Google is a very adjective writer

Time to have some fun with Google. Using the wildcard "*" character I searched Google to see how different famous writers are characterized on random Web pages. I entered searches like "Jonathan Franzen is * writer" to see what would come up for the "*" and pulled the adjectives all into one sentence for each writer. The links go to the sites where the adjectives came from. Arbitrary, but oddly poetic:

Jonathan Franzen is... an accomplished, incredibly gifted, curmudgeonly Luddite, talented, serious, rare, amazing, better, American writer.

Zadie Smith is... a talented, talented, talented, terribly talented, young, Dickensian, gifted, terrible, very good writer.

Jonathan Safran Foer is... a great great, young, great, prehensile, no ordinary, Generation X, very talented, definitely a wunderkind, very talented, uniquely gifted and imaginative writer.

Ok, that was fun. How about these guys:

James Frey is... an amazing, great, Bestselling, hardly the first, still a great, only, wonderful writer.

J.T. Leroy is... a critically acclaimed, fabulous, Incredible, active, the best, truly amazing, fantastic, fiction writer.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:58 PM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

The Smithy Code

Can you handle another Da Vinci Code story? It has just emerged that Justice Peter Smith, who presided over the Dan Brown plagiarism trial, embedded a secret code within his ruling that refers to both The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, whose authors sued Brown. In the first 13 and a half pages of the 71-page ruling, a handful of italicized, boldfaced letters are embedded, that when combined, spell out "Smithy Code." But there's more. A further jumble of italicized, boldfaced letters have yet to be deciphered. In her New York Times piece, Sarah Lyall describes a series of "brief and ultimately frustrating e-mail messages" in which she tried to pry the solution from Smith, to no avail. She also relates Smith's dismay when, for the first couple of weeks after the ruling was released, no one noticed the secrets that lay within:

It has been nearly three weeks since he handed down the ruling. Probably disappointingly for Justice Smith, nobody seemed to notice anything unusual about it when it was first released. But he alluded to the possibility that there was something more soon afterward as a throwaway line in an e-mail exchange with a reporter for The New York Times, saying, "Did you find the coded message in the judgment?"

It's silly, but I admire Justice Smith for his cleverness. After all, a blogger can't exactly look down on someone for grasping at his 15 minutes of fame.

Update: From the comments, a mysterious anonymous commenter has provided us with the code. It starts out "smithy code" and from there, the jumble of letters is "Jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv".

Anybody want to take a stab at it?

Update 2: Judge Smith has released some clues.

1. Holy Blood, Holy Grail refers to the Dossiers Secret and the hidden message. It is revealed by spotting that certain random letters appear to be different in form from the majority of the text.
Applying that to the judgment reveals the following highlighted letters: SMITHYCODEJAEIEXTOSTGPSACGREAMQWFKADPMQZVZ (the first part reveals there is a message)
2. There is no significance to the placing of the letters in the text.
3. Da Vinci Code also uses codes. The most liked one is apparently a numerical one (p.255 The Fibonacci Sequence). In the book it is changed.
4. The correct sequence up to 21 is: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21
5. The code is created by letter substitution.
6. The letter change is creating by applying the Fibonacci Sequence numbers above letter by letter.
7. The relevant number shows where you start for each letter to substitute. Thus the first letter is identified by rewriting the alphabet stating at the first letter in the alphabet ie for the first letter A A. The second letter is also started at 1; the third at 3. When 21 is reached the code reverts back to 1 etc and repeats that until all the letters are substituted. A message ought then be revealed (there is a deliberate typo to create further confusion). The message reveals a significant but now overlooked event that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial.
8. The preparation of the Code took about 40 minutes and its insertion another 40 minutes or so.
9. I hate crosswords and do not do Sudoku as I do not have the patience.

Update 3: The Smithy Code has been cracked.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:46 PM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

Wiki Wiki Amazon

After bringing us rankings and tags and reviews and recommendations and lists and blogs and discussions, Amazon, which never met a feature it didn't want to add to its product pages, has now added wikis. They live way down close to the bottom of the page. There aren't many of them yet, and it's hard to see a reason why they would really take off at this point, but who knows. To give an example here's the text that currently resides in the wiki for James Frey's infamous A Million Little Pieces:

Author James Frey was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1969. He was educated at Denison University and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2000, he spent a year writing A Million Little Pieces, which was published in 2003 by Doubleday Books, a division of Random House, Inc. He is married and has one child. In early 2006 he admitted that much of the content in A Million Little Pieces, which is presented as a memoir, had been fabricated.

