magazine was given $100 million. “Over the last 12 months, the euphoria within the organization over what is believed to be the largest gift to a literary group — and which effectively guarantees in perpetuity the survival of the monthly founded 91 years ago in Chicago — has been undercut by the prosaic details of managing new wealth and responsibly employing it in the service of poetry. For some staffers, the excitement over a submission by a promising new poet has competed with the tedium of long meetings on legal, accounting and investment issues.”

The New York Times Book Review is looking for a new editor. “In looking forward, the Times might want to look back—to what was widely agreed to be the Book Review’s golden age, from 1971 to 1975, under the editorship of John Leonard. Nostalgia is obviously a perilous emotion, but in this case, the golden years prove to be more than just the gilt of yesteryear. They provide a useful model for what tomorrow’s Book Review could look like—should it choose to.”