Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa has come back to haunt Salman Rushdie once again. Iran is threatening to boycott the Frankfurt Book Fair because Rushdie was invited to give the keynote speech. You could also read our essay on how Rushdie passed the time while in hiding.
Iran Boycotts Rushdie… Again
Debut Novel from n+1 Co-Editor Brings in Big Bucks
Those who watch the book deal emails from Publishers Lunch know that Chad Harbach, an editor at n+1, recently sold his first novel, The Art of Fielding, but a Bloomberg article today reveals it went for an eye-popping $650,000. The book centers around baseball at a fictional Wisconsin college, and Bloomberg pegs the deal as “one of the highest prices for a man’s first novel on a topic appealing to a male audience.” Possible buried lede: n+1 compatriots Benjamin Kunkel and Keith Gessen saw their first novels sell 48,000 and 7,000 copies respectively, according to Neilsen BookScan.
Dorothy Parker Loses Her Day Job
Once upon a time, Dorothy Parker was fired from her post as theater critic for Vanity Fair for harsh reviews that upset the magazine's advertisers.
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The Voice Is Now The Word
Cee Lo Green will be dropping a memoir in 2013, and his press release reads like something that’s gone through four different spins in Google translator: “Talk about art imitating life? Enter into the super-natural, the surreal and the extra-ordinary that is [Cee Lo Green.] Do you think this is by chance? CRAZY? FORGET YOU? After reading this book, there will be no doubt that I am meant to be. CEELO GREEN A.K.A ‘everybody’s brother’ will make you a believer, not only in me, but also…yourself.”
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Interviews with Ambitious Readers
HTMLGiant is running a cool series of interviews with readers who recently finished long or difficult books. Check out their takes on Lee Child’s Echo Burning, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and William Gaddis’s The Recognitions over here, here, and here, respectively. Also, while on the topic of difficult books, check out Emily Colette Wilkinson and Garth Risk Hallberg’s round-up of their ten top picks.
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The Worst Dinner Party
Monday Links
On this sad aniversary, the Pioneer Press provides a small selection of 9/11 books and movies.Ed does a great job reviewing Haruki Murakami’s new collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Kudos to him for penning a thoughtful and thorough review.The AP writes up a new video game based on the Christian apocolyptic Left Behind series of books. The novels have sold more than 63 million copies according to the story.This made me a little queasy: A teacher in Hurst, Texas has ignited an interest in reading among her students by having them all read a book together… James Patterson’s young adult thriller Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment. Whatever it takes, I suppose.
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Where are the PEN ******* running to Rushdie’s defense?
I’m guessing we won’t see it.
This obviously being an instance of the subaltern re-asserting Himself at the level of the geo-political….