Not only can Maud be found in this Sunday’s Post, but as Ron notes, the Times has gone ga-ga over Vollman, albeit mammoth nonfiction Vollman. (And, on the whole, this Sunday looks as if it has considerably more fiction coverage than the last three weeks.) Is there hope for the NYTBR? Has Keller been listening? I’m positive that the gang over at the Saloon will have a tally and a summation of this interesting new development.

It’s official: most popular bloggers are thieves. It ain’t just link poaching either. (And because I try not to be a thief, via MeFi.)

Also, who knew? (via Wonkette)

One more thing: Am I the only one who thinks that John Garfield was the Keanu of his time? Garfield has exactly two expressions he resorts to: looking up and looking down. This limited yet distracting dichotomy has worked against my total enjoyment of such films as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Body and Soul (and it’s particularly shameful in the latter case). When Garfield offers the rare expression working against the two looks, it comes across as a pretty boy using all six brain cells in his arsenal to come up with something tantamount to the worst community theatre histrionics. Garfield often looks pained when he attempts this, as if he’s suffering from hemorrhoids. And his posturing is egregious when he’s trying to come off as a tough guy.

I could be totally wrong on this, but frankly I just don’t understand why John Garfield should be regarded. Give me the underrated Steve Cochran or even straight-shooter Robert Cummings any day.

Okay, now I’m really outta here.

Ruthless deadlines keep me away from the blog until Monday. I’m not permitted one post, one word, one link until this work backlog’s caught up (the downside of getting well). So sayeth the self-discipline imp cracking the whip. I wish Tony Clifton would come in and guest blog while I’m away, but alas. Enjoy some of the fine folks on the left.

No, Tina. “Eventoid” is a dumb word. Not even Safire on his most addled afternoon could sanction it.

After years bouncing around the courts, the Neil Gaiman-Todd McFarlane trial has wrapped. Heroes can be copyrighted. Gaiman has won $2-5 million from being screwed over. After paying attorney’s fees, Gaiman’s devoting the remaining sum over to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Gaiman, now in the running for Coolest Guy on the Planet, has been called “a shameful opportunist” by McFarlane. “I’m nice too,” said McFarlane. “Just not as nice as Neil.”

With Darren Aronofsky, he helped wow and depress the hell out of filmgoers with Requiem for a Dream. Now hard-boiled novelist Hubert Selby, Jr. is back with Fear X. Nicolas Refn is the director. John Turturro stars. Kubrick’s cameraman, Larry Smith, was enlisted. Selby co-wrote the script. And instead of the Kornos Quartet, it’s Brian Eno on the soundtrack. “The movie is very, very, very depressing,” said the Telegraph. “But it’s also very good. Even our harshest critic couldn’t get out of bed for several days.”

The Age talks with Andrea Levy. Her novels are inspired by racial identity, much of it related to her parents coming from Jamaica to Britain, thinking that they would be considered white, only to be singled out.

Here’s a new angle for an Anne Rice profile: her relationship with her late husband.

Reason No. 3,624 to Vote for Kerry: States are getting creative with their budgets. Denied resources by a federal government too busy cutting taxes for the rich and spending its way out of control, Alabama has an unusual idea. In an effort to buy school textbooks, a Bingo for Books proposal is on the table.

A Pennsylvania public library has placed five sexual instruction books on the reference shelves, rather than the stacks. Now residents hoping to learn about positions other than missionary or the joys of gay sex will have to do so at a public refectory table, instead of the privacy of their own homes. The number of successful orgasms in Broomall, PA is expected to drop by 16% over the next year.

A chat with J.K. Rowling revealed the following: There may be more than seven books. Harry Potter will continue growing up. Harry Potter will enter a Hogwarts halfway house.

So who is National Book Critics Award winner Edward Jones?

1. He received a telephone message from his agent urging him to continue.
2. Here’s an excerpt. The novel, for those who don’t know, is about a black slave owner.
3. Jones began to write after being let go from a job he held for 19 years condensing articles for a trade journal. The novel has sold 100,000 copies.
4. Jones is 53 and lives alone in a Washington, D.C. apartment.
5. He grew up poor, moving “18 times in 18 years.” His mother could not read or write.
6. Jones couldn’t make friends, so he read books (including comic books).
7. Here’s an NPR link for audiophiles.

And the winner is Edward Jones!