That's it. Not very exciting, is it. But perhaps there are more exciting wikis floating around in Amazon-space. If you're inclined to explore, the list of most-edited wikis might be a good place to start.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:16 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Some Links

• E-paper continues to get press. The New York Times talks up the technology's potential for newspapers. See also: The digital future of the book.
• MetaxuCafe is covering the Pen World Voices Festival.
• Sara Gran, much praised for her book Dope and her blog has a new edition of her book, Come Closer, coming out.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:03 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Goodnight Moon come to life

Artist Thatcher Hurd, son of Goodnight Moon creators Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd has an art show up at the Rhode Island School of Design that features a three-dimensional life size display from of the illustrations from the book. For more, see the AP story and a photo of the work.

(via H2O)

- C. Max Magee @ 8:55 PM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

Burroughs Book Covers

Check out a terrific collection of William S. Burroughs book covers. There's 34 Junky covers including editions from Portugal and Turkey, as well as 39 editions of Naked Lunch from places like Norway and the Czech Republic. Lots of other Burroughs books, too.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:40 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Fiction Contest at Verb

Laurel writes to tell us about a fiction contest that she's involved with at Verb. Stories up to 5,000 words are eligible and the winner receives $1,000 and publication in an issue of Verb. The judge for the contest is Thisbe Nissen who wrote Osprey Island and once helped my friends find an apartment in Iowa City. Verb isn't your typical literary magazine, by the way. Laurel says: "Verb is the first audioquarterly, which means that you'll be recording your story for distribution through audible.com, and to subscribers on a CD! If you would prefer, an actor may record in your stead. Past contributors include Robert Olen Butler, Stuart Dybek, Peter Case, Julianna Baggott, Ha Jin, and many others."

- C. Max Magee @ 7:52 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

A Ship of Books

Recently, I happened upon a news story from a paper in India about a floating library, a giant ship of books, that was set to dock in Chennai. It sounded like something out of Borges, and I looked into it further. The MV Doulos is the world's oldest active ocean-faring passenger ship. In its long life, dating back to 1914, it has sailed under four different names and been a freighter, a luxury liner and, during World War II, it served with the US Coast Guard. In 1977, the ship was acquired by Gute Bucher fur Alle e.V. (Good Books for All), a German non-profit, and since then it has sailed, loaded up with books, to 100 countries and 515 ports of call. The Doulos Web site's description of what the ship does:

Doulos carries a stock of half a million books. In total, over 18 million visitors have come on board to browse the selection of 4,000 available titles. Titles cover a wide range of subjects, such as science, sports, hobbies, cookery, the arts, economics and medicine, as well as books on faith in God and living life in God's service. The books have been carefully chosen to cater to interests of all ages, and keeping in mind the educational, social and moral needs of the local community. A large selection is devoted especially to children. Local language materials supplement the vast array of English books. The books are offered at a fraction of their retail value. In some ports significant quantities are also donated.

It sounds pretty amazing, but you'll note as well the part in the above description about "faith in God and living life in God's service." Having, of course, never set foot on the Doulos, I wouldn't want to pass judgement on their mission, and I hope that "Good Books for All" is one of those organizations that does not let religion subvert its secondary mission, but a look at a few news stories about the ship show that it is not without controversy.

In The Organizer an opposition weekly in India, there is an angry article about the ship's current visit to the country: "The crew was trying to spread Christianity among the visitors rather than promoting reading habit." Another article, this one in The Hindu, describes long waits to board, but not the religion issue.

Prior to the India visit, in Bahrain, the controversy was not over Christianity but that the ship violated rules against commercial activity by foreign entities, according to this Gulf Daily News story. It was eventually resolved. After a few searches, though, it seems clear that most folks appreciate the ship, even in places that might seem hostile to it, including Abu Dhabi, for example. In Mauritius, local booksellers have been angered by the cheap prices of the books on the ship.

The ship sounds like a complicated thing, noble and magical as it conveys books around the world, but vaguely sinister as it, according to some, pushes religion on visitors and undercuts locals. I'd like to see it for myself.

- C. Max Magee @ 3:56 PM ~ comments: 4 ~ Links to this post

 

How to Good-Bye Depression

I've seen some pretty wacky self-published books listed on Amazon, but never, ever, have I seen one as purely absurd as this one. The title alone had me giggling: How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? by Hiroyuki Nishigaki. Luckily a book description is provided as well:

I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out.

In addition, he also can have burned a strong beautiful fire within his abdomen. It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body, release his immaterial fiber or third attention which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration.

If you don't know concentration which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like a hell.

You can't make this stuff up, folks. And the book has proven noteworthy enough to garner 33 customer reviews. I'm sure they're all quite serious.

