TUESDAY MARGINALIA

* As has been widely noted, Richard Rorty has died.

For decades, Rorty waged a public and controversial challenge to various conventional philosophical thought. He published a landmark book in 1979 titled "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" that became one of the best-selling philosophical works of all time. In it, Rorty argued against the concept of representation that leading philosophical scholars had been focused on for centuries.

"The aim of the book is to undermine the reader's confidence in 'the mind' as something about which one should have a 'philosophical' view, in 'knowledge' as something about which there ought be a 'theory' and which has 'foundations,' and in 'philosophy' as it has been conceived since Kant," Rorty wrote in the book's introduction.

* Dzanc Books has extended its relationship with Roy Kesey.

* We think it's kind of cute when the kids at Gawker pretend they know something about publishing.

* The Mighty Sam Jones's (of Golden Rule fame) review of Robert Walser's The Assistant is now online at The Quarterly Conversation.

* New York Magazine talks to a bunch of writers for this list of works not available in English that should be.

* There's nothing new in this look back at great putdowns but it's hard to get tired of things like this:

A critic for The New Yorker, Anthony Lane, came back from the film of Phantom of the Opera two years ago and wrote: "I gazed at a black screen and saw words so calamitous they might have been written in my own blood – Screenplay by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher... the tasteful genius behind Batman & Robin and the English peer who paid homage to TS Eliot by having grown men prance around wearing jerkins knitted from tabbies. If you ever longed to know what it feels like to be asphyxiated by brocade, here is your chance."

* Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger:   "Over the last year, we've been trying to breathe life back into magazine fiction."  And this is how they do it?

* The experts are divided on the value of publishing book excerpts in magazines - and apparently getting into the New Yorker is not all that ...

The New Yorker? Well, it’s not as sought-after for excerpts as one might imagine. “Everyone thinks it’s lovely to have an excerpt there,” said Ms. Dahl of International Creative Management, but since there’s no special designation in the magazine, “it’s hard for readers to know it’s from an upcoming book.”

* An interview with Cecil Castellucci is one of several highlights of the new issue of Bookslut.

* Some straight talk from Orange Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

Madonna’s public fervour about African orphans, for example, makes Adichie’s eyes roll: “Madonna is free to adopt children from wherever she wants. But I heard her saying that she wanted people to go to Africa and adopt children. Nobody helps Africa by adopting its children. We need to talk about structural things like loans and trade."

*  The BBC Story Prize has gone to Yemeni writer Zahra Rahmat Allah.  You can read "The Secret," her wrinning story, here.

* Zoe Heller is the subject of the Independent's latest Five Minute Interview.  (Yes, we're calling our lawyers.)

* Josephine Hart takes public exception to Martin Amis's declaration that poetry is dead.

"Reading a poem involves self- examination ... we don't have the time or the inclination." Ah I weep ... a novelist who does not have the time or the inclination for self-examination ... surely not! As Harold Bloom tells us, we read "in quest of mind more original than our own". An act of humility as we travail "the inferno of the living".

* From glass ceilings to glass bookcases - Joanna Kavenna wonders why men don't seem to read much fiction by women.

* Martin Mosebach has won Germany's prestigious Georg Büchner Prize.

* Another "Inside the Awards" piece.  In this one, Alyson Rudd takes you inside the deliberations behind the Costa First Novel Award.

My rule for deciding which books deserved my attention was, well, that they had to be able to hold my attention. Only two things matter in a novel; ability to write and ability to tell a story. Too many submissions were from authors who knew lots of adjectives but who simply could not induce one to turn the page. Penney could. She has a relaxed authority rare in a first-time author. She takes her time, making sure that the reader is comfortable in the surroundings before moving the plot along. That is why she also won the overall Costa Book of the Year. Tenderness is not good for a first novel; it is good in its own right.

* First Andrew Wylie brought literary agents to France, now India has joined the world of literary agents, too.

* Nice to see Union College of Schenectady (and there's a bar bet waiting to be won) keeping up with one of its most distinguished alumni.

* Daniel Olivas reviews The Diary of Petr Ginz for the Jewish Journal.

* And, finally, we usually end the Marginalia posts with a lighter item but you'll find, after the jump, a note from the gang at McSweeney's which has been hit awfully hard by the AMS bankruptcy.  They're going to be auctioning some items off, so please read the details and stop by and help out.

As you may know, it’s been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney’s included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 -- actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big.

We are committed to getting through and past this difficult time, and we’re hoping you, the readers who have from the start made McSweeney’s possible, will help us.

Over the next week or so, we’ll be holding an inventory sell-off and rare-item auction, which we hope will make a dent in the losses we sustained. A few years ago, the indispensible comics publisher Fantagraphics, in similarly dire straits, held a similar sale, and it helped them greatly. We’re hoping to do the same.

So if you've had your eye on anything we’ve produced, now would be a great time to take the plunge. For the next week or so, subscriptions are $5 off, new books are 30 percent off, and all backlist is 50 percent off. Please check out the store and enjoy the astounding savings, while knowing every purchase will help dig us out of a big hole.

Many of our contributors have stepped up and given us original artwork and limited editions to auction off. We've got original artwork from Chris Ware, Marcel Dzama, David Byrne, and Tony Millionaire; a limited-edition music mix from Nick Hornby; rare early issues of the quarterly, direct from Sean Wilsey's closet; and more. We’re even auctioning off Dave Eggers’s painting of George Bush as a double-amputee, from the cover of Issue 14.

This is the bulk of our groundbreaking business-saving plan: to continue to sell the things we’ve made, albeit at a greatly accelerated pace for a brief period of time. We are not business masterminds, but we are optimistic that this will work. If you’ve liked what we’ve done up to now, this is the time to ensure we'll be able to keep on doing more.