Additional winners:

General Nonfiction: Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi
Biography/Autobiography: William Taubman, Kruschev: The Man and His Era
Poetry: Susan Stewart, Columbarium
Criticism: Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows

I’ll have more on Jones during tomorrow morning’s update.

Since the Hag likes Cafe Press so much, Return of the Reluctant proudly joins this populist consumerism.

Ladies and gentlemen, the official “I’m A Bitch” T-shirt.

Leave it to the trusty OGIC to have some good inside New Yorker juice (via today’s WSJ). Back in 1966, Murray Schumach prepared a lengthy profile on Wallace Shawn. But editor Arthur Gelb caved and gave Shawn article approval. Results: a New Yorker editor holed up with enmity, months of unsuccessful negotiations, and an article that never made it into print. The lesson is unequivocal. But it still dismays me that so many editors cut this kind of deal.

A number of authors, including JK Rowling, Philip Pullman and Vikram Seth, are leading a coalition against the removal of retail prices from books. Philip Pullman notes that “books are not eggs,” midlist authors would suffer, and royalties would be more creatively calculated.

There’s actually a simpler way to look at the issue: Does anybody really want to go into a bookstore and be surrounded by books with terrible price tags besmirching their exterior? The affixing paste may ruin the cover. Or the pricetag might become so prominent as to destroy a carefully designed cover. Worse still, the name of a book or an author might be blotted out due to some rushed, underpaid bookstore clerk threatened with a flogging.

Fiction coverage isn’t the only thing getting shafted by the Gray Lady. Ted Rall’s editorial cartoons have been pulled because the Times wants to ensure that its content “does not offend the reasonable sensibillities of our audience.”

Man, between this and the NYTBR flap, I am this close to cancelling my Sunday subscription in protest.

(via Romenesko)

There’s a new neighbor on the lit blog block: Rake’s Progress.

Publisher’s Lunch reported this morning that Houghton Mifflin issued a press release that sales were down from last year, with the sentence, “The decrease was due mainly to lower Tolkien book sales and lower sales of children’s titles.” However, in confirming the info, I noticed that the press release had been removed. Is it possible that Houghton Mifflin is deliberately withholding some pertinent info and that Tolkien has lust its potency? As Uncle Matt Grambo might say, DEVELOPING.

[UPDATE: Never mind. Here’s the release.]

Tonight, the National Book Critics Circle finalists will be announced. Among the nominees is one of my favorite contemporary novelists, Richard Powers, whom the Chicago Tribune catches up with. Powers, the Tribune notes, really talks in the same cerebral way as his books. That isn’t really a revelation for Powers fans. But what’s really hilarious about the interview is how the Tribune sexes Powers up: “His pale green eyes resemble chips of stained glass. His fingers are long and thin. His hair is dark brown, with the occasional thread of gray, and it falls in a thick curtain, without so much as a hint of curl. Powers, in fact, seems composed entirely of straight lines and right angles: He’s tall and lean, and he moves with the efficient grace of an animated T-square.”

What next? David Foster Wallace described as “a bracing, tobacco-chomping stallion” for GQ?

Even so, it’s good to see Powers getting this kind of major coverage months after his last novel, The Time of Our Singing, was issued quietly in hardback (and all this is a month or two after the trade paperback edition).

The Book Babes respond to the petition. Margo writes that “literary conversation has been left too long in the hands of an elite whose approach is too stuffy for my taste.” I couldn’t agree more. Which is why it is every literary journalists’s duty to maintain literary standards that can be imparted to more people. It’s taking the good aspects of the Oprah Book Club idea and raising the bar a bit, getting people excited about books without coming across as a pretentious or ditsy ass. People want to read, and they want to read good stuff. They’re always on the lookout for new authors. And the most ardent readers hope to find books and ideas that challenge them. These two have managed to get away with soft interviews with Norman Mailer and Joe Eszterhas, have perpetuated largely uninformed ideas of books, and kept up profiles of popular and middlebrow books that people would read regardless. And that is why I object to these self-described bimbos.

Again, I urge people to sign the petition. Get two people at Poynter who know what the hell they’re talking about and who won’t devote precious column-inches to whether a middle-aged woman can be a babe or not. Which wasn’t the point of Mark’s petition.

[UPDATE: Comrade Mark responds in pointed and hilarious form.]

More Rankin. Okay, provided I can find the first Rebus novel, deal me in (in no small part, thanks to Sarah).

The New York Daily News: Women Who Blog. Lots of swell folks, but no Rack?

