Category: words

• Writers are upset about Contentville, which went online July 5. The site offers “books, articles, TV transcripts and old speeches, for sale starting at $2.95 each,” but “some publishers are shocked at Contentville’s chutzpa. The Village Voice says it licensed EBSCO to use content for educational and research purposes. ‘It’s outrageously unethical. Nobody ever dreamed of this. It’s just gross.'” – Feed

• — the new U.S. poet laureate. First published more than 70 years ago, Kunitz, now 95, has won almost every poetry award (including the Nobel in 1959 to the National Book Award in 1995), although he’s only published a handful of books. “I write poems only when I cannot escape them, when it is so urgent I will sacrifice everything else to do it.” A new Kunitz collection is due out next year. – NPR  [Real audio file]

Two years ago a husband/wife team published a version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” in Latin. It was an unexpected hit. Now they’re back with “The Cat in the Hat.” “Of course, unless you’re fluent in the language of Cicero and Nero, it’s hard to judge the playfulness of such lines as: ‘At tunc quies est erepta!/ Tota domus est correpta/ Tum tumultu, tum fragore!’ In the original English version, those same lines, about the first appearance of the Cat, go this way: ‘And then something went bump!/ How that bump made us jump!/ We looked!’ ” – Chicago Tribune

Last week over 2000 female writers, aspiring writers, agents and publishers attended the 20th Annual Romance Writers of America Conference. “These nice ladies are actually serious pros – just looking at them, you can tell who makes the really big money, and who writes the nasty sex scenes and who doesn’t. We’re talking some of the best research and writing craft on the shelves.” – Washington Post

James Joyce’s grandson wants to stop the staging of a musical adaptation of Joyce’s “Ulysses.” “Stephen Joyce has threatened legal action over the production of Molly Bloom, A Musical Dream, which is due to be premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.” – BBC

Stanley Kunitz will be named America’s new Poet Laureate. What a birthday present – he turns 95 today. The nonagenarian is the 10th laureate in an impressive succession. He follows in the wake of Robert Penn Warren, Howard Nemerov, Mona Van Duyn, Rita Dove and Robert Hass. Robert Pinsky has been poet laureate for the last three years. – Washington Post

Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, Philip Roth, John Updike – they’re all old and they’re all American. “But they have two further features in common. First, they are all prophetic; they map, analyse and judge the condition of their nation and they consider its future. Second, they are, in this, completely unlike any British writers. We simply do not have a single writer of stature who feels obliged to tell our national story. – Sunday Times (UK)

Louis de Berniere, author of the best selling novel “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin,” says the main character of his book is purely fictional. But An 89 year-old Italian veteran, who wartime experiences seem to uncannily match those of the fictional Captain Corelli, speaks out, saying the author was not only rewriting history, but is a racist to boot. – BBC

HarperCollins cuts off deliveries of books to Chapters, Canada’s largest bookstore chain, says National Post. Chapters owes as much as $11- million in unpaid bills dating back to 1999, and there are fears the superstore bookseller may be in deep financial distress. – National Post (Canada)

• SO MUCH FOR THE EVIL EMPIRE: “The bankruptcy of Chapters would be a calamity that might set publishing back two decades. One publisher told me this week that about four out of five Canadian publishing houses will go under if Chapters goes bankrupt.” National Post (Canada)

Translating devices are making their appearance, helping to bridge the communication gap between languages. Or do they? A writer takes one of the devices for a spin: “The bear nut/mother attacked and bit the attendant into the legs, levers and the basin area.” – Feed