- C. Max Magee @ 11:24 PM ~ comments: 3 ~ Links to this post

 

Ask a Book Question: The 45th in a Series (Calvino Questions)

Molly writes in with a question about Italo Calvino's The Baron in the Trees.

I am having a book club meeting to discuss The Baron in the Trees, by Calvino. I am having the hardest time finding discussion questions. Any leads?

Millions contributor Emre has read the book, but he's out of the country and unreachable at the moment and I've never read it. Still, I figured with all the collective knowledge out there we could get some good answers to this one. So how about it folks? Can anyone out there help Molly out? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

- C. Max Magee @ 11:15 PM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

Some Thursday Links

• Literary gold: Don Baiocchi's list of books that are responses to other books.
• The top 50 film adaptations of books. The Guardian never seems to tire of such lists.
• Benetton, whose Colors magazine is one of my favorites, is participating in the New York festival of Internatonal Literature by hosting a conversation series. They're looking to get people involved: "Through the BenettoTalk blog it is possible for everyone to join the conversations, posting questions and generating debate, some days before they happen. Authors like Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Lethem, Rodrigo Fresan, Helen Oyeyemi and many others will answer you." You can post a question here.

- C. Max Magee @ 11:03 PM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

A Place to sit and read

The bibliochaise, a clever hybrid of chair and bookshelf.

- C. Max Magee @ 7:55 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

We will again be a Fast Food Nation

You probably know about Eric Schlosser's iconic book Fast Food Nation. In it Schlosser revealed the fatty, processed underbelly of the fast food industry, and it seems likely that all of the millions of people who read the wildly successful book thought twice before their next trip to the drive thru. What you may not know is that a movie based on the book and directed by Richard Linklater is set to come out later this year. (I first wrote about this on the blog way back in 2003, but had forgotten about it until recently.) According to IMDb, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Greg Kinnear, Kris Kristofferson, and Avril Lavigne are all part of an ensemble cast. There's no official release date as yet.

In the meantime, and perhaps in anticipation of the movie, a new version of Fast Food Nation has come out that's aimed at 6th through 9th graders. Chew on This is basically a rewrite of Schlosser's bestseller, but the idea here is that as big consumers of fast food, kids should hear Schlosser's message too.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:43 PM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

The Pulitzer needs a shortlist

I was ruminating a bit about the Pulitzer Prize this week and wondering why it isn't a bigger deal. The bookstore I worked at in Los Angeles may not be indicative of national trends, but while I was there, the Booker Prize and the National Book Award moved more books than the Pulitzer. (The Nobel Prize had a bigger impact on sales than all the other awards combined, believe it or not.) I think part of the reason that the Pulitzer fails to capture the interest of readers is that it's much less controversial than other awards. Pulitzer winners are almost always safe picks. But part of it, I think, is that the award has no build up. The judges do not announce the nominees (aka the shortlist) in advance, instead the finalists are revealed at the same time as the winner. It's pretty obvious that having a shortlist would build interest - some might say artificially - by placing the prize in the public eye for longer. But I'd argue that the Pulitzer is worthy of this treatment. Though the picks are often safe, taken together, the Pulitzer winners are an incomplete, but still compelling bunch of books. The Pulitzers are primarily a journalism award, and that, I think, matters too, in that it allows us to equate the novel with journalism, which, at its best, is meant to be a noble and unfrivolous pursuit. (And this isn't just the J-school grad in me talking.) Finally, giving the Pulitzer a shortlist would just be more fun and it would give us book bloggers more to natter on about.

Previously: Excerpts and links for the Pulitzer winners and finalists.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:17 PM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

Excerpts of Pulitzer Winners and Finalists

Comcast's Internet service was been down for about 36 hours which has made blogging difficult. Now that my day job is officially a work from home gig, I rely on steady Internet access like never before, and considering the amount of time I spend blogging and using the Internet for pretty much all of the information consumption in my life, going without is next to impossible for me. I'd say that's a little scary, but it's been like this for several years now so I'm pretty used to it. At any rate, hopefully I'm back up and running for good, no thanks to Comcast - it took three phone calls to them and 12 hours before they could even confirm that an outage was causing my problem. Luckily, Mrs. Millions was kind enough to let me use her office for work, otherwise I would have been really screwed.