Years ago, a manuscript thought to be authored by a white abolitionist turned out to be written by former slave Harriet Jacobs. Literary scholar Jean Fagan Yellin published the MS (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself) and the book sold 200,000 copies. Yellin’s getting a grant from the Ford Foundation to publish all of Jacobs’ papers.

Two books about the notorious John Gardner are compared.

Write a well-regarded novel in Japan, and get stalked.

And digital tools are being used to restore texts from a Georgian monastery.

The Free Dictionary comes very close to beating out dictionary.com. For one thing, there aren’t any pop-ups. But the real geeky advantage they have is the contextual examples from classic literature. For almost every word, you’ll get at least three quotes from Wilkie Collins, O. Henry or Mark Twain, and you’ll be able to click on the precise place they appear. There are some minor problems with this approach. Davenport, for example, seems to bring up character names and the city rather than the sofa. But short of paying big bucks for The OED Online, this isn’t too bad of a substitute.

Neglected to mention it, but Choire’s at the NYTBR.

J.M. Coetzee came out of the woodworks for the Adelaide Festival of Arts Writers’ Week, only to scare the bejesus out of people. Coetzee insisted that he will never give a lecture again, and that he would snap necks if anyone suggested that his Nobel speech or anything coming out of his mouth was a lecture. Coetzee wieleded a truncheon while speaking, randomly beating empty chairs between questions, and sometimes howling to the moon just before stating a declarative sentence. The Nobel winner can no longer be seen during the day. There are unconfirmed reports that fresh blood could be seen trickling down the corners of his mouth.

Jennifer Graham hates Dr. Seuss, noting facetiously that he was a failed novelist because To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street was rejected 43 times. Although I think the figure was actually 24 times, even 43 times is still par for the course. Alex Haley received 200 rejections before writing Roots. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected 121 times. Silence of the Lambs was rejected 28 times. The Naked and the Dead was rejected 12 times. Catch-22 was rejected 21 times (hence, the eponymous twenty-two). And, as an experiment (well before his big scandal), Jerzy Kosinski changed the names of the author and manuscript to see if his book would sell. Thirteen agents and fourteen publishers rejected it.

The moral of the story: Just as one can’t judge a book by its cover, it’s impossible to weigh a manuscript’s merits based on the number of rejections.

Spider-Man 3 is in the works. No word yet on whether Michael Chabon will be involved with this one, though Chabon himself doesn’t know what’s happened to his words on the second film. This confidence does suggest that we might see a continual story arc picked up from the second film, similar to Mario Puzo’s work in the first two Superman films. Variety reports that no director or actors have been signed, and the script has not been finalized. Furthermore, Harry Knowles has not yet bombarded the Web with half-assed rumors, near-lies and “inside sources.” So perhaps it’s premature to report anything before the hype.

Not only is more hip-hop lit being published, but it’s selling.

New NYRoB up. To be read later: Richard Horton’s “The Dawn of McScience”.

Jayson gets petty, claiming that quotes run in the Times broke the embargo and committed copyright infringement. The article quoted a total of 156 words from Blair’s book, roughly half the number of words quoted by The Nation in a precedent-setting 1985 Supreme Court decision. Things here aren’t helped by Bill Keller, when the ass claimed that copies of Blair’s book “have begun to circulate.” Chip McGrath’s review will run on March 14. Given how petty Blair and New Millenium have been with the Master’s House, I hope McGrath gives this little punkass hell.

First, Adam Moss to New York, now Frank Rich?

Sara Nelson weighs in on the Amazon flap. She dishes some dirt and brings up the obvious question of why Amazon is overinflated. But isn’t it a bit ironic that she’s using column-inches to plug her book in a column probing tainted influence?

The final word on style:

…

!!!

???

were all so fatigued down here jimmy why dont you crack corn no i dont care seez there sit on my lap with the monkey yes he was good and he grows too if only you understood virility as much as i do even if i’m older than you and yes yes yes bust my basketballs and replace them with breasts mighty casabas and a large pair of pantaloons pantalettes panties pants trouser snakes in the garter strap it on hard backwards see, that way lies excess. it was a tale twice told by idiots signifying nothing. yet how easy twas before. when all the hype glassed emetic, hermetically sealed beneath sugar sugar. aw honey honey now forever associated with bastard bee, smart-looking dapper wings not a bad bone in the little insect’s body. there he is strutting around for some cereal. it’s enough to make you quit eating all this commercial rubbish, but then try and walk a day without passing the time.

