Just found out that John Keegan is Defense Editor at the Brit newspaper, The Telegraph. He has written about most of the military conflicts of this century. I read and was much edified by his book, The Second World War. His Telegraph articles can be found here
John Keegan
List envy
The New York Times whipped bloggers and readers into a frenzy with its linkbait list of the best books of the last 25 years along with A.O. Scott’s voluminous essay on the “great American novel.” The reasons why this list is silly and flawed have been discussed on a number of blogs – the panel of judges skewed male and boring, the timeframe and criteria are arbitrary, etc. What amused me about the list was that the Times made such a big production of it – with a panel at BEA, a press release, and, of course, Scott’s giant essay. It’s like the Times didn’t realize that such lists are standard filler at glossy magazines. Was the Times’ best fiction list all that different from People Magazine’s annual “Most Beautiful People” list? No, not really.The Austin American-Statesman was similarly bemused by the Times list and so it put together its own list using the Times list as fodder. It asked academics and critics to name the “most overrated” books on the Times list. The resulting comments from their judges are both thoughtful and funny. And for those of you scoring at home, the most overrated books on the Times list are A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
“I Could Feel the Poverty”
In a workshop, my fellow writers had said the moment wasn’t believable because “we didn’t have that kind of poverty in the United States.”
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Michael Chabon’s update on The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
In September, I posted that Michael Chabon’s next book, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, his first full-length adult novel since The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, was to be released on April 11, 2006. Alas, the book has been delayed. Chabon’s done with the manuscript, but there were scheduling problems with his publisher, HarperCollins. Chabon announced the delay on his Web site:HarperCollins had been sort of rushing the thing along, over a steady but polite murmur from the author that perhaps they were moving too quickly. The manuscript was complete. It was not impossible to make the April 11 pub date. But we didn’t even have a finished jacket. Many people who were selling and marketing the book hadn’t had the opportunity to read it. Everything just felt too rushed and when that sense of undue haste finally caught on at the publishing house, I was able to persuade them to see reason, and wait.The new date is now “Winter 2007.”
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