This whole baby and blogging thing ... yikes ... not so easy ...
* From the Guardian Archive: Mr. Charles Dickens has died at 58.
Mr Charles Dickens died last night at ten minutes past six o'clock, at Gadshill, near Rochester. He was seized with illness about the same hour on Wednesday afternoon, as he was about to sit down to dinner with his sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth. She observed something unusual in his appearance and became alarmed. She told him that he looked ill, and proposed to telegraph for medical assistance. Mr Dickens replied, "No, I have a toothache. I shall be better presently." Almost immediately he fell into unconsciousness, from which he never recovered up to the moment of his death.
* A conversation with the new editor of Granta, John Freeman.
* Another venerable independent falls: Shaman Drum Bookshop is set to close June 30.
* Maud Newton on Sarah Waters: " ... a master at stoking anticipation ... "
* The "Kindle Beater" sounds vaguely like something we'd find in a kitchen drawer ... or a specialty at the local S&M club.
* The new Murakami is an immediate bestseller in Japan.
The new novel by Japanese cult author Haruki Murakami has become an instant bestseller with its latest print run pushing it over half-a-million copies in less than two weeks, the publisher said on Tuesday.
* Germany's PEN center offers a home for exiled writers.
* Come and visit Tablet Magazine - the completely revamped version of Nextbook. There's an introduction to the new venture here.
* Canongate has been named Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards, and Jamie Byng is interviewed the next day.
* Margit Frenk has won this year’s Menendez Pelayo International Prize.
The prize, which recognizes authors for literary or scholarly achievement in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, is conferred by Menendez Pelayo International University in the northern Spanish city of Santander and includes a cash award of 48,000 euros ($66,000).
* David Ulin profiles Frances Kroll Ring, F. Scott Fitzgerald's last typist ...
"She's the last real witness," Berg points out, "along with Budd Schulberg" (the 95-year-old author of the classic 1941 Hollywood novel "What Makes Sammy Run?") "to Fitzgerald as a working writer. She had a front row seat for a year-and-a-half." Novelist Steve Erickson calls her "a living connection to an American culture that cared about writing and literacy . . . She is the keeper of a literary flame in a city that has always had more literature than it gets credit for."
* Kate Christensen's guilty pleasure? Janet Evanovich.
* Dave Rosenthal worries about men who don't read novels.
* And, finally, many thanks to the superb Opera Chic for alerting us to this profile in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra ... Ciao!
Good luck juggling all those balls, Mark. Recently I ran across some suggestive research on voles, indicating major changes in male vole brain chemistry after a litter of pups. (Evidently, vole fathers are quite involved in the nurturing and rearing of their offspring.) Researches believe that similar neurobiological changes can take place in male homo sapiens sapiens.
As a father of three young sons, I struggle constantly with the tension between work and parenting. I know you're only a few days into this fatherhood thing, but I'm curious: have you noticed any shifts in your thinking about parenting vs. blogging/writing? Have any expectations or assumptions fallen to the wayside?
Posted by: Brooklyn Bibliophile | June 10, 2009 at 08:02 AM
Blogging? Writing? What are those?
Right now, as you no doubt know, everything is so intense and so new, there's really very little emotional or mental bandwidth for anything else. (That's one of the reasons I still haven't posted the Joseph O'Neill interview.) I tried to do some work on the new novel the other day and, after about 20 minutes, I knew it was hopeless.
I suspect once we're settled into our new place (we're moving next month), things might become a bit more balanced. But right now, it's all about the little 'un ... I did tell a friend that when I held Clara for the first time, I became almost physically aware of the rest of the world, and all its concerns, melting away.
Posted by: TEV | June 10, 2009 at 11:41 AM
Thanks for the update. There's nothing like that first moment. May you treasure it forever. And best of luck with the move!
Posted by: Brooklyn Bibliophile | June 10, 2009 at 04:59 PM