Square Pegs

Regular readers know that we have a little bit of a blogging crush on the New York Times’ Ed Wyatt, the king of the publishing beat — we always make fun of the ones we love. So it’s with giddy fingers that we share the latest Wyatt news: he’s moving to Los Angeles! Yes, yes, we know. It’s hard to contain this kind of excitement. The announcement, via the always-worthy-of-reading L.A. Observed: But all is not woe for the culture department: Ed Wyatt, intrepid reporter on the publishing beat, is also moving to the California Republic, as a television beat […]

While we’re not entirely sure that we get fan-fic, much less slash fiction, we’re a live-and-let-live kind of blog. You have an active fantasy life? We support it. You have a thing for going where no character has ever gone before? We’re cool. But, man, we hate confusion. It is perfectly fine for fiction writers to Make Stuff Up. It’s really important for journalists to Get Stuff Right. If you’re gonna write about a new phenomenon that’s, like, really old, get your facts straight. To wit: Go to the REM link, for example, and you’ll find a short story devoted

Even for regular practitioners, the English language is the stuff of nightmares. You’re talking along and then, boom!, do you use the subjunctive case? Is there another case that might be better? It’s a wonder any conversation, much less written material, is accomplished. Don’t get us wrong: we believe the convoluted nature of our language is what sets us apart from, oh, the French and their crazy insistence on assigning gender to everything. But whom? If there’s a concession the language can make (and, note, we are only asking for one), let it be the loss of “whom”. Purists might

There is something comforting about writing a novel in secret. Nobody knows how often you trash the entire thing and start over. Nobody sees all your blips and bleeps and complete screw-ups. It’s a very nice feeling, this freedom. A while back, we brought Greg Sandow to your attention — he’s the guy who’s writing his book in public (well, on the internet; presumably that still public). While Greg’s subject, the future of classical music, is not the stuff of fiction, his process will be familiar to all. Including the part where he’s starting over: (This is the first episode

It is a slow morning here at the headquarters, and we have caught our mind wandering down strange paths. This is the sort of thing that happens when PW uses the word “viral” in a sentence and the subject is not infectious disease. Example: Though it’s too early to tell if the video will go viral. . . The video in question pairs novelist Lolita Files with pop singer Silena Murrell. Yeah, exactly our reaction. Of course, we do not claim to be in touch with what the kids are listening to these days. Nor can we speak to the

By now it should be clear that we woke up slightly above cranky on our mood scale. It is the little things that will get to us today, and possibly we should give up now. No, apparently that’s not going happen, or it won’t happen until after we invite you to join us in banging our head on hard wood surfaces. Let us begin by saying that we are sure that Jeffrey Trachtenberg is very knowledgeable about the publishing industry. We have fairly good faith in the Wall Street Journal, and since he’s on staff, probably he knows his stuff.

In our haste to begin Monday, we made a huge mistake. We nearly forgot to note that this is Divided Kingdom week at the Lit-Blog Co-Op. For you this means, hurry, hurry. Rupert Thomson blogged from Spain — proving, among other things, that they have the Internet in Spain. The things you learn. But wait! There’s even more — discussions about the four humors (you should not be suprised that, given the absence of a humor called “worked up”, we were labeled phlegmatic — it only sounds back if you have allergies), podcasts, and treasure hunts. Okay, probably not treasure

Do not think that we are opposed to reading — if we could not read, we would likely go mad. And, yes, we’ve already heard that joke. It wasn’t funny the first million times. Yet we do enjoy these regularly timed “Why Kids Won’t Read” stories, if only because they reinforce the idea that making reading a chore — and one must consider that unlike many of the other subjects studied in school, reading is one that lives on a pleasure activity after the final exams* — turns kids away from the task. But that, you see, is the point:

Sometimes we look beyond the world of publishing. It’s a surprisingly big planet, all things considered. Yet in all corners of the globe, we find people just like us: An instant later, Mr Flynn’s 6ft, 13st frame was hurtling towards the first of the vases, all of which were displayed on a windowsill. “Although [I knew] the vase would break I didn’t imagine it would be loose and crash into the other two,” he said. “I’m sure I only hit the first one and that must have flown across the windowsill and hit the next one, which then hit the

We are totally behind tilting at windmills, so bring you the story of one man’s attempt to accomplish the impossible*. Since the fine folks at the OED are more diligent than those at the U.S. Patent Office, they do a pretty thorough search for prior examples of word usage. We suspect this internet thing helps. In one case, a man’s attempt to get his made-up word (Jill, you are not alone) into the dictionary of record was deemed “amusing”. We have been called amusing more than once in our life, and it’s rarely the compliment it seems. For example, when