“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
Happy Baby Shower
The Rumpus’s Stephen Elliott is using Kickstarter to raise money for the film adaptation of his novel Happy Baby. However you could also fund the project in a more three dimensional plane by attending November 29th’s Fundraising Party (which we’re co-sponsoring!). The party will include comedy by Eugene Mirman and readings by Jami Attenberg and Rick Moody.
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Shoot First
A hundred years after the First World War began, many people are looking anew at the conflict, among them Thomas Laquer, who wrote a lengthy reflection of its causes in an LRB review of Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers. In The New Yorker, George Packer uses the war as a jumping-off point for an essay on a broader topic: the evolution of war literature in the modern world.
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True Originals
A while ago, our own Kaulie Lewis alerted readers to The Turnip Princess, a new collection of previously untranslated Bavarian fairy tales. In the latest issue of The New York Review of Books, Marina Warner reads a new edition of the original stories of the Brothers Grimm, comparing them to the most well-known stories in the fairy tale canon (as well as the stories in The Turnip Princess).
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Tarzan Have Metrics
“Tarzan know, Tarzan know: ‘Mood? Me want to write like Warren Buffett. Mood — that for house DJ or Al Green.'” Here is Tarzan’s Guide to Elliptical Style For Effective Business Writing from the good people over at McSweeney’s.
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Free Amazon Prime and Free Shipping for Students
Attention Students: Amazon is offering a free year of Amazon Prime, the service that gets frequent Amazon shoppers free two-day shipping, for a year with their new Amazon Student program.
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Fun Fact: Emily’s Not Keen on Time Travel
Jason Rice interviewed our own Emily St. John Mandel yesterday. They talk about her new book, The Lola Quartet, which celebrates its One Day Old birthday today.
Tuesday New Release Day
Another big, literary title hits shelves today. Tom McCarthy turned heads with Remainder in 2007. Now he’s back with C. Posthumously published is Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago’s The Elephant’s Journey. Also newly released is Sara Gruen’s tale of bonobos and reality television: Ape House, William Gibson’s latest Zero History, and The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass. Culture mavens will be intrigued by The Official Preppy Handbook reboot True Prep. And this week’s intriguing art book is Full Bleed: New York City Skateboard Photography. And in non-fiction, Bob Dylan In America by Sean Wilentz and Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, so compellingly written up in last week’s New Yorker.
Tim Weiner Knows Every Secret Ever
Tim Weiner won the Pulitzer Prize for Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Then, four years after its publication, he received a box of J. Edgar Hoover’s “personal files on [FBI] intelligence operations between 1945 and 1972” from a well-connected D.C. lawyer. That treasure trove of information has since wound up in his recently published book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, and he sat with NPR’s Terry Gross to talk all about it.
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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.