In the spring of 2006, John Unsworth taught a graduate seminar on “Twentieth-Century American Bestsellers.” It led to one of history’s finest class projects–a browsable database of bestsellers, 337 in all. As with any bestseller lists, you’ll find a range of titles, everything from Thomas Wolfe to Tom Clancy, but click through and find that each entry includes an extremely detailed description of the book’s history (these were compiled by graduate students, after all); a mini-essay on its reception; images of covers, page layouts, and even some ads; and more. It is, in short, bibliophilic crack. (Thanks Craig)
Bibliophilic Crack
Daemon Days
You may have heard (via this site or elsewhere) that Harold Bloom has a new book out. In the Times Sunday Book Review, Cynthia Ozick gives her take, identifying the critic’s use of the phrase “without precedent” as key to understanding his theory. You could also read Matt Hanson on Bloom’s classic The Anatomy of Influence.
Tarantino on Writing
Say what you want about Quentin Tarantino; the man thinks like a writer. You can hear him doing so out loud on the current episode of KCRW’s The Treatment, with Elvis Mitchell.
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Beware of the Dog
This week in book-related news: a new coffee table book devoted solely to Marc Jacobs’ bull terrier, who happens to be an Instagram celebrity.
Haruki Murakami: Literary Ambassador
Among Haruki Murakami’s many significant literary achievements is the fact that the author has – since the 1990s – become “responsible for triggering and fueling the Japanese literature boom in South Korea.” Indeed, by “creat[ing] bonds of shared emotions and literary sensibilities among tens of millions of people with different cultural and historical backgrounds,” writes Yoon Sang-In, “Murakami’s literary works have emerged as a great cultural asset that contributes to stability in [the East Asian] region.” (Bonus: Murakami’s latest book – which will be published in the States in 2014 – is flying off the shelves in Japan.)
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There’s Franco in My McCarthy
Sometime Ph.D candidate, sometime actor, and ubiquitous lit blog all-star James Franco (henceforth known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”) has begun filming an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God in West Virginia, and I’m reminded of that line from W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” — “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
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Ah, yes, the 20th-c Bestsellers Database! I always thought that was a great project. Funny story about it: I was a grad student at UVA when John Unsworth was there, and though I never took a course with him, I knew him fairly well from working at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, where he was head.
Just after he left UVA to go to UIUC, I got a techie position in the English department. (This was 2001.) One of my first tasks was contacting John to tell him that the woman who administered the English department server had decided to delete the 20th-c Bestsellers database and web site. The English department didn’t at all value it, apparently, which I thought was weird.
The thing was linked to all over the web, and of course moving it broke all the links. I always thought it was short-sighted of the UVA English department not to realize that keeping on their server with a UVA address would have been great publicity for them. But I suppose the University of Illinois justly deserves all that glorious Googlejuice! :)
Great class project!
@amandafrench
Seems like good ingredients for an independent Zotero reading group.