Category: publishing

So will New York Times’ coverage of culture change under new exective editor Bill Keller? He’s said to have a healthy interest in culture and can be expected to take it seriously. He “takes over with a Raines-named troika newly in charge of the NYT’s cultural coverage. In October 2002, former foreign correspondent Steven Erlanger was anointed culture editor; in January of this year, cultural kahuna Frank Rich was given even more power; and, just two weeks later, 28-year-old Jody Kantor, the New York editor for the online magazine Slate, was named editor of Arts & Leisure.”

“The posthumous publication of new work by great writers might properly be considered a religious rather than a literary event. When previously unpublished work appears, as has happened in recent years, by Ernest Hemingway, Robertson Davies, Lucy Maud Montgomery, I.B. Singer or Albert Camus, readers momentarily convince themselves that they are witnessing a miracle: He (or She) has risen. Hallelujah! It’s an irrational reaction, of course, but how else to explain the rapture and awe such publishing events engender? Never mind that not everything a great writer ever scribbled — her notes, letters, laundry lists — is worth publishing.”

The seemingly forced resignation of Greg Gatenby from Toronto’s Harbourfront Literary Festival is unfortunate, says Philip Marchand, since Gatenby was one of the few people left in the publishing world who truly understood the importance of nurturing intellectualism, even to the point of occasional absurd pretentiousness. But his ouster is only the latest sign in the Canadian book industry’s 15-year slide towards irrelevance and oblivion. Increasing consolidation of publishing houses and the demise of countless independents has taken its toll, and while there are a few positive signs, the industry is a shadow of its former self.

This week, a huge literary festival gets underway in, of all places, the sleepy tourist town of Parati, Brazil. The festival, which aims to promote Brazilian literature to the world, was organize by Liz Calder, a London editor who has been vacationing in Parati for a decade. Certainly, the resort atmosphere is one of the big draws for the authors and intellectuals participating in the festival, but Calder insists that the event will raise the profile of Brazilian authors worldwide. Still, not everyone in Brazil’s literary world is happy, and some are claiming that Calder is only promoting the Brazilian authors whom her employer publishes.

“Writers, publishers and cultural critics have long lamented the difficulty of interesting American readers in translated literature, and now some say the market for these books is smaller than it has been in generations.” Even small university presses which have specialized in the world literature market are cutting back or pulling out of the genre altogether, and literary experts say that such narrowing of the range of available books in the US is nothing short of a crisis. Not only does the dearth of titles in translation mean that there is less for Americans to read, it also has a profound impact on the ability of foreign authors to get their books translated into other languages.

With the increased interest in personal memoirs of ordinary people, the market has become saturated with autobiographies that read like novels, astounding tales of people overcoming terrible childhoods and debilitating diseases to become happy, productive adults. But is anyone fact-checking these tales of personal heroism? A recently released memoir by James Frey has a number of reviewers questioning whether many of the events he describes could have actually occurred. Frey hasn’t bothered to defend himself too heavily, either: “I wrote what was true to me and true to the experience,” he said recently. “If people want to pick the facts apart, they can.”

Stephen Williams, the Canadian author who has sold 37,000 copies of his book Karla: A Pact With The Devil since it was released five months ago, is suing publisher Pierre Turgeon and his bilingual publishing house, Cantos, claiming that Williams has been paid only a fraction of what he is due from the book’s proceeds. The book in question, which examines the case of a notorious Canadian serial killer, has been exceedingly controversial, and was at one point thought to be in violation of a gag order issued in the case. Turgeon claims that the controversy has hurt sales, and denies that the book has turned a profit.

Let’s say you’re writing down a quotation of a sentence fragment, and you want to continue your sentence after the quoted material. On which side of the closing quotation mark do you place your comma? Who cares, right? Thousands upon thousands of writers, editors, and other word geeks care, as it turns out, and with the new 15th edition of the legendary Chicago Manual of Style set to hit shelves soon, we can all nitpick to our hearts’ content.

If every generation has a hallmark literary style, Generation X has certainly laid claim to the autobiographical essay. But the all-about-me style is not just an American phenomenon. A new generation of German writers are making a name for themselves with a similar style. “World War II and the Holocaust are no longer the dominant themes in these existential tales by the young writers. Instead, they are writing about the role of the artist after the fall of the wall, the life of the immigrant and, obsessively it seems, about the elusive nature of happiness. Some wonder if fiction should not have a longer memory.”

Is there anyone left who hasn’t written their memoirs? Autobiography is a time-honored literary tradition, but lately, it seems as if anyone and everyone believes that their own life is so fascinating that the world cannot survive another minute without having it committed to paper. Linton Weeks is not a big fan of the trend: “I feel that the memoir is the genre of our generations. The Me Decades are stretching out into the Memoir Millennium. The I’s have it.”