Plenty of excellent presses are in similar straits these days; two top-notch peers of ours, Soft Skull and Counterpoint, were just acquired by Winton, Shoemaker & Co. in the last few weeks. It’s an unsteady time for everybody, and we know we don’t have any special claim to your book-buying budget. We owe all of you a lot for everything you’ve allowed us to do over the last nine years, for all the time and freedom we’ve been given.

Once this calamity is averted, we’ll get back to our bread and butter -- the now-legendary Believer music issue is already creeping into mailboxes everywhere; Issue 24 of our quarterly is in the midst of a really pretty silkscreening process; and in July the fourth issue of Wholphin, our DVD magazine, will slip over the border from Canada, bringing with it some very good footage of Maggie Gyllenhaal and a Moroccan drummer who messes up a wedding in an entertaining way. And then a couple of months after that, we’ll publish a debut novel from a writer named Millard Kaufman. This book is exactly the kind of thing McSweeney’s was created to do: The novel came through the mail, without an agent’s imprimatur, and it was written by a first-time novelist. This first-time novelist is ninety years old. It was pulled from the submissions pile and it knocked the socks off of everyone who read it. Millard may well be the best extant epic-comedic writer of his generation, and he stands at equal height with the best of several generations since.

Whatever you can do to help in the coming days, we thank you a thousand times. We’ll keep updating everybody on how this is going over the next few weeks; for now, pick up a few things for yourself, your friends, for Barack Obama. More news soon -- thanks for reading.

Comments

[fats]

actually the kids at gawker do know something about publishing -- one of them, Emily Gould, was until not too long ago an editor at RH or S&S or something.

[CAAF]

I second fats' observation. From what I understand, Emily Gould (who authored the post) used to be an editor and she just had a YA book published. I like what she's been doing on the literary front at Gawker; she's smart & candid. Doesn't mean you have to agree with her but she's definitely knowledgeable.

[Jack Pendarvis]

RE: How hard it is to get tired of "great putdowns." I have found an easy way, if you are interested! Get someone to try out some of their "great putdowns" on you. Soon you will be tired of them. Hope this helps!

[TEV]

RE: Emily/Gawker. Hey, different strokes, obviously. But I've met plenty of people who work in publishing who don't know shit about the business, and I've never seen anything that's even slightly insightful in her stuff.

But the remark wasn't necessarily intended to single her out - they're all pretty embarrassing over there when they turn their attention to matters literary. (Emily is not the only one who posts on the subject.)

After all, consider the Menaker post in question - where is there any evidence of smarts, candor, or anything other than the usual Gawker nyah-nyah? My feeling is they should punch their weight and stick to Paris Hilton.

Just my opinion, of course ...

[TEV]

Oh, and, obviously I don't know any of the facts but a career trajectory that goes from being an editor to being a Gawker contributor scarcely suggests much in the way of editorial competence.

[CAAF]

It feels odd to play the role of Gawker apologist given that I don't have it in my RSS feed and know the editors of the site only peripherally (at best)... but whatevs.

Here goes: I'll stand by my liking of Gould's writing. She's part of why I started reading the site again after a hiatus. In general, I've noticed she likes a lot of great books and isn't afraid to be impolitic. She's also pretty funny. No, I'm not sure if that part. post is a shining example of these qualities; anyway, I read it as less about Menaker and more a swipe at Kunkel's sales figures, which has been, from what I can tell, an ongoing source of speculation/amusement, along with those of other hyped wunderkinds.

As far as her career trajectory, I'd guess on the contrary. Depending on your position & house, being an editor can be a hard slog and you're not often paid well, so I'm not surprised when people jump to something else.

We may have to agree to disagree on this one and move on to something we can talk about more companionably.

[TEV]

Hey CAAF, you know I love and respect you, even when we disagree! Like I said, it's largely a matter of taste. For this reader, her rudeness and eagnerness to kneecap offsets whatever occasional virtues she might display - though clearly mileage varies on this one. I also don't find her that funny or that interesting. But if she's responsible in any way for your return to blogging, that's good enough for me ...

So we'll agree to disagree, and I guess we should talk about James Wood now!

[steve]

I'm with Mark on this one ... Gawker on publishing is like Mel Gibson on the Torah.

[Ayre]

I always think its kind of cute when Mark pretends to know something about James Wood.

[TEV]

Hey Ayre: "it's" not "its"

If you're going to take your shots, feel free, but at least be literate about it.

[Ayre]

Busted by the apostrophe police. Zing.

[TEV]

Apostrophe police, literacy police - call it what you will. Just keeping your nose clean.

[Dyanna]

Why does anyone read Gawker anymore anyway? It's the same thing every day and IT'S boring as hell. Not smart. Not funny. Boring. It's already a complete cliche of itself.

Ayre, spelling countz.

[CAAF]

Agreed, and on to the illustrious JW. I trust that you, like me, have been disappointed (then bemused by that disappointment) that none of these summer read-up surveys have included him. I don't know what we're supposed to do if we don't know what James Wood is toting to the beach this summer. The Biographia Literaria? The Secret?

[TEV]

Agreed - I've noticed that, too. Although his review of The Savage Detectives (coupled with Maud's praise) has more or less served as my summer reading assignment.

I've actually been thinking about a summer reading post since Maud's NPR appearance, primarily taking objection with Laura Miller's narrow criteria for a summer read. I've always thought that the summer could just as profitably be used making one's way through one major, heavy work that has been languishing (sort of what you did with your Paris reading). Fodder ...