- Most folks have probably heard that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road on a 120 foot long continuous roll of paper, but now you can seen it. “Beginning this week at the Orange County History Center in Orlando, Fla., and ending with a three-month stay at the New York Public Library in 2007, Kerouac’s “On the Road” scroll will make a 13-stop, four-year national tour of museums and libraries.“
- One great byproduct of the new translation of Don Quixote is that it has given way to many reconsiderations of the classic. Now the Atlantic Monthly weighs in.
- Also from the Atlantic, a great piece explaining how they choose which books to review and why their reviews may sometimes come across as atypical. It’s a great read for anyone who is tired of the prevalence of cookie-cutter picks and pans.
News Roundup
Falcon Turns 75
USA Today rounds up media coverage of the 75th anniversary of the publication of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. They share this tidbit, too:The Maltese Falcon was first published serially in five parts in Black Mask magazine from September 1929 to January 1930; Knopf published it as a book in 1930. “There are about 2,000 differences between the two published texts – sometimes a comma or a paragraph placed (differently), but often it’s Hammett fooling with the prose to get it just right,” says Richard Layman, author of six Hammett books, including Shadow Man, a biography, and a trustee of Hammett’s literary property trust.USA Today also put the book’s first chapter up. Check it out.
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Music Meme
1. The person who passed the baton to you.Scott.2. Total volume of music files on your computer.At the moment I’ve got a bit more than a gig, much of it the songs that have managed to follow me through the three computers I’ve been through since the Napster heyday.3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.Sadly, I rarely buy music anymore. I used to spend a decent chunk of my disposable income on music, but in recent years I haven’t had much disposable income, and I definitely haven’t kept up with new music with the fervor that I once did. Accordingly, I last purchased a CD in October of 2004, Flight from Echo Falls by The Vells4. Song playing at the moment of writing.I listen to more and more NPR-type stuff instead of music these days (All Things Considered at the moment). When I do feel like listening to music at my computer, I’ll often listen 3wk.com, an Internet radio station that plays lots of great, obscure stuff.5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)See above.6. The three people to whom you will ‘pass the musical baton.’DerekCemJustin
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Abebooks buys Bookfinder.com
Abebooks, the Canada-based book listing service has acquired Bookfinder.com, a search engine that compares prices of books from a variety of sources including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells and hundreds of other smaller stores. They also list books from Abebooks site. Bookfinder.com founder Anirvan, in his blog post announcing the sale, said We will remain an independently operated and managed entity based out of Berkeley, but we’ll now also be able to draw upon our Canadian friends’ technology resources and industry expertise to help us develop our ideas, and make this an even more useful service for book buyers and sellers.What’s in this for Abebooks? Presumably Bookfinder.com generates a decent amount of affiliate revenue by referring shoppers to all of these different book stores. Abebooks will get that revenue and they won’t have to pay Bookfinder.com referral fees any more. I’m guessing that Bookfinder.com generates a decent fraction of Abebooks’ traffic. Abebooks will now have some control over that entry point. I know a lot of serious book people use both sites to help build their libraries, and I’m sure they’re hoping that this partnership will result in more features not fewer.Also, if you’ve never used Bookfinder.com before, you should give it a try. It’s great for comparison shopping, and it covers books from all eras, including older books that typically aren’t available through Amazon. I also use Bookfinder.com to price old books. Wondering what that old book you’ve been holding on to is worth? Search for it on Bookfinder.com and you’ll see what various retail establishments around the world are selling it for.
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Back on Track
Following up on Monday’s post, as it turns out, that missing issue of the New Yorker turned up (bearing a paper jacket reminding me to renew and sporting a torn cover) a day after this week’s issue landed in the mailbox. So it appears as though I won’t be skipping an issue after all. Luckily for me, I’m going on vacation for a few days, and I’m hoping this will afford me some time to catch up. (Incidentally, you can expect The Millions to go dark through Sunday while we take a break.)
Seeking Tales of Vonnegut
Biographer Charles Shields has already put this request out on many book blogs, but since he asked, I thought I’d share it here, as well:This past June, I published Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. Now I’m beginning work on the first authorized biography – the first biography at all, actually – of Kurt Vonnegut. I’d like to hear from any of your readers about their experiences with Vonnegut, either personally or with his novels.Shields can be reached at [email protected] As a big Vonnegut fan, I’ll be looking forward to this one.Related: Some reactions to Shields’ book on Harper Lee.
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A Note on Literary Nonfiction
Though I’m a little late in getting around to it, I wanted note Scott’s recent essay on literary nonfiction at Conversational Reading. Inspired by the recent discussion of Ryszard Kapuscinski following his death, Scott highlights three notable practitioners of the form: Lawrence Weschler, Jonathan Raban, and Geoff Dyer. I am a huge fan of literary non-fiction (or long-form journalism), so I enjoyed Scott’s in depth look at these three writers.Those who are interested in this form and who are looking to fill out a “to be read” pile with some literary non-fiction should take a look at couple of fairly comprehensive booklists that have been posted here in the past. The first is a list inspired by Robert Boynton’s The New New Journalism a collection of interviews of some of the top names in literary non-fiction. Ours is a companion reading list of the books by the writers featured in Boynton’s book. We also have a reading list from a class at NYU taught by Lawrence Weschler. Millions contributor Garth took the class a couple of years ago and jotted down titles and names that the class delved into or just touched upon. It’s a terrific resource.
Barthelme and Pynchon
Counterpoint is rereleasing a collection of Donald Barthelme tidbits (it’s subtitled “Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays”), The Teachings of Don B.. The collection is perhaps most notable in that it contains an introduction by Thomas Pynchon. I’m fairly certain it’s the same essay by Pynchon that’s found here. It begins:Though to all appearances a gathering of odds and ends, what this volume in fact offers us is the full spectrum of vintage Barthelmismo — fictions thoughtfully concocted and comfortably beyond the reach of time, reactions less exempt from deadlines and rent payments to news of past moments that nonetheless remain our own, not to mention literary send-ups, intriguing recipes, magisterially extended metaphors, television programming that never was, strangely illuminated dreams, elegant ranting, debonair raving, and more, much more.Now that’s a blurb.
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