- A nice rememberance of Hunter S. Thompson by his friend Paul Theroux in The Guardian.
- William T. Vollmann’s substantial look at Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Phillip Short in the NY Times.
- Deborah Solomon sits down for a long chat with Jonathan Safran Foer which reveals this: “he received a $500,000 advance for his first novel and a $1 million advance for his second, meaning that he is probably the highest-earning literary novelist under 30.”
From the Book Pages, Briefly
Edith Grossman Tilting at Windmills
Edith Grossman has lately become the definitive translator when it comes to Spanish-language fiction. She is responsible for producing the English-language editions of the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (including his upcoming autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale), Mario Vargas Llosa (most recently The Feast of the Goat), and of course she brought The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis to American readers. Now, for the first time, she turns her translator’s pen to a classic. Her beautiful edition of Cervantes’ Don Quixote has just been put out by Ecco, and, having never read the book, I will be delighted to turn my attention to this new edition soon.New CoetzeeMy friend and trusted fellow reader Brian informed me that he has read recently lauded author, J. M. Coetzee’s new novel Elizabeth Costello, and that he found it quite good and thought-provoking (better than Disgrace, anyway, which is his point of reference for Coetzee). So I was mildly surprised when I saw that the book received an unflattering and somewhat dismissive capsule review in last week’s New Yorker. The New York Times Book Review, however, confirms Brian’s assessment of a dense and philosophical, yet readable book.Amazon’s Mega SearchLast week Amazon announced their mind-boggling new search feature, which allows users to search the complete text of tens of thousands of new books. Talking to readers and checking out the buzz on the internet, I encountered a wide range of reactions to this new development, ranging from anger at Amazon’s ever-widening reach and annoyance at the plethora of extraneous results when searching for book titles or authors to exultation at this vast resource that has suddenly appeared at our fingertips. Meanwhile, the New York Times covers authors’ concerns. Any thoughts, press the comment button below and let us know.
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Punctuationally Speaking
There are two types of people in this world: (Segment One) people who adhere, as a point of pride, to every last comma and period of the laws of punctuation, and then there the people who just don’t have the time (Segment Two) and, frankly, are a little tired of hearing about these numerous and arcane rules that are supposedly all that separates us from the animals. Bearing in mind that Segment One would be offended that anyone might suggest that punctuation rules are not self-evident and that Segment Two will tell you to blow it out your ear, a book aimed at teaching the populace the in and outs of punctuation doesn’t seem likely to be a blockbuster. Yet just such a book was a huge seller in England last year. Are the Brits crazy or are we Americans missing out on the pleasurable nuances of punctuation? We’re about to find out. Next week, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss comes out, and its current sales ranking of 6 at Amazon indicates that it will indeed be a success on this side of the Atlantic. And the New York Times seems to like it, which can’t hurt. The success of this book will cement the notion that Americans appreciate this British brand of book that delivers dull subject matter contained in a humorous package and prove that the big sales of last year’s most delightfully useless British book, Schott’s Original Miscellany, was not a fluke. (I hope that I punctuated everything correctly in that post.)
Diddy fails to deliver
Perhaps you’ve heard the recent news that Random House is suing to recover a $300,000 advance from P. Diddy for an autobiography he failed to deliver back in 1999. In the Guardian, Blake Morrison argues that Random House’s litigousness represents a departure from gentlmanly publishing practices of the past. It is most certainly the only article that I’ve ever come across that manages to find what P. Diddy and Marcel Proust have in common.Of course, P Diddy is not a poet starving in a garret. In fact, thanks to his business interests, which range from ownership of Bad Boy Entertainment to the Sean John clothing line, he could probably afford to buy every garret in Manhattan – and still have something left over. Moreover, Random House could put that £160,000 to good uses – to encourage a first-time novelist, for instance.Still, a worrying precedent is being set here. What will the world of literature come to if every late-delivering author is held to account? Authors have been slow to deliver ever since Moses came down from Mount Sinai with his tablets of stone (40 days and nights late, according to his editor). In the 19th century, those who failed to produce their promised magnum opus ranged from Coleridge and de Quincey (both of whom suffered an opium habit) to Casaubon in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, with his grandiose plans to write a scholarly Key to All Mythologies.In the 20th century, it was Proust who set the appropriate tortoise pace.Link
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Book trends Google style
So perhaps you’ve seen the latest bell (or whistle) to come out of Google HQ. It’s called Google Trends and it lets you look at the search volume over time for different keywords. It also shows you which regions search for a particular term the most. Initially, I was most interested in that geographic data. I figured perhaps this could settle that tiresome debate about which city is “most literary.” Here are the resultsDelhi, IndiaChennai, IndiaAustinPortland (Oregon, I’m assuming)ChicagoSeattleNew YorkDenverMinneapolisPhiladelphiaI was, and still am, a curious about the two Indian cities at the top of the list, but I did recently write a post about the MV Doulos (Ship of Books) being docked in Chennai. But, anyway, to get to the more serious issue, by this metric our most literary city is Austin, and New York (pretender to the crown) comes in at number five, while our venerable Californian cities don’t even make the list. Before we get too riled lets remember that these cities are just guesses. From the FAQ: “Google Trends uses IP address information from our server logs to make a best guess about where queries originated.”Regardless of Google’s guestimates, I was curious about some other bookish searches. “Harry Potter” shows a preponderance of international searches, and the series’ impressive ability to stay in the news. Or you can see how the young wizard compares to pretender to the throne, “The Da Vinci Code.” If you ever doubted how popular Harry Potter is, that graph should convince you. Getting back to Da Vinci Code, though, to those of you who have grown weary of hearing about Dan Brown’s book, would it surprise you to find out that, according to Google, the book is more popular than ever?Moving on to scandals, it turns out an Oprah tie in can help you in that department, too. Observe James Frey’s drubbing of JT Leroy. Kaavya Viswanathan, meanwhile, hasn’t generated enough of a scandal to register.Turning to awards, remember when the National Book Award generated a stir in 2004 by nominating five women from New York as finalists, looks like it paid off (in search traffic anyway). And here’s all the prizes I could think of going head to head (I’ll call the Booker the winner, since the Pulitzer includes all those journalists).
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