the time had come to shoot the television. why waste hours on that sort of thing? in two hours, you could probably have some long really nice sex, unprotected if you were willing to take a risk. wow, kid, that’s gutsy. or in that time you could read half a mystery novel, provided it was entertaining, fast-moving, typeset with very wide line spacing and fairly short. but is that just as bad as the glass orb in the little room?

or you could have a nifty conversation with a stranger, assuming that the stranger sticks around and was willing to spill things about his/her/its life. most people are, you know.

but wither testicles? yes, it’s time for the operation. what you’ll need to do is slice the side then scoop in with a spoon DON’T FORGET THE MORPHINE remove some fluid that causes this hernia nightmare and then drill DON’T FORGET THE MORPHINE or if you’re daring wander about like tom green with only one. what would it be like to have three buttocks and one testicle? what would it be like to have breasts? beyond staring at the mirror all day, i’d probably spend all that time testing their sensitivity. i’d also see how well i’d do DON’T FORGET THE X in a wet t-shirt contest. maybe.

???

hey, trio. get lost. we’re trying to free associate.

!!!

yeah, you too. don’t be shocked. don’t pretend as if this is anything other than rainy day speculation.

…

agreed

The Literary Saloon takes the piss out of Carole Matthews and product placement in literature. (via Mark)

Just so everybody’s clear (because my heart plummeted to the ground when I saw it in the bookstore today, only to realize it was a different book), there are actually two novels named The Cloud Atlas. One is a first novel by Liam Callanan. The other is written by Ghostwritten author David Mitchell. Since Mitchell has the hype of a million gods right now, fair is fair. Here’s a Detroit Free Press review for the Callanan book, and here’s Callanan’s website.

A self-pimping page for all outside writings is in the works, as is a page for the play and an edrants redesign. But for now, here’s the latest review. More are on the way through various outlets.

Publisher’s Lunch reports that word on the street has it that Chip McGrath’s successor will be named in a day or two. And McGrath himself will be reviewing Jayson Blair’s book.

This blog exists to amalgamate personal sentiments and information with general satirical tomfoolery. Often, details are placed in posts that are obviously fictitious. The staff leaves readers to infer what is true and what is not true. We are, after all, inveterate jokers, to the point where we are now using first person plural, a stylistic vice that we genuinely hate and previously derided. You see, it is possible to advocate evil for a moment.

Most readers are capable of making the distinction. We respect the readers to use their noggins and click upon the links presented, and to confirm the information. We trust our readers to know when we are being truthful and when we are pulling your leg. Sometimes, we do both simultaneously. And we encourage our readers to respond with equally silly responses or, in the case of arguments, counterpoints, additional angles, or exposes of the issues.

To all who like to play, the lawn is watered every day. If this is not your cup of tea, then you’re not alone. Might I recommend instead the upcoming Starsky and Hutch, an upcoming film which looks to be the most straightforward intellectual achievement of the year?

There will be no further disclaimers. But I do intend to boycott Mars.

It was a cool idea, a fresh kind of quid pro quo for Bookslut. Bring in a journalist, one who had bashed the blogosphere, onto a book blog, and see if she could blog without referencing her peers.

Well, it turns out that in a little over a day, Jennifer Howard doesn’t practice what she preaches. And not only that, but her colleagues at the Washington Post don’t have the gonads to state their names! Whereas we folks here in the blogosphere stand by our words. Sometimes we’re anonymous. But we’re always the same people, not some “anonymous blogger” in the wings.

From March 1, 2004, Entry 1: “Now I can spend the rest of the morning trying to figure out why review outlets like the WaPo have to sign confidentiality agreements…”

From March 1, 2004, Entry 2: “And the Post (that’s DC, not New York) ran this on Saturday.”

From March 1, 2004, Entry 3: No mention of the Post, but a callout to the Complete Review.

From March 1, 2004, Entry 4: “Followup comment from a WaPo colleague.”

From March 1, 2004, Entry 5: “That same WaPo colleague.” and “my 18-month-old daughter.” What’s up with the shameful personal details? Fer shame!

From March 2, 2004, Entry 1: Link to Washington Post article.

From March 2, 2004, Entry 2: The first post that doesn’t involve the Washington Post or a link to another blog.

In other words, out of seven entries, Jennifer Howard has linked or mentioned the Post six times. Or a Linkwhore Ratio of 85%!

Now, by contrast, let’s take a look at the blogs that Ms. Howard attacked in her article on the days she mentioned.

