The French writer Jean-Marie Gutav Le Clezio just won the 2008 Nobel prize for Literature. He was eleventh on the list of betting sites, offering 14/1 odds, just between Inger Christensen and Michael Ondaatje. He’s published thirty-odd books, a few of which have been translated into English. Many people identify two distinct periods in his […]
The National Federation of the Blind is protesting the film adaptation of Jose Saramago’s Blindness. The director of the Federation, Marc Maurer, claims that “Blindness doesn’t turn decent people into monsters.” Jose Saramago has already dismissed the protesters quite emphatically, calling the protest a “display of meanness based on nothing at all.” The protest couldn’t […]
The Minnesota Review is in danger of shutting down, due to Carnegie Mellon’s intransigence regarding funding. It’s an age-old struggle between English departments squeezed for money, who want to shift funds to other seemingly more tangible benefits, and literary journals that are rarely self-supporting. David Kaufer, the head of the English department, insists that The […]
Nothing could be more foolish than betting on the Nobel. At least with the National Book Award and the Man Booker you have a shortlist to choose from. With the Nobel, it’s anyone’s guess. Besides, I’ve lost plenty of money betting on the stock market, which these days might be even more foolish than betting […]
So now that the British publishers of Sherry Jones’ “The Jewel of Medina” have been firebombed, do you think that Random House is congratulating themselves on a prudent decision? In terms of cost-analysis, and in terms of potential danger, and in terms of (some) public relations, Random House clearly took the correct path. If nothing […]
Apologies for the scarcity of posts this week. I was up in Canada for a few days. But without any further ado, a roundup of stuff that has happened in my absence. A new Open Letters for the month of October. Oxford University Press is publishing “As They Say in Zanzibar: Proverbial Wisdom from Around […]
Pop over to PBS’s Channel Thirteen website for my recommendations on the new high school reading canon. Feel free to critique my list or offer a book you wish you were assigned in high school. UPDATE: The link to PBS is dead. I’ve reposted the article below. The New Canon John Matthew Fox Selecting reading […]
I’ve been listening to Michael Silverblatt’s interviews with David Foster Wallace for Bookworm, and they are quite rewarding. I especially like that Silverblatt starts out the interview on “Infinite Jest” by asking Wallace straight out whether the structure of the book is based on fractals. (!?) The National Book Foundation highlights five very talented writers […]
The university has taken over the role of Patron of the Arts, especially for creative writing, as the New York Times points out in Those Who Write, Teach. Five years ago I gave up the full-time writing life and became the kind of domesticated writer known as a professor. I was not shot with a […]
The Bollywood of Lit Mags. Books are Dead (or so they’d like you to think). Edward Champion has catalogued responses from a number of authors on David Foster Wallace’s death. Bilingual short story collection — Spanish and English stories, side by side. Salman Rushdie, editor of this year’s Best American Short Stories, answers two questions […]
