“These elements of scandal, by now familiar in the #MeToo era, claimed an unusual casualty on Friday: The Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s most prestigious accolade for writing.” In the wake of a sex abuse scandal, The Swedish Academy announced it will postpone this year’s award until next year when they will name two winners. In the meantime, maybe we should all mull over the problem with prestigious prizes.
The Nobel Will Return in 2019
It’s Late
Recent Pulitzer laureate Adam Johnson has a new short story in Esquire, and it’s a doozy, invoking drone strikes, Obama and Kurt Cobain in the course of its tightly-knit plot. Sample quote: “I wonder if the First Lady was the one to turn off the machine.”
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Booksellers React to Borders’ Bankruptcy
Half of all restaurants that open close,” WORD owner Christine Onorati says. On the other hand, Red Lemonade publisher Richard Nash hopes former Borders employees can find ways to continue “operating as the matchmakers of the book ecosystem.”
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On Harm Reduction
Recommended Reading: Mary Addison Hackett reflects on heroin and harm reduction at n+1. “It is clear that no one — no neuroscientist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or physician — can explain what addiction is or account for its contradictions. Tobacco, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, MDMA, amphetamines — are they inherently addictive? Common knowledge suggests they are. But all around me I see exceptions more than the rule, my friends who use, have used, some or all of these drugs, including heroin, casually. I, too, am one of the exceptions.”
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“Change the listeners”
“The problem with our national lit isn’t just that it’s often written from the same voice; it’s written often to the same listeners. But if you changed the listeners, you change the art.” Tobias Carroll interviews Kiese Laymon for Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
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Early Years
Renowned children’s author Lois Lowry talks to The Days of Yore about writing as a mother, living in Japan as a child, and early receptions to Number the Stars and The Giver.
More Marginalia
Sam Anderson’s brilliant Year in Marginalia inspires MobyLives to announce the “Melville House Marginalia Contest.”
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Problems with prestigious prizes. I am really concerned about the way some accusations are presented. Ms. Clemmon’s accusation against Diaz in Australia was presented almost like a stunt. This is not a game. If you have been sexually assaulted or harassed, it is a crime and one must go to police, or get a lawyer, rather than take part in this gleeful kind of anonymous confrontation in the guise of a question for a writer on a panel. Not mature, not credible.
Re women writers paid less than men, take “girl” or “wife” out of the title. These ubiquitious and unintellectual books are generally in trade paperback, so 10 or 20 dollars less in price. I do nothing but roll my eyes in book stores now.
Having said that women writers are great. Lily Tuck, Mary Gordon, Sarah Hall, Sigrid Nunez, for example, deserve every penny they make publishing in hardcover, and the prices in Canada (35-38 dollars) equals that of men writers: Laurence Osborne and Robert Coover for example. I am willing to cough up my hard earned money for quality, but not for “girl/wife” thrillers.
I see no difference in pricing, especially in non fiction, where prices range from 35 dollars and up to 50, for literary biography and history, written by either sex.