In the meantime, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday. To me, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction is the most predictable of all literary prizes as it usually goes to the most well-known American literary work of the previous year, especially if the book deals with American themes, namely the American immigrant/Melting Pot idea. American history is usually an important theme as well. This year I figured E.L. Doctorow's The March was a lock, both because it sold well and because it's about an iconic episode in American history, General Sherman's great march during the Civil War. Instead, Doctorow's book was named a finalist, but the much less well-known, but similarly named and themed book March by Geraldine Brooks won the prize. March is about the Civil War as well, but the book is not simply a fictional account of a historical event, rather March tells the story of Mr. March, the father who in Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women is away fighting in the Civil War. This isn't the first time that what Booksquare calls a remix has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1999 Michael Cunningham's The Hours, a "remix" of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway won the prize.

Listed below are this years winners and finalists in all the "Letters" categories. I've included links to excerpts and other interesting material where available.

Fiction

• Winner: March by Geraldine Brooks - excerpt
• The March by E.L. Doctorow - excerpt
• The Bright Forever by Lee Martin - excerpt

Drama:

• No Winner: (I rather like that the Pulitzer unlike most other prizes is unafraid to not pick a winner if they don't feel there's a worthy book in a category - though, admittedly, I'd be surprised to see them not pick a fiction winner any time soon.)
• Miss Witherspoon by Christopher Durang - New York Times review
• The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow by Rolin Jones - New York Times review
• Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp - New York Times review

History:

• Winner: Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky - Bookslut review
• New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan by Jill Lepore - excerpt
• The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz - interview

Biography:

• Winner: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - excerpt
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion - excerpt
• The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall - Megan Marshall at Slate

Poetry:

• Winner: Late Wife by Claudia Emerson - a poem
• American Sublime by Elizabeth Alexander - excerpt
• Elegy on Toy Piano by Dean Young - excerpt (pdf)

General Non-fiction:

• Winner: Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins - (very short) excerpt
• Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt - Judt in The NYRB
• The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer - excerpt

- C. Max Magee @ 8:15 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The LBC wants you to "Read This"

If you haven't already, wander over to the LBC blog to check out our newest "Read This" selection. Personally, it's my favorite out of all the books I've read for the Litblog Co-op. The book is called Television and it was written by Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Jordan Stump.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:28 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Covering the Catalogs: Soho Fall/Winter 2006

I got the latest catalog from Soho Press in the mail recently. Soho is an independent press in New York that puts out a few books of literary fiction a year. They've also got a crime imprint. A flip through the catalog drives home Soho Crime's reputation for detective stories set in exotic locales. This time around there's New York's Chinatown, Bethlehem, and Paris, as well as paperback editions for recently released hardcovers set in Seoul, Florence, Granada, and Paris again.

Also on the way is a mystery set during World War II called Billy Boyle by James R. Benn. Billy Boyle is a Boston cop who gets unexpectedly thrown into the war and ends up investigating the death of an official of the Norwegian government in exile. It's the first in a three book series about Boyle. The catalog also has word of the paperback edition of The White Earth, Andrew McGahern's multigenerational tale set in Australia that I read and discussed in January.

If you are a publisher and would like to send me your catalog, please email me.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:26 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The LBC Awakes

The Litblog Co-op blog is stirring once again. Here's what's going on. The spring Read This! selection will be revealed on Monday followed by the rest of the finalists for this round. There will be six weeks worth of discussion about the books, and anyone who comments over the course of the six weeks will be entered into a drawing to win all five books for the round.

And while you're there be sure to check out the four finalists for the summer round. We've decided to start announcing the finalists early so that everyone has enough time to read the books. For all the details, get yourself over to the LBC blog.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:20 AM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

Mrs. Millions Has Been Reading

The lovely Mrs. Millions decided that she really ought to be keeping better track of what she reads, especially since she reads so much these days. Hamstrung by various reading obligations and by my harebrained scheme for selecting what to read next, I don't always get to read the books I want to read right away. Instead I hand them over to Mrs. Millions. Unlike me, she didn't burden herself with literature classes in college, nor has she tried to make a career out of writing and reading, so she reads purely for fun, a fact that makes me a little jealous sometimes. Perhaps she'll share her thoughts on some of the books she reads, as she has done here on one or two occasions, but probably not as that would take some of the fun out of the reading. Mrs. Millions' reading list will live way down near the bottom of the far right column, but so you don't have to go to the trouble of scrolling down, here's what she's been reading lately:

• English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
• Looking for a Ship by John McPhee
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
• White Earth by Andrew McGahan
• Crossing California by Adam Langer

- C. Max Magee @ 10:02 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Google jumps on the Da Vinci Code bandwagon

