On July 30, Kevin Morrissey, the managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, took his own life. Following that, questions were raised about how the award-winning literary magazine, which is affiliated with the University of Virginia, has been run under editor Ted Genoways. Most have questioned how the magazine spent its money, and some have debated whether Genoways was a “bully” in the workplace. But no one predicted that the small-print-run journal would cancel its winter issue and close its offices—or that it would become national news. That this is happening a month after Morrissey’s death suggests that the journal’s problems—financial and/or interpersonal—are still
John Clare In the past couple of weeks big-name agents like Andrew Wylie and authors like Seth Godin have used e-books to challenge traditional publishing, making us protectively clutch our paperbacks. At Digital Book World, Emily Williams examines the crucial questions of copyright and contracts in the emerging battle to control the e-book future, while at The Atlantic, Tim Carmody looks back at “10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books.” The latest craze of the heady e-book era, the Kindle 3, is out now and earning rave reviews; John Naughton explains why this version of Amazon’s e-reader will thrive: “Looks Don’t Count for Everything.” There’s no need to explain:
A Penguin/Odyssey Editions title Following Random House’s e-book deal with Andrew Wylie earlier this week, Penguin is now negotiating with the super-agent about digital rights to books in Wylie’s direct-to-Amazon Odyssey Editions. Insiders speculate that the deal with Random house nets up to 40 percent for backlist titles by Wylie’s clients (a significant raise from the old 25 percent rate). According to the website The Bookseller, Wylie’s DIY Odyssey imprint has been whittled down from twenty titles to seven—if negotiations with Penguin succeed, there will be only a handful of titles from his e-book gambit left. Over at the Huffington Post, Jodi Picoult and Jennifer
Alberto Caeiro da Silva, one of Fernando Pessoa’s many aliases. Rick Gekoski’s article about the Man Booker Prize gives you a real sense of the importance of British literary awards—or perhaps just the self-importance of authors nominated for them. Either way, the famously malcontent author Thomas Bernhard would have a field day mocking the pompousness (though he’d probably pocket the prize money anyway). Music fans will have the satisfaction of seeing Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards read from his forthcoming autobiography, Life, at the New York Public Library on October 29th, leaving us to wonder not just how he’s survived this long, but
Andrew Wylie, photo by Eamonn McCabe Standoff ends: It was only a month ago that literary agent Andrew Wylie, in a challenge to publishers who resisted negotiating new terms with authors over e-book rights, announced his own e-publishing venture called Odyssey Editions and offered exclusively on Amazon twenty backlist titles ($9.99 each) by his clients, including Lolita, Invisible Man, and Portnoy’s Complaint. Whether Wylie’s move was a bluff, a taunt, or an earnest expansion of his business, Random House wasted no time in responding, ceasing all new English-language business with the tony lit agency. This was undoubtedly uncomfortable for both parties, and yesterday Wylie
John Ashbery As the rave reviews of Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Freedom, pour in (“Masterpiece of American fiction,” “Novel of the Century,” etc.) and the backlash begins (though you can’t buy the book yet), Lorin Stein blogs at The Atlantic about what it means for the future of literary fiction (and the companies that publish it). Stein knows the territory well; he worked for Franzen’s publisher, Farrar, Straus Giroux, for more than a decade before decamping to the Paris Review a few months ago. He writes: “In my 12 years at FSG, we saw publishers lose millions every season trying to corner the market on the Big New (preferably Young) Literary Sensation. Meanwhile
“Buying literature has become cool again,” proclaims Paul Levinson, a communications professor at Fordham, in a New York Times article about how e-readers are shattering the stigma of being a bookworm. A recent iPad buyer agrees: “It’s almost like having a new baby . . . people approach me and ask to see it, to touch it, how much I like it. That rarely happens with dead-tree books.”
