Cutting out large chunks of a book is pretty common, but cutting out 200 pages is a little unusual. While working on his latest novel, Joshua Ferris decided to abandon the elements drawn from crime fiction, which meant he had to toss out a huge portion of his draft. “Now that was a fun day,” he says.
Hatchet Job
The Gray Salt Sea, The Wine-Dark Sea
Writing for Lapham’s Quarterly, Caroline Alexander takes a deep dive into Homer’s “wine-dark sea” to uncover the origins and meaning behind the poet’s “incomprehensible” phrase.
Temper That Ego. You Need Luck As Well.
A few weeks ago, Benjamin Hale wrote an article for us about the trivialities and happenstance associated with publishing prizes. His point was that legacy was more important than short-lived fame. In a way, his piece is nicely supplemented by Tom Bissell’s essay on the luck and chance necessary to attain literary success.
An Earthquake-Proof Library
Japanese architect Shinsuke Fujii has designed a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that's meant to withstand the shocks of an earthquake.
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The Problem with the Poky Little Puppy
“The problem is that young children have terrible taste and enjoy garbage. Another problem, which compounds the first problem, is that they want to hear the same books hundreds of times in a row. So for all the joys that storytime can offer, it frequently entails a kind of dismal self-abnegation that’s too excruciating even to describe as tedium—an actively painful sense of my precious time on earth being torn from my chest and tossed into a furnace.” Gabriel Roth writes about the terrible Poky Little Puppy for Slate, and his complaints pair well with Jacob Lambert‘s Millions series, “Are Picture Books Leading Our Children Astray?” and “Again, I Ask…“
Dispatch from the Online Retail War
During its ongoing contract talks with the publisher, Amazon has been displaying that Hachette’s books ship in “up to 3-5 weeks.” James Patterson, one of their biggest authors, has declared on Facebook that “there is a war going on between Amazon and book publishers.” The Washington Post has more on the backstory of Amazon’s strategy, while the New York Times blog details how Patterson and other authors are fighting back.