The LA Time’s Jacket Copy blog has a long interview with Jonathan Lethem about his most recent work, Chronic City. Check it out!
October 31, 2009
The Whiting Foundation Announces Winners
Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Writers Awards which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The awards, of $50,000 each, are based on accomplishment and promise. Candidates are proposed by nominators from across the country whose experience and vocations bring them in contact with individuals of extraordinary talent. Winners are chosen by a selection committee, a small group of recognized writers, literary scholars, and editors, appointed annually by the Foundation. Both nominators and selectors serve anonymously.
The ten writers recognized this year for their extraordinary talent and promise are:
Jericho Brown, poetry. Please is his first book, published by New Issues Poetry & Prose in 2008. He lives in San Diego.
Jay Hopler, poetry. His first collection, Green Squall, was published by Yale University Press in 2005. He lives in Tampa, Florida.
Adam Johnson, fiction. He is the author of Emporium (Viking 2002) and Parasites Like Us (Viking, 2003). He lives in San Francisco.
Rajiv Joseph, plays. His productions include Animals out of Paper, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and the forthcoming Gruesome Playground Injuries. He lives in Brooklyn.
Joan Kane, poetry. The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife, her first collection, will be published by NorthShore Press this fall. She lives in Anchorage.
Michael Meyer, nonfiction. The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed, was published by Walker & Company in 2008. Soon to return to China, he lives in New York City.
Nami Mun, fiction. Miles from Nowhere, a novel, was published by Riverhead in 2009. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she lives in Chicago.
Hugh Raffles, nonfiction. He is the author of In Amazonia: A Natural History (Princeton University Press, 2002), and The Illustrated Insectopedia, which Pantheon will publish in the spring of 2010. A Professor of Anthropology at The New School, he lives in New York City.
Salvatore Scibona, fiction. The End, his first novel, was published by Graywolf Press in 2008 and shortlisted for the National Book Awards. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts. (He just read with us on October 25!)
Vu Tran, fiction. This accomplished short story writer has an as-yet-untitled first novel forthcoming from W.W. Norton. Born in Viet Nam, he now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
See here for more details.
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October 29, 2009
“Life of Pi” to Become Movie
Filmmaker Ang Lee has recently announced plans to create a film adaptation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. Lee’s past films include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. Click here for more details.
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‘Zeitoun’ as Cartoon: Animated Film of Eggers Book
A film version of a book about a man’s true-life experiences in post-Katrina New Orleans would seem sufficiently pregnant with artistic possibility. Still, Jonathan Demme plans to take his adaption of “Zeitoun,” the best-selling Dave Eggers work, one step further by making it as an animated feature.
On Wednesday, Mr. Demme (whose films include “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Rachel Getting Married”) said that he had acquired the film rights to “Zeitoun,” whose cover illustration by Rachel Sumpterr had inspired him to make it into a cartoon.
Click here to read the full article.
N.B. We have limited numbers of signed Dave Eggers’ books!
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Most Influential Books Survey
For celebrating their 25 year anniversary, the international magazine Wasafari conducted an international survey of the most influential books of the past quarter-century.
Toping the list is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was the only novel chosen by three international writers. One of the authors who chose the book stated, “”[It] taught the west how to read a reality alternative to their own, which in turn opened the gates for other non-western writers like myself and other writers from Africa and Asia… Apart from the fact that it’s an amazing book, it taught western readers tolerance for other perspectives.”
Salman Rushdie made the list twice for The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children. And I was personally very pleasantly surprised to see Allen Ginsberg’s Collected Poems!