A week doesn't go by that there's not some new news related to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The plagiarism court case, the book's paperback release, and the book's connection to the recently discovered "lost Book of Judas" have all made headlines recently. Not bad for a book that first came out over two years ago. People wonder how the book can continue to sell so well (the paperback sold as many as 500,000 copies in its first week of release), but being on the front page of the newspaper every week goes a long way when you're trying to move product. Incredibly, with the The Da Vinci Code movie coming out in May we're actually in for another round of news about the book. Undoubtedly the movie will get tons of press, but I was particularly surprised to see that Google is participating in a special promotion for the movie. If you go to google.com/davincicode and follow the prompts, Google will add "The Da Vinci Code Quest" to your personalized homepage (assuming you have a Google account.) The "Quest" is some sort of puzzle game that officially starts on Monday and there are various prizes being offered. Now, Google has certainly morphed into a pretty big company over the last couple of years, but you don't really expect them to do promotional tie ins. Once again, The Da Vinci Code seems to be rewriting the rule book.

Philipp's got more details.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:13 PM ~ comments: 3 ~ Links to this post

 

My Eyes Bleed For The Family Circus

In the comments to the last post, Erin left a note about "depraved" Amazon reviews for Family Circus books. With a little Googling, I was quick to discover that this was something of an internet legend, dating back to the late-nineties when pranksters started leaving all sorts of silly reviews for Bil Keane's anthologies. There's even mention of them in Wikipedia (as of this writing.) Sadly it appears that most of the reviews have been expunged, but I was able to find a few that were subtly wierd enough to elude the censors:

• For What Does This Say?: Yeats once wrote, "None other knows what pleasures man/At table or in bed." Bil Keane, however, seems to have found in his latest 'Family Circus' opus a treasure-chest of pleasures for each and all of us. There are some who chafe at the seeming repetitive themes within Keane's major works; I would respectfully submit that all great stories are about life and death, love and loss, fear and triumph. If not Keane, then so go Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz and Callimachus, too, for good measure. It is not originality that spawns thought and wonderment; it is the vessels of those themes (Billy, Grandma, Barfy, PJ) that inspire and enlighten. Keane, as carrier of these vessels, reminds us of a truth so eloquently immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Some books leave us free and some books make us free." In 'What Does This Say', it is clear that the tome achieves the latter, with gusto and aplomb.


• For Smile! With The Family Circus: Though universally popular with critics, Smile! has never been commercially successful. It's been in and out of print -- mostly out -- so this hardcover 30th anniversary edition is an especially welcome event to discerning FC readers. Along with his day job with United Features Syndicate to produce the more commercial Family Circus strips we know and love, Keane labored on Smile! on evenings and weekends from 1966 through 1972 in a cathartic period when he confided to friends that he had to complete Smile! before the effort killed him. Smile! is Keane's FC adaptation of the legendary unreleased Beach Boys album of the same name. Keane met Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks at the Fillmore West in late 1966 and quickly the three became inseperable. The next six months were a happy, artistically productive time for the three, and it's during this time that most of the widely-bootlegged Smile! demos were recorded. Unfortunately Parks and Wilson had a falling out in February 1967, after each discovered that Keane had been sleeping with the other, and the lovers' betrayal ended the Beach Boys' Smile! sessions. Wilson spent the next year in solitude, finally giving up on Smile! without giving a public explanation. Keane, having been spurned by both Wilson and Parks, returned to the comfort of the Family Circus to lick his wounds. Some critics have derided Keane as "the Beach Boys' Yoko Ono" for his unfortunate role in the Smile! sessions. Nevertheless, Keane's book remains the only fully-realized version of the work that the three men envisioned together in late 1966. Music historians trying to guess how the bootlegged Smile! demos would have been pieced together need look no further than this book.


• And for Kittycat's Motor is Running: I weep for Jeffy. The language, however base and stomach cramp inducing, does the job of transporting the reader to the suburban hell that only Keane can imagine. The amount of ennui overflowing from this wasp-ish family of innocents staggers. If you cannot see their pain, you are blind. I am Jocasta, my eyes bleed for the family circus.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:10 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Leftover Links

• Some seriously deranged Amazon customer reviews. (via Doc Searls)
• A year ago "Our Lady of the Underpass" was a Chicago phenomenon. Eric Zorn revisits.
• Chimney sweeps and flower pots are the stuff of poetry for Sam.
• Dale Peck's recent judgment in the Tournament of Books is scarcely worth mentioning, but I did very much enjoy Kevin Guilfoile's commentary on the topic as well as his tale about meeting Ken Kesey.
• Kakutani's reign of terror turns 25.
• The Literary Saloon points us to Jonathan Franzen's new book. It's a memoir, and like Ed, I am disappointed by that.
• The Rake chats with Charles D'Ambrosio

