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« L.A. EVENT: SPOKEN INTERLUDES | Main | THE GOD OF WAR REVIEW »

June 03, 2008

TUESDAY MARGINALIA

* Ian McEwan read a portion of his new novel at the Hay festival, only to be told by an audience member that the section was not original, and appeared to have been borrowed from another work.

The Booker Prize-winning novelist read an excerpt of the unfinished novel to a large audience at the Hay literary festival in Wales, but was immediately told by a member of the audience the episode was not original.

Taken aback by the audience member's insistence that he had already read the incident somewhere else, McEwan promised to investigate its provenance, suggesting he might drop it from his draft manuscript.

* The Huffington Post reports on the 2008 Audie Awards for audiobooks.

Paper-and-ink books are in mortal peril. Book publisher's sales are down. Book readers are declining. These are the cheerless quotes coming out of the recent BookExpo America held at the Los Angeles Convention Center this past weekend. But over at the Biltmore Hotel, a short hop away, folks attending the 2008 Audie Awards were smiling and whistling a much happier tune. While new sales numbers are not ready yet from the Audio Publishers Association's annual survey, preliminaries indicate sales in this expanding segment of the publishing industry are up again over last year's impressive numbers.

* At the New York Observer, Leon Neyfakh talks to Alec Niedenthal, the 17-year-old Alabama lad who has taken the Times' letter page by storm.  And although we're not wild about his taste in role models, we suspect he'll amount to something.

* More BEA roundups, including Carlin Romano for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Ed Nawotka at Bloomberg and Boris Kachka at New York Magazine's Vulture.  Edward Wyatt also covers the fair for the Times, focusing on the Kindle.  (It occurs to us that an author can't sign a Kindle ... what would become of the autograph booths?)

* Pugilistic poets?

* The LA Times's Scott Timberg chats with MOTEV favorite Alan Furst.

With this book and your work in general, we have the remnants of the aristocracy, country estates, wonderful little cafes -- it seems like the world destroyed by World War II. Do you feel like you're keeping that alive?

Yes, it's very strange. I remember sitting at my desk, in my apartment in Paris, where I wrote the first 2 1/2 of these books, and staring out the window and saying to myself, "Why me? Where do I get off recording the death of old Europe?" This seems supremely strange, since I'm in every way an indistinguishable Jewish writer from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But this interest that drives me, I don't know where that came from.

* Aaron Appelfeld has been awarded the Grinzane Cavour's 2008 special prize for his novel "Badenheim, 1939."

* Exiled author Taslima Nasreen has been offered safe haven in Sweden.

* John Mullan's report of Martin Amis's appearance at Hay.

Amis called a collection of his essays The War against Cliche, but in fact he loves to bring a cliche in to a solemn context. History told you that trying to expunge religion was "something like a fool's errand". What did he think about American Christianity? Impatience, as if one might say to that nation, "come on, when are you going to snap out of it". And all this is in that decided, dry montone.

* As has been widely noted, the New Yorker fiction issue is now online, and features "Natasha," a Nabokov story previously unavailable in English.

* And, finally, the final episode of the first season of Titlepage is now online.  Looking forward to a second season.

Posted by TEV at 10:54 AM in Marginalia |

Comments

Matt

That snark at Amis seems to confuse cliche and idiom.

Posted by: Matt | June 03, 2008 at 01:50 PM

Steven Augustine

"That snark at Amis seems to confuse cliche and idiom."

There is very little actual thinking going on in this "debate".

Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 03, 2008 at 02:10 PM

blue cave

lol @ ian mc ewan
i always said the man is not a "big" author.

I have also read the story he read. I think it's from Kundera, but not sure. But 100% i've read the story before...

Oh i am loving this :)

Posted by: blue cave | June 03, 2008 at 02:42 PM

blue cave

lol @ ian mc ewan
i always said the man is not a "big" author.

I have also read the story he read. I think it's from Kundera, but not sure. But 100% i've read the story before...

Oh i am loving this :)

Posted by: blue cave | June 03, 2008 at 02:43 PM

P.T. Smith

The McEwan thing bothers me. It's not an original tale by any means, I know I've read it from Douglas Adams, but I've heard that it was written out before that. However, it's a common urban legend anectodote, no harm in it being used more than once.

Posted by: P.T. Smith | June 03, 2008 at 07:49 PM

Daniel

Huff Post is wrong about sales. Sales are up. Profit is down. Some publishers are in peril, the folio format is not.

Posted by: Daniel | June 04, 2008 at 10:44 AM

lwoolf

Yeah, it is not what you write--how original, etc. ---but HOW you write it, no? Otherwise, Shakespeare is a big hack.

Posted by: lwoolf | June 05, 2008 at 08:52 AM

Josh

"lol @ ian mc ewan
i always said the man is not a "big" author."

Uh, um, uh.

Posted by: Josh | June 07, 2008 at 11:50 AM

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