Another venerable independent gives up the ghost as Olsson's finally closes up shop ... David Leavitt's excellent The Indian Clerk, to which we devoted a full week last year, is now out in paperback if you haven't caught up with it yet ... No surprises in this list of the world's best-paid authors ... It's time for that evergreen, the Ladbroke's Nobel Odds story ... The TLS announces its 2008 Translation Prizes ... Poet Hayden Carruth has died at 87 ... Robert Birnbaum in conversation with the People's Historian Howard Zinn ... Scott McLemee examines the "Playboy philosopher" phenomenon known as BHL ... Extremists may succeed in having the UK edition of The Jewel of Medina cancelled ... io9 offers up a list of the longest science fiction books of all time, as well as the twelve "coolest deaths" ... Martin Amis will be leading a discussion on Philip Larkin's legacy, which should be of particular interest to Amis, given that "this reputation has been complicated by the subsequent publication of his letters, biography and previously unpublished poems and novels" ... The 1926 Brazilian sci-fi novel O Presidente Negro envisions the 2228 U.S. presidential election. In that race, the white male incumbent, President Kerlog, finds himself running against Evelyn Astor, a white feminist, and James Roy Wilde, the cultivated and brilliant leader of the Black Association, "a man who is more than just a single man ... what we call a leader of the masses." ... FOTEV Amitava Kumar holds court at the Wisconsin Book Festival, where he hopes to "kiss Marilynne Robinson’s hand" (and we hardly blame him) ... David Ulin is hoping to get a little bit more than usual out of Banned Books Week ... The interviewing secrets of Clive James ... Richard Price and Junot Diaz on the death of Times Square ... The Washington Post devliers a report on the happenings at last weekend's National Book Festival in DC ... Bill Maher's favorite books - not a bad list, McInerney notwithstanding ... The current New Yorker spotlights some unpublished Mailer correspondence ... There must be something in the air, because Men's Vogue (yes, Men's Vogue) does something similar with George Plimpton ... These sorts of things never work out well, but it looks like there's a post-Douglas Adams Hitchhiker book on tap ... An Irish report of Gatz, the staged reading of The Great Gatsby ... As many have noted, Charlotte Kohler has died ... It occurs to us that if managers did read novels, we might not be in the awful mess we're in now ... The Pico Rivera Borders - "a must-stop for Latino authors" - is profiled ... The Independent asks: Waugh - what is he good for? ... Daniel Torday looks at How Fiction Works at the Kenyon Review, taking exception to Walter Kirn's absurd review ...Speaking of Wood, Colin Marshall scores an audio interview over at The Marketplace of Ideas ... Whilst we were traveling, we were interviewed for this Washington Times article on the literary dimensions of the presidential campaign ... A new Bookforum went live in our absence ... Paul Auster is interviewed at the Village Voice blog ... and, finally, for those of you who couldn't make our conversation with Andrew Sean Greer back in May at the LAPL, a podcast of the evening - one of the best of its kind we've ever done - is now available for your listening pleasure.
And he's back! With a vengeance.
Good to have you back in the blogosphere after all the book touring. Don't forget: you've got to keep on writing. Your NEXT novel's got to be ready before the fanfare dies out on Harry.
Me, my little blog is woefully distracted by politics and economics, but I'm working on my second novel. Still haven't heard from Writer's House.
Best,
Jim H.
Posted by: Jim H. | October 02, 2008 at 10:22 AM