- C. Max Magee @ 8:25 AM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

Judas: Bookseller

The revelation of the so-called "Book of Judas" last week made for some good news stories. The newly discovered gospel claims that one of history's oldest bad guys wasn't so bad. It's a provocative story and there's an element of Indiana Jones to it all, as the lost text was found in Egypt and made its way to the public through years of intrigue and backchannel trading. Scholars, meanwhile, are already debating how relevant the document is. The New York Times article on the gospel gets into the scholarly debate somewhat, but an illuminating essay by David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy explains why the "Gospel of Judas" is not a lost book from the Bible, but rather a Gnostic text. But what interests me most are not the theological ramifications of the find, but how its public unveiling is tied to the release of so many books (and a movie).

First of all, it's unlikely that this news would be of such interest were it not for the success of The Da Vinci Code, which has made once obscure Gnostic texts mainstream reads for fans of Dan Brown's book. It's also worth noting that The Da Vinci Code movie comes out soon, on May 19th, which is sure to keep early Christian mysticism in the news. But then there are the books themselves. National Geographic, which officially made the documents public, has two related books out now: The Gospel of Judas, which is an annotated translation of the original documents, and The Lost Gospel, which is about the discovery of the gospel and the research that went into deciphering it. The David Kopel essay cited above mentions an AP story in which James M. Robinson, a rival to the National Geographic scholars, explains why the find is probably not all that important. It turns out Robinson has his own book on the gospel coming out, too, The Secrets of Judas, which gives his view on the find.

So, for something that was portrayed in the media as a stunning new find, this all seems to be very stage managed to me. The Gospel of Judas itself has been floating around since the 70s, but the three books (and the National Geographic TV special) all seem timed to hitch onto The Da Vinci Code's next wave of publicity as Dan Brown emerges from his court proceedings and his best seller hits the big screen.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:36 PM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

Weekend Links

• George Saunders is the subject of one of Deborah Solomon's wacky interviews in the New York Times. (via Ed)
• Scott gets a byline in the SF Chronicle for his review of Duchess of Nothing by Heather McGowan.
• Elizabeth Crane summarizes the Tom Cruise flick Minority Report like only she can.
• "A rare collection of Dracula-related books is to be handed over to Dublin City Library." I had no idea Bram Stoker was Irish.

- C. Max Magee @ 4:45 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

IMPAC shortlist

The IMPAC shortlist is in. If you don't know about the IMPAC, it's very unique prize with a very long longlist. The longlist is composed of nominees from over 150 libraries around the world. Those picks are then whittled down to a shortlist via a panel of judges. As you'll see from the shortlist, since the process leading up to this award takes so long, some of the books aren't exactly new. I think involving libraries makes the IMPAC unique compared to a lot of other awards out there. It seems a lot more egalitarian than, say, the Booker or the National Book Award, and I appreciate the international flavor as well. That's why I included it in my prizewinners post last year. There's more info about the award at the IMPAC site. Now, here's the shortlist with some comments:

• Graceland by Chris Abani - This book about Nigeria was nominated by a library in Sweeden. - excerpt
• Maps For Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam was an LBC nominee - we wrote about it for five posts sarting with this one. Another example of the multiculturalism of the IMPAC: this book about Pakistanis living in England was nominated by libraries in Belgium and South Africa. - excerpt
• Havoc in Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett - I've been wanting to read this book ever since I first heard about it. Was read and loved at Book World. - excerpts
• The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe - excerpt
• An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grondahl - excerpt
• Breaking the Tongue by Vyvyane Loh
• Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini - excerpt
• The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra - excerpt
• The Master by Colm Toibin - excerpt
• The Logogryph by Thomas Wharton

- C. Max Magee @ 8:34 PM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

A Couple of Quick Notes

It's been a busy week, but I wanted to share a couple of things real quick. I enjoyed the Guardian story about the different psychologies of men and women based on what they read. I was not at all surprised by their conclusion that women are far more engaged in reading then men. I'd never thought about it before, but when I worked at the bookstore I was surprised to see that female customers were far more numerous than male. In fact, nearly all of our most dedicated and literary regulars were women. GalleyCat and Bookninja also commented.