Lovecraft New York magazine details the history of the ailing Barnes and Noble and the current behind-the-scenes power struggle between founder Len Riggio and his rival Ron Burkle to control its future. Have you ever looked at a white chocolate truffle and wondered: “What black arts could have stripped this chocolate of its natural hue?” At McSweeney’s Luke Burns has, imagining H. P. Lovecraft as a candy copywriter for Whitman’s Sampler. Who are the world’s highest paid authors? Don’t ask—you probably already know. Tonight, Taylor Plimpton reads from his new book, Notes from the Night, at Manhattan’s McNally Jackson books—perhaps a precursor to another romp on the town and the makings
Christine Schutt Over at The Village Voice, Michael Musto devotes his entire column this week to his horrid situation with the publisher Alyson Books. Musto’s Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back was supposed to be in stores on February 1st, but Alyson still hasn’t published it, and hasn’t been very forthcoming (at least not with Musto). We hope that Alyson, which is owned by Regent Media, sorts this out soon, because other books we’re excited to read—namely Laurie Weeks’s Zippermouth and Kevin Killian’s Spread Eagle—are also in limbo. “Get ready for ads in books,” says the Wall Street
Lydia Davis Barnes Noble put itself up for sale on August 2. Now, BN founder and chairman Leonardo Riggio has bought 990,740 shares of the company’s stock—apparently in “an effort to strengthen his voting position for a likely proxy fight.” English-speaking francophiles, rejoice: You can get a sneak peak at Lydia Davis’s new translation of Madame Bovary in Playboy’s September issue. According to a tweet by Hugh Hefner, it’s “a great read.” Google Editions, which was supposed to make millions of books digitally available this summer, will now launch in the fall. Despite its seeming potential to demolish bookstores,
Frank Kermode Literary critic Frank Kermode has died at the age of 90. Kermode penned more than two hundred pieces for the London Review of Books, beginning with the first issue in 1979, and edited and wrote dozens of books over the course of his distinguished career. The New Statesman writes: “Kermode wasn’t just the finest literary scholar of his generation, he was also one of this country’s most luminous practitioners of the higher journalism.” His last book, Concerning E. M. Forster was reviewed in the spring 2010 issue of Bookforum. In an interview with Big Think, novelist Rick Moody says that the economy is changing
Elizabeth Bishop Stephen Elliott has picked Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom for his reading club at the Rumpus. The novel will go on sale August 28, and Elliott is clear about where you shouldn’t buy it: “Books purchased from Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon are ineligible.” Since Amazon opened its Kindle store in the UK in early August, ebook retailers there have entered into a price war. In the latest move, bookseller WH Smith cut the prices of its top 100 bestsellers by as much as 66 percent on its ebook site. Joseph Young cranked out his new vampire novel, NAME, in a month. There’s a reason
Jonathan Franzen Jonathan Franzen doesn’t like author videos. How do we know? He announced it—in an author video: “This might be a good place for me to register my profound discomfort at having to make videos like this.” Bill Clinton liked to read Walter Mosley. George Bush liked The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But what does Obama like (aside from Joseph O’Neill)? Here’s his reading list from the past two years, which makes us ask—are women allowed? Evidently, Obama hasn’t talked about a woman author since the summer of 2008, when he praised Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. The Awl wonders: Have authors and editors always hated each other?
Giancarlo DiTrapano Is Andrew Morton’s biography of Angelina Jolie the worst book of the decade or just the “worst book of the 21st century so far”? Such are the weighty matters pondered by Allen Barra at Salon; you can practically see Barra pout as he points out: “this Jolie junkie found practically nothing that I hadn’t seen before and mostly dismissed as utter crap. Much of Morton’s research seems to have been done while standing in supermarket lines.” Which—for all the charm of Salt and Girl, Interrupted—is where we do most of our Jolie research, too. Pete Hamill’s new
Charlotte Roche Move over Justin Bieber: Rolling Stone has announced that Jay-Z’s memoir, Decoded, will be published by Spiegel Grau on November 16. German novelist Charlotte Roche’s international bestseller Wetlands (published in the U.S. in 2009) is about 18-year-old Helen Memel, a sex addict admitted to a hospital for an anal fissure, who, while she’s not picking and eating her scabs, recalls things like the time she left a used tampon on an elevator. Now, Swiss author Bruno Barett is publishing Responding to Wetlands, a semi-fictional book in which he pretends to meet Helen and psychoanalyze her. We were
Michel Houellebecq The great French smoker Michel Houellebecq has gained an international audience writing misanthropic (and yet somehow emotionally complicated) novels about sex tourism, asexuality, terrorism, anhedonia, and the grimmer sides of the contemporary human condition. The books are good, but he’s just as well known for his bad-boy persona—drinking, smoking, and flirting with women reporters. One might wonder what his next novel’s shocking subject will be, but the answer is obvious: He’ll write about himself. J. C. Hallman, the author of In Utopia, sums up why people write dystopian novels: “Look at all the things we’re having trouble
John Waters The Huffington Post’s hit-mongering list of the 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Authors somehow manages to be sensationalistic and banal at the same time. John Ashbery? Louise Gluck? Junot Diaz? Really? Over at PW, poet and Bookforum contributor Craig Morgan Teicher has started an alternate list: Who are the most underrated authors in America? We agree with his opening sally: Stephen Elliott. And then there’s Blake Butler’s 15 “Towering Literary Artists” Who Are Still Alive, though sadly, that list has lost two of its members since it was published last year. Role Model: Laptops are fine, but we
Tony Judt Historian, political theorist, and public intellectual Tony Judt died on August 6 at the age of 62. Much more than a scholar, he was an eloquent and insightful writer, whether he was reflecting on postwar Europe, navigating our current economic and political challenges, or chronicling his experience of living with ALS. Always a vibrant thinker, his literary output only seemed to increase as his health deteriorated. He blogged at the New York Review of Books until last month, and was recently interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR. Illness has struck too many intellectuals lately, among them Christopher Hitchens. In a state of
Joan Didion, circa 1970 People have been complaining about the banality of author photos for years (here’s what the Times had to say about author-pic cliches back in 1993). Perhaps because the old-fashioned book (along with its carefully designed jacket) is losing its dominance, people are now not just decrying boring photographs but offering advice to writers seeking a publicity shot: Get a makeover. You want our advice? Skip the Estee Lauder and channel the spirit of Joan Didion in her author photo for Play It as It Lays, circa 1970. She is not playing. (Extra credit: seek out