Art Spiegelman has a new book out about 9/11, and it appears to be generating some controversy. USA Today and most other papers are praising the new book, which is short on pages but big on production value. Others, like the customer reviews at Amazon, are very disappointed. Meanwhile, controversial cartoonist Ted Rall has written a scathing indictment of Spiegelman in the Village Voice.
Art Spiegelman’s Latest
Oprah and Edward P. Jones
At the Happy Booker, Wendi points to a New York Daily News article which mentions that Oprah has been recommending Edward P. Jones’ 2003 novel The Known World to book clubs, leading to speculation that her own book club will return to contemporary fiction, and Jones’ book will be her choice.Great news for Jones, but I see no reason why Oprah can’t have both contemporary and classic picks at the same time. She only selects three or four books a year, so double that wouldn’t be a big deal, and getting millions of people to read books like East of Eden and Anna Karenina isn’t a bad thing.
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Google Blogs Books
The folks at Google have set up a blog dedicated to Google Book Search. Google’s plan to digitize the world’s books has been one of the most interesting and controversial publishing industry stories of the last couple of years. Is anyone surprised that it’s Google using a blog to get its side of the story out and not the publishers? Me neither.
Mrs. Millions buys a book
Mrs. Millions thanks all of you for your suggestions. We stopped by the Borders today, and she selected Michael Frayn’s Headlong. She wanted to purchase The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, as well, but the staff at Borders was unsuccessful in its half-hearted attempt to locate the book for us nor did it appear to be on the new releases/bestsellers table, all of which seemed odd to me because isn’t this supposed to be one of the big books of the summer? Well, hardcovers are no good at the beach anyway, so maybe we’ll pick it up when we get back. That’s all for now; time to go catch a plane.
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The Rex Pickett story
Among the few movies I’ve seen in recent months, Sideways was one of the best. The director, Alexander Payne, has made a career out of bringing quirky, character driven novels to the screen. This time, the source material was a novel by the unknown and struggling Rex Pickett. According to this article from the Guardian, Rejected by 15 publishers, Sideways was still without a home when Payne happened to read the manuscript and liked it. Even with the possibility of a movie in the works, Pickett had to work hard to get it published. St Martin’s initial reluctance turned out to be quite lucrative:Then, finally, a publisher bit. “A lot of people think the book was only sold because it got made into a movie,” Pickett says. “That’s not true. It was bought when there was no guarantee it was going to be a movie. So that rankles me a little bit.” Apart from anything else, the film’s uncertain status meant that the book deal wasn’t worth much money up front. “St Martin’s Press paid me almost nothing. But that did mean my advance, what little it was, was earned out very quickly. Now I get a dollar for every copy sold!” He still sounds slightly giddy at the thought.I haven’t read this book, and I’ve heard that it’s just so-so, but I love the Rex Pickett rags to riches story.
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My Resolution for 2011: Stop Blaming the Internet
The Internet was the big bogeyman, the great scapegoat of 2010.
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Covering the Catalogs: Plume
The weather is nice, and we’ve got all the windows open in the apartment. We ran some errands earlier today – although the task of going to Whole Foods to buy cheese and olives deserves a term with better connotations than “errand.” Now I’m flipping through a stack of catalogs from Penguin while I listen to baseball on the radio. This is why I look forward to weekends.I think I’ll start with the Plume, Portfolio, Overlook, etc. catalog. These imprints do both paperback editions of books that have already come out in hardcover, and paperback originals, which are initially published as a paperback without a prior hardcover release.There’s a nifty little collection coming out in August as a paperback original. The Subway Chronicles “offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives on this most public of spaces,” New York’s legendary subway system. Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Francine Prose and Calvin Trillin are among 27 contributors whose essays look at New York’s subterranean city from every angle. The anthology’s editor, Jacquelin Cangro, runs thesubwaychronicles.com.I’ve heard sections of Dan Savage’s book The Commitment read on This American Life. Savage writes in the David Sedaris, David Rackoff, public radio funny man vein. Like those two Davids, Savage is gay and his sharp comic timing and casual mastery of the memoir style transcend any label. In The Commitment, Savage recasts the gay marriage “debate” as his own family drama, injecting some much-needed humor and personality into a controversy that is so often portrayed as faceless. The hardcover is already out and the Plume paperback comes out in October.Under the Portfolio imprint is the paperback of John Battelle’s book The Search. The book tells the story of how a goofy little search engine called Google grew into a $120 billion company that enjoys global ubiquity and is seemingly able to reinvent any industry it touches (publishing for example). Aside from my general fascination with Google, I’m also interested in this book because I read and enjoy Battelle’s blog. As the creator of FM Publishing and the “band manager” of Boing Boing, Battelle is someone to watch in the world of new media. The paperback edition comes out in September.Extras: Andy Riley’s morbidly hilarious The Book of Bunny Suicides and The Return of the Bunny Suicides are being collected in a box set called A Box of Bunny Suicides due in September. Haven’t seen the bunny suicides? Go here and click excerpt. Also, Plume is putting out great-looking new editions of Fences, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson. (The snazzy new covers aren’t showing up at Amazon yet, but I’m assuming they’ll switch out the old ones soon.)
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Appearing Elsewhere
Tonight at Housing Works Bookstore & Cafe, I’ll be competing in the sixth NYC Literary Death Match, sponsored by Opium Magazine. I’ll be reading a ten-minute story representing Canteen, three readers will do the same on behalf of three other publications, and then an illustrious panel of judges – including The New Yorker’s Ben Greenman – will evaluate us, “American Idol” style. Intrigued? Me, too. The $10 cover includes a free copy of Opium’s latest issue. Hope to see you there.
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