“The suit is the most recent legal move in a years-long dispute between Burton and the broadcaster that originated the series.” New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog reports that LeVar Burton is being sued by WNED-TV in Buffalo, NY over the continued use of his famous Reading Rainbow tagline, “but you don’t have to take my word for it.”
You Can’t Take His Word for It
Adventures in Publishing
Ted Thompson, whose novel The Land of Steady Habits was released earlier this year, writes for Salon about his experience publishing his first book. Pair with this conversation between our own Bill Morris and Edan Lepucki, who both have novels coming out this month.
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Twenty Years in the Wilderness
“I think that every novelist of the kind of novels that I write has in them maybe one really good book, but the trouble with so many novelists is that they keep on writing novels even when they run out of ideas.” Forrest Gump author Winston Groom on why it’s taken him 20 years to write his new novel. Pair with our recent three-way interview with writers Emily Barton, Alexander Chee, and Whitney Terrell, all of whom needed a decade for their most recent books.
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E is for Edward who mailed you some art
How jazzed would you be if you received mail in one of Edward Gorey‘s illustrated envelopes?
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Tuesday New Release Day: Batuman; Magariel; Weldon; Tharoor; Kunzru
Out this week: The Idiot by Elif Batuman; One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel; Before the War by Fay Weldon; Swimmer Among the Stars by Kanishk Tharoor; and White Tears by Hari Kunzru. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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Deep In Yakuza Territory
Photographer Christopher Jue journeyed with People Who Eat Darkness author Richard Lloyd Parry into the four-story headquarters of the Kudō-kai, a Yakuza group headquartered on the Kyushu island of Japan. “My mental note to myself,” says Jue, “was ‘once I step foot into their property, anything can happen.’”
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The End of a Myth
When Hanna Rosin published The End of Men this year, the book stirred up a lot of controversy (and a number of parodies, to boot). Now Stephanie Coontz, a historian, takes issue with Rosin’s premise — the “myth of male decline” — in the pages of The New York Times Book Review.
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Yupper Class
The release date for Thomas Pynchon’s new novel is three weeks away, and to mark the occasion, Boris Kachka runs through a quick biography of the perpetually mysterious author. Among other things, Kachka points out that Pynchon resides in a fairly odd neighborhood for a recluse to choose to live in — the Upper West Side. (Previously: “Thomas Pynchon to Publish New Novel” and “New Thomas Pynchon Teaser.”)
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