Category: publishing

Charles Baxter is an accomplished writer. But he has had less attention than many other writers with his achievements. “Part of the explanation may lie with the label ‘Midwestern’ and the mostly dubious associations it implies that hover over his fiction like, well, storm clouds over the prairie. ‘When others think about Midwesterners, they think: naïve, somewhat simple. Why else would you live here if not for some failure in judgment’?”

Lost in all the breathless coverage of the “blog” phenomenon is the inescapable fact that most blogs are little more than daily lists of mundane personal activities, of interest to no one but the author and the author’s immediate circle of friends, if that. So what’s the point? Maybe that very lack of wide appeal is the point. “The Web is a high-tech gossip network: an entirely public notice board with very private functions. There is something about publishing, even self-publishing, even Web posting, that lends an air of gravity to one’s personal relations; when written, they come to seem more literary, more important.”

It’s “such an interesting time to be writing about writing—or writing about writing for publication, anyway. Thus several recent entries in the books-on-books genre approach, with varying degrees of insight, similar prickly questions about the present state of lit, such as: Is there anything important left to write, or anyone perceptive enough to write it? And does anyone really care anymore, least of all the gluttonous media cartels increasingly footing the bills?”

What are the most valuable first-edition English books? Sotheby’s estimates that the most valuable are Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rab bit (1901) and Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows (1908), which could both fetch £50,000.

What poetry would Australians write? “Recently, a poetry initiative was trialled in selected schools. The intention was to enable students from different social and financial backgrounds to find a common ground in the wonderful world of words. What emerged was a tragic picture of isolated and disaffected youth striking out against the defenceless.”

James Thurber has had official honors. But “despite all this official appreciation, a doubt arises: Is Thurber still being widely read and enjoyed? The nod from the Library of America was meant as a coronation, but nobody can be funny for a thousand pages, and Thurber’s writing—occasional by definition—resists so exhaustive and formal an act of exhumation and canonization. As for the new collection of his letters, your pleasure in it will probably depend on how much of the Thurber literature you’ve been exposed to — I mean the literature about him, not the literature by him.”

Longtime Booker Prize administrator Martyn Goff unloads about various personalities that have been involved in judging over the years. “He recalled how one year Salman Rushdie threw a tantrum, telling Goff to ‘Fuck off’ before storming past. He listed the failings of numerous eminent judges, branding last year’s chairwoman, Lisa Jardine, as ‘bossy’ and accused her colleague, David Baddiel, of saying ‘stupid things’. Gerald Kaufman and Fay Weldon also came under fire, but Goff’s prize for worst-ever Booker chairman went to John Bayley, widower of Iris Murdoch.”

A critic discovers a book re-published without securing rights from the original publisher or author. After tracking down the 93-year-old author, the critic contacts the publisher. “Two weeks ago, it wrote, effusively, to Miss Lovett saying that 7,588 copies of her book had been sold, and that, should she be willing to give retrospective permission, a cheque for $4,530.04 was on its way.”

“Traditionalists, gird your loins, for they have updated Geoffrey Chaucer. From a shortlist of 10 tales they have invited the cream of today’s television writers to create contemporary versions in their own voices but true to the spirit of Chaucer’s original. ‘Chaucer held up a mirror to the 14th century and we intend to do the same for the 21st, exploring themes such as the cult of celebrity, bigotry and the obsession with youth’.”

Tibor Fischer set off a literary storm earlier this month when he slammed Martin Amis’ new book before it had even been published. “Fischer, whose fourth novel, Voyage To The End Of The Room, is published on the same day as Amis’s Yellow Dog, is certainly shrewd enough to know that his column in the Telegraph earlier this month attacking Amis’s novel with apparently unprovoked ferocity would get him talked about far more than any number of press releases for his own; he acknowledged as much in the piece: ‘As a writer, I’m relieved that Amis has produced a novel unworthy of his talent. No one wants a masterpiece knocking around when your own book is looking for attention’.”