Robert McCrum’s got a question for you, and I’m interested to know the answer, too. Who are the naked writers? My first thought was perhaps Truman Capote, because he wrote so often from bed, but that’s not exactly strong evidence. Anyway, here are some writers in their underpants.
Fetishized rituals
The Book Peddlers on Mumbai’s Streets
Sonia Faleiro takes a look at the “book boys of Mumbai” who participate in India’s quasi-illegal pirated book market. (It’s an issue also discussed in Akshay Pathak’s most recent dispatch on Indian publishing.) Faleiro notes that books often appear on the streets as soon as they’re released to stores – and also that by 1999, as much as “20 to 25 percent of all books sold in the country were pirated.” Meanwhile, the former production editor in me wonders, how the heck are they re-printing these books so quickly?
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Writerly Relations
In an interview with Big Think back in 2008, David Remnick said of Philip Roth that the writer “would have been my father had Philip Roth not been a literary intellectual but rather an orthodontist in North Jersey.” At The New Yorker’s website, Remnick eulogizes Roth’s work upon his retirement. (Keith Meatto did the same thing for us.)
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From Augere to Author
“I’ve always loved that ‘author’ derives from the Latin augere, to increase.” At The Guardian, Eleanor Catton discusses her inspiration for The Luminaries, which involved two years of research. Here’s our review of the finished product.
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The Legacy of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Dan Saltzstein reflects on the legacy of Korean-American experimental artist and poet Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.
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But just maybe you’ll beat the odds
If you find yourself in a sporting mood, you can place a bet on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I personally like Alice Munro’s 20/1 odds for taking the award, though Haruki Murakami’s 10/1 make him the safer bet.
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Beware of the Gravedigger
Recommended Reading: On the literary tradition of objectifying and consuming women’s corpses.
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E-Books Upend Publishing Class
A Columbia University course that has taught generations of bright-eyed would-be Maxwell Perkins the ins and outs of the New York publishing biz has had to retool its curriculum to account for the e-book phenomenon, the New York Times reports.
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Jay Gatsby, Iconic American
BBC‘s Tom Geoghegan asks whether or not The Great Gatsby is “the perfect tale for modern America.”
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