The Wasafiri list:
1 Aminatta Forna: The Famished Road by Ben Okri
2 Amit Chaudhuri: Collected Poems by Elizabeth Bishop
3 Bernardine Evaristo: Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain by Peter Fryer
4 Beverley Naidoo: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D Taylor
5 Blake Morrison: The Stories of Raymond Carver by Raymond Carver
6 Brian Chikwava: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
7 Chika Unigwe: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
8 Daljit Nagra: North by Seamus Heaney
9 David Dabydeen: A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul
10 Elaine Feinstein: Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
11 Fred D’Aguiar: Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris
12 Hirsh Sawhney: River of Fire by Quarratulain Hyder
13 Indra Sinha: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
14 John Haynes: Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
15 Lesley Lokko: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
16 Maggie Gee: Disgrace by JM Coetzee
17 Marina Warner: Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
18 Maya Jaggi: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
19 Michael Horovitz: Collected Poems by Allen Ginsberg
20 Minoli Salgado: Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
21 Nii Parkes: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
22 Roger Robinson: Sula by Toni Morrison
23 Sujata Bhatt: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
24 Sukhdev Sandhu: The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Dr Li Zhisui
25 Tabish Khair: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
click here to read more!
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The “Best of” Season Begins!
Publisher’s Weekly, in advance of their 100 Best Books issue, released their reviewers’ list of the ten best books of the year. It is an excellent list combining some heavily buzzed about books and some overlooked gems:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704210.html?desc=topstory
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October 28, 2009
Publishing & E-Publishing
Barnes & Noble recently released the Nook — its new e-reader — as a direct competitor to Amazon’s Kindle. The folks at Wired are pretty excited about it and its shiny new features, which you can read all about in their review. I’m one of those cranky young men who will never be caught dead with an e-reader so long as I live (and have the option of dead tree). My opposition to them is mostly personal — I enjoy the sensual experience of holding a physical book, turning its pages, feeling the grain of the paper, scribbling notes in the margins, underlining here and there. For the books I love best (or which came with a paper assignment), you can trace the dialogue I had with the author, characters, and/or ideas through those marginalia and exclamations of approval or puzzlement. I like having a desk cluttered with books in various states of completion. I love having bookshelves stocked with color and inviting leisurely perusal. For me, an e-book is anathema to the experience of reading, which encompasses far more than the text.
Which is not to say that I think e-readers are the end of the world. I think it’s likely that e-literature (or whatever you want to call it) is going to become much more popular, but I highly doubt that it will eliminate the dead tree model. E-readers and bookstores will probably end up in some sort of uneasy coexistence. I just think it’s too early (as a book “traditionalist”) to freak out about the end of print, just as it’s too early for the futurists (for lack of a better term) to gloat about the inevitablity of virtual print.
I bring this up in response to a really thoughtful and fascinating post by Two Dollar Radio’s publisher Eric Obenauf over at The Rumpus about the difference between the two models. As good as Obenauf’s essay is, the comment section opens up a wide-ranging discussion about the role of the artist in contemporary society, the monetary value of art versus its personal and aesthetic value, and what the future of publishing will signify for writers’ art and wallets. Stephen Elliott, Brian Spears, Andrew Altschul and other writers and Rumpus editors join the fray. Definitely worth a full read!
(crossposted from Destructive Anachronism)
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October 27, 2009
Fitzgerald’s tax returns
Or “how to make the 2009 equivalent of a half million dollars a year and still die penniless”
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I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy by Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
My staff pick this month just has to be a classic on my bookshelf, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky. Easily in my top 3 poets of all time, Hafiz is also the most celebrated Persian poet and perhaps the most celebrated poet’s poet. A book of love and its many forms, his essence of inspirational wisdom and insight is captured here in this collection translated by Daniel Ladinsky (who deserves a great deal of recognition in capturing the strength behind Hafiz’s brevity).
Perhaps Emerson put it best: “He fears nothing. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see and be.”
Whether for your love, your faith, or for yourself… I would recommend this collection to anyone looking for a beautiful read with depth to make your heart sing.
“A poet is someone
Who can pour Light into a spoon,
Then raise it to nourish
Your beautiful parched, holy mouth.”
-excerpt from Your Beautiful Parched Holy Mouth, Hafiz
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October 26, 2009
New England Halloween Picks
Halloween is around the corner so here are some spooky books to put you in the right mood. You can find all of these at Newtonville Books.
Food For the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires by Michael E. Bell.
Witches, Rakes and Rogues: True Stories of Scam, Scandal, Murder and Mayhem in Boston, 1630-1775 by D. Brenton Simons.
Haunted Pubs of New England: Raising Spirits of the Past by Roxie. J. Zwicker.
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