From Slate comes the story about how a word that is "a vulgarity for a condom" ended up being the answer for 43 Down in Monday's New York Times crossword puzzle.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:21 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The Possibility of an eBook Summer

Hillel Italie, the AP's publishing beat reporter, has a story about how a couple of major book stores aren't getting behind the impending release of the Sony Reader. According to Italie, both Barnes & Noble and Amazon won't be carrying the device when it comes out this summer, while Borders will be carrying it. In a post from a couple of months ago, I mentioned the Sony Reader, which had gotten rave reviews from people who'd tried it out. Sony now has the Reader up on its Web site, and I have to say, even in the pictures, it looks a lot more usable than I expected. It's small and relatively elegant looking, but the quality of the text on the screen is most impressive. There is certainly a paper-like quality to the display. Despite all this, I don't think I'll be pulping my books anytime soon. I simply enjoy all the non-textual aspects of books too much. I do think, however, that if this device is as pleasant to use as people have described it to be, then surely there will be some use for it, and certainly some categories of books will be ripe for transition to this format. Textbooks come to mind.

Truthfully, I'm really not all that surprised that Barnes & Noble isn't carrying the Sony Reader because I would imagine that the transaction of buying books for the device and the act of reading books on the device won't have any real connection to the typical brick and mortar book store experience. Not unlike how the way many people now buy and listen to music doesn't have much of a connection to the Tower Records down the street, and Tower Records (probably to its detriment) isn't in the "eMusic business." As for Amazon sitting this one out, that's a little harder to understand, but I'd imagine it'll jump on board if there's any inkling in the early going that the Sony Reader is taking off. Ultimately, I think the Sony Reader will be a success if Sony manages to sell it as a comfortable reading device and not a replacement for books. There are a few other issues, of course. It's expensive, set to retail for $300 to $400, and there are many handheld devices, and many more on the way, that can function as "eReaders," though without Sony's special, paper-like display, while also doing a lot of other stuff - I'm talking Palms and the like here. Regardless, though, 2006 should be an interesting year to watch the ongoing digital future of books.

Supplemental Links: Another pic of the device at Gizmodo; Kevin 2.0 asks if dedicated eBook readers are really needed; Bookninja, on the other hand, calls it the "iPod for nerds."

- C. Max Magee @ 11:00 PM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

More Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions

In January, I put up some scans of the first round of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions, for which famous cartoonists provided the cover art. Scott points to a new batch of Deluxe Editions posted at The Fantagraphics Blog. For more on the creation of the art for the Marquis De Sade book (to be released in October), visit Tropical Toxic, the blog of the artist, Tomer Hanuka.

Update: A new batch is out.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:07 PM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

Shortlist unveiled for richest short story prize

This morning the Guardian points to the shortlist for the National Short Story Prize, a British contest that attracted more than 1,400 entries. The point of the contest is to "re-establishing the importance of the British short story," and as such there are some recognizable names on the shortlist to get people interested, including master of the form William Trevor and novelists Rose Tremain and Michel Faber. Also making the list is James Lasdun whose book The Horned Man I very much admired. The Guardian story has some very brief excerpts of the stories, and BBC 4 (one of the organizers of the Prize) has bios of the shortlisted writers. BBC4 will be broadcasting readings of the five stories from the April 10th to the 15th, a unique idea that is especially suited to short stories, and the winner - to receive 15,000 pounds - will be unveiled on May 15th. I hope they put the text of the stories online at some point, too.

Update: Found some links related to the final stories, and I thought I'd share.

• "Men of Ireland" by Trevor was originally published in the New Yorker. James Tata writes about the story here.
• "The Safehouse" by Faber was discussed at Bookworld. The story appeared in Faber's collection, Farenheit Twins.
• "The Anxious Man" by Lasdun appeared in The Paris Review #173. They're sold out but Amazon has a couple of copies
• "The Ebony Hand" by Tremain will be part of a collection called The Darkness of Wallis Simpson in December. The collection is already out in England, and there's a brief synopsis of the story at readingadventures (scroll down).
• "Flyover" by Rana Dasgupta is in the collection Tokyo Cancelled.

Some thoughts on the story prize from Tim Worstall.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:34 AM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

The Poetry Corner

Now, I'm sure the many poetry fiends who haunt this blog are already deep into their "National Poetry Month" saturnalia, this being already the third of April after all. Still, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that you can get a poem delivered discretely to your inbox every day this month from the Academy of American Poets. One poem a day not enough? Visit Knopf to double your daily poetic intake. And now, three poetry books I have liked:

• The Pill Vesus the Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan - see "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" and others here.
• Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara - see "A Step Away From Them" and others here.
• In Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson - about In Memoriam

In the spirit of National Poetry Month, I encourage you to share your poetic favorites in the comments.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:07 PM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

British History in Books

Melvyn Bragg, who hosts the terrific In Our Time program on BBC Radio, has put together a list of the twelve British books that have changed the world. The list is for a television series that he'll be hosting. As an article in the Guardian explains, the most recent book on the list is from 1918, and there's no fiction at all. What's interesting about Bragg's list is that they're not so much books as they're historical documents of political and scientific importance. The list:

• Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton
• Married Love by Marie Stopes
• The Magna Carta
• The Rule Book of Association Football
• On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
• On the Abolition of the Slave Trade by William Wilberforce
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
• Experimental Researches in Electricity by Michael Faraday
• Patent Specification for Arkwright's Spinning Machine by Richard Arkwright
• The King James Bible by William Tyndale and 54 Scholars Appointed by the King
• An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
• The First Folio by William Shakespeare

- C. Max Magee @ 8:19 AM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

The Rushdies

If you've ever seen Salman Rushdie and his wife Lakshmi in public, then you know, the pair of them turn heads. Salman looks like a caricature. He's almost muppet-like, while Lakshmi is a model many years his junior and many inches taller. When they walk through a room, everybody sort of stops what they're doing and stares. An article in the Times illuminates this seemingly mismatched relationship. (via AL daily)

- C. Max Magee @ 8:08 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The Corey Vilhauer Book of the Month Club: April 2006

I had a hell of a time picking my book of the month this time around. This happens every few months, and I'm always better off for the difficulty in choosing my favorite. One month I will go through four books and have a definitive favorite - a book that I'll recommend to friends, etc. The next, however, I'll manage to read three books that are not only better than the one I picked the month before, but are good enough to make my preliminary "best of the year" short list. It never fails - I'd have more balance in my life if I had read them a month apart, but it never happens that way.

This month my choice was between Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer), Hard Laughter (Anne Lamott), and Other Electricities (Ander Monson). Hard Laughter was good - better than I had expected it would be - but it was the easiest one to leave off. Many months it would have been my favorite (I'm a sucker for books that are 80% conversation) but this month it had too much to compete against.

Foer and Monson fought it out in my mind until I realized something - I've already picked Foer as a Book of the Month - my first one, for The Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning. So, by process of elimination, Ander Monson won the right to have his book selected.

I first heard of Ander Monson through the LitBlog Co-Op's "Read These Books or Die" Winter 2005/6 campaign and was extremely interested in its use of indexes. I was intrigued enough to request it from our local library, and to my surprise they purchased a copy and put my name at the top of the list.

Mr. Monson, you can send me a thank you anytime.

Really, Other Electricities is like no other book I've ever read. It's not quite a novel, but it's also not quite a short story collection. It's somewhere in between - a group of essays and short stories that all interplay with each other; all create another piece of a grand novel. It's a series that is bound by one theme - the lives of a small town shortly before and shortly after the death of a girl. Her accident - she and her prom date were drowned in a frozen lake after they attempted to drive on it - binds every character together to the point where each story, regardless of the protagonist, is ultimately connected.

The resemblances to Fargo and Twin Peaks are evident. And while Other Electricities may not have been inspired by Laura Palmer and Marge Gunderson, there are a lot of similarities in their worlds. In fact, the episodic nature of Monson's overall story cries out for the comparisons. Much like Twin Peaks was a collection of odd characters whose lives intertwined; each of these stories overlaps and peeks into the life of this town in the years leading up to and following the death. The setting is Coen Brothers, but the town could have been created by David Lynch.

Don't think that this is a simple knock-off, though. Monson creates a complex town that's filled with failed dreams and eccentric people - the group of bored and rutted kids that nearly always drinks too much, gets themselves stuck in the middle of a frozen lake, and commits murder. It's cold, and the town has adapted to it. There's mystery in the air, not to mention a vast array of disappointment.

The variety in the style and length of each story in Other Electricities helps create a mosaic of voices and lifestyles; each character brings a new revelation about their small town, about death, and about growing up as a teenager in the middle of domestic tundra. Everyone gets their say.

The layout of the book is wonderful. Monson charts out every character and connects each in a web, then gives an explanation of the themes and characters - both artistically and satirically. An index not only helps reference common ideas but also gives a little insight into the relationship between Liz, the drowned girl, and her prom date - a relationship that isn't mentioned directly. You can cross reference to your heart's content.

It's amazing to think of these stories on their own - they're all very good, but as a whole there are ideas and themes that aren't even mentioned; are simply implied by the connections between stories. I've never felt so cold, and I've never desired to go wandering through a small town, around a lake, and into the city center during a vicious snowstorm as much as I did after reading Other Electricities.

Well, it's snowing outside. I guess I could start now.

-Corey Vilhauer
Black Marks on Wood Pulp
CVBoMC Jan, Feb, Mar.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:59 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post