On Considering The Right Friends (For Bio Purposes Only)

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I count myself as guilty as the next guy when it comes to ignoring the details of my literary ancestors’ lives, but in my romantic, sepia-toned fantasies of the past, all writers had to do was string lovely sentences together. Then again, when I consider the ones with staying power, most of them had something that would please a publicist. Hemingway was impossibly masculine, rugged, and outdoorsy; London photographed like a sad-eyed movie star; and Sylvia Plath was out of her mind. I’m mildly cheered by the idea that all Dorothy Parker and her cohorts had to do was drink […]

Quote of the Week

Putting The Breaking Back In News

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We admit it: we delighted in the mental image of the Paris literary scene being shaken to the core. Absent live video, we were left to make do with a monolithic scene of Jacques-Louis David clarity, one where all members of said literary scene were conveniently located in the same cafe. The flaw with this image came in our inability to replace glasses of wine with outrage. What has France in distress? Oh, just a little statement of the obvious: In its 2004 report, the SCPA, part of the justice ministry, said it was “difficult to distinguish between jury members,

Square Pegs

And Reviews. Again.

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We still have mixed feelings about anonymous reviews. Sure, a huge part of us demands that reviewers stand up and take responsibility for their work. What’s wrong with standing behind your opinion? Then we start thinking that anonymity allows for a certain level of freedom, especially if the reviewer is part of the community they’re reviewing. Peer pressure, you know. Quinn Dalton, whose Bulletproof Girl received an anonymous, negative review from Kirkus makes a compelling case for taking the unsigned out of unsigned reviews: While negative reviews are a reality, I didn’t feel that this review was fair or accurate.

Books/Mags/Blogs

This Really Cute Guy Just Moved Next Door

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So there we were, swinging in the hammock, watching the hummingbirds chase each other (they really do have a lot of excess energy). Suddenly, the sound of a moving van interrupted our half-sleep. What? A new neighbor? And here things had been so quiet. What’s with the excitement on our block? On one side, we have the extremely provocative The Happy Booker, on the other side is the very enticing Dan Wickett. What’s a blog to do? Well, we’re going to throw a three-day weekend. To celebrate Dan’s assumption of multiple daily posts and contributions to the Bloghood Improvement Project,

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AgentSpeak: Bold Voices

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There were lots of words we didn’t understand in MediaBistro’s profile of Larry Weissman Literary LLC. Media landscape, cultural taste-trackers, that sort of thing. What we did understand that there’s an agent out there eager to represent bold young journalists who specialize in literary narrative nonfiction (something, we presume, you know when you see it). Also, popping out was this interesting gem: He tends toward literary fiction, but he’s not averse to the more commercial stuff. Authors with a YA novel up their sleeve can address those manuscripts to Weissman’s wife, Sascha Alper. Vitals: Larry Weissman Literary LLC, Brooklyn, New

Agents

Writers Need Income Too

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If you’re looking for a reason not to write for the Village Voice, might we point you to the latest offer from management to staff? In addition to the traditional benefit cuts (which we’re sure somebody is going to fix — you want your crisis? Try health care, and not just for artists), there’s a cute little item that should raise hackles everywhere: …and insisted that terms for work on the Voice’s website be determined in one-on-one deals between individual writers and the corporation, not through the collective bargaining that is required in a union shop. In a way, accessing

Square Pegs

Either The Numbers Are Lying, Or Someone Out There Is Reading

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At some point, someone will need to reconcile the fact that kids today don’t read with the fact that Harry Potter orders are skyrocketing. But we’ll leave that task to those who understand bell curves and whatnot. We want to focus on the positive for the moment. At this rate, pre-orders should top the 1.3 million pre-orders received for the previous Harry Potter book in 2003. After that, there’s not much in the way of news. Oh, the huge discount issue is going to raise its ugly head again. And it will be interesting to see if people are throwing

Books/Mags/Blogs

Continuing Our Train of Thought

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Laws always have a hard time keeping up with rapid changes in society and technology. In many ways, this is a good thing. Laws should be deliberate, not reactionary. Sometimes, however, a slow pace can be destructive. Which is why, like music clearances, you’re going to be hearing more about patent infringements. Which, by the way, are not the same as copyright infringements. Patents are ideas. The problem is that some ideas are not unique. Just as a thousand monkeys might eventually produce the works of Shakespeare (though, we hope, with more modern spelling), two minds might light upon the

Square Pegs

Taking The Fair Out of Use

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It is a generally accepted principle that art builds upon art. Books, movies, songs, even paintings take cues from what has come before. Stories and themes are reexamined. Pieces of other works are incorporated into new works. But then art became big business. It was no longer controlled by the artist — once art became a corporate asset, the rules changed. If you’ve been paying attention to the rumblings, one thing you’ve noticed is that it won’t be technology that keeps the vast majority of works out of the public purview, it will be clearances. Especially when it comes to

Square Pegs

An Embarrassment of Riches

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Even as we get excited about innovative marketing campaigns, we find ourself wondering what stops reporters from asking the tough questions. Like, oh, “When did living off the grid start meaning becoming invisible to real-life surveillance networks? Have you never heard of spy satellites?” Yes, indeedy, folks. We have ourselves a situation where the publisher is convinced they have the next Da Vinci Code (hey, they have the editor — it’s not such a leap of logic), but the author isn’t willing to get caught up in the publicity machine. So much so that Jason Kaufman felt obliged to defend

Books/Mags/Blogs
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