TMFTML, October 30: 8 entries, 1 post referencing Old Hag and Whatevs, 1 post referencing Maud. Linkwhore Ratio: 25%

Maud Newton, November 6: 5 entries, 1 post referencing Old Hag, 1 post referencing Literary Saloon. Linkwhore Ratio: 40%

Moorish Girl, November 7: 4 entries, 1 post referencing Maud and the Old Hag. Linkwhore Ratio: 25%

Old Hag, November 7: 3 entries, 3 entries referencing other bloggers and 1 that day going out of its way for a shoutout. Linkwhore Ratio: 100%

Okay, so Howard may have a point. But then everyone in the blogosphere knows that the Hag rolls around with everyone. So she doesn’t count.

But we can’t discount the fact that Ms. Howard has greatly outperformed the other ratios. And whereas the other bloggers linked to several people in their posts, Ms. Howard has continuously linked to a single source! What’s more, she has not only continously linked to a major newspaper (i.e., the Establishment), but she has failed completely to link to the exciting up-and-comers (like, The Syntax of Things or At Large, to name just two). She has linked to merely one. Furthermore, as my colleague Mark has noted, the erstwhile über-book info source has become dangerously contaminated with Buffy and Oscar references.

Maybe that’s the point. In the newspaper world, everybody gets to be a hypocrite.

Today is Dr. Seuss’s 100th birthday. As usual, the NEA is hosting its Read Across America program. It is your duty to inform at least one child today that there were never any movies called The Grinch and The Cat in the Hat, and introduce the kid to the wonderful world of Theodor Geisel.

Today is also Super Tuesday. Be sure to vote if you live in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island or Vermont.

If you live in Texas, today is Texas Independence Day, Texas Flag Day, Sam Houston Day, and Texas is the Center of the World Day. Don’t go to work. Please. You get the day off.

Today in Literature: D.H. Lawrence died in 1930. His last words: “I think it’s time for the morphine.”

Tom Clancy has decided to move back to Maryland. “Really. New York scares the shit out of me,” said Clancy. “I need total isolation to develop crackpot conspiracies. My libertarian-minded readers are counting on me.”

In two weeks, the New Zealand Prize in Modern Letters will be chosen. The shortlist includes William Brandt, Geoff Cush, Kate Camp, and Glenn Colquhoun. Oddly enough, the judging panel doesn’t include a single New Zealander. They’re all Yanks.

Ian Rankin gets a big profile in The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. One thing I didn’t realize was that 10% of all books sold in the UK in 2002 were written by Rankin.

There’s a big campaign to save the French language afoot. Maurice Druon, novelist, historian and elder statesman of the Academie Francaise, is urging the French to be snootier, ruder, and merciless in their use of grammar. It is also worth noting that Druon, who is 85, has not laughed once since the 1970s.

Edward Jones: Get canned from your job, write a National Book Critics Award nominated book?

Myrna Blyth, former editor of Ladies’ Home Journal and currently burning bridges with a new expose, says, “No one is going to keep me from a Cobb salad at Michael’s.” But will Michael’s keep the Cobb salad away from Blyth? Touche!

From The Germatriculator, links at random:

The Olive Press: 51% Evil.
Maud Newton: 50% Evil.
Return of the Reluctant: 42% Evil.
Pullquote: 41% Evil.
The Elegant Variation: 40% Evil.
Wood S Lot: 39% Evil.
About Last Night: 37% Evil.
The Fold Drop: 37% Evil.
Golden Rule Jones: 35% Evil.
Old Hag: 34% Evil.
Gawker: 34% Evil.
Uncle Grambo: 34% Evil
The Literary Saloon: 33% Evil.
Low Culture: 30% Evil.
Wonkette: 28% Evil.
Book Ninja: 25% Evil.
Beatrice: 24% Evil.
Book Slut: 22% Evil.
Sarah Weinman: Page too long. 100% Evil?
Moorish Girl: Page too long. 100% Evil?
TMFTML: Page too long. 100% Evil?
Chicha: Timeout. 75% Evil?

(via Six Different Ways)

M&M/MARS
Attn.: Consumer Affairs
800 High Street
Hackettstown, NJ 07840

Re: Why I Will Never Buy A Package of M&Ms Again

To Whom It May Concern:

Last night, while watching the Oscars, I experienced one of the most disrespectful and horrid television commercials of my life. The commercial was put out by your company and featured animated versions of your product entering a tableau from The Wizard of Oz – specifically, during the famous closing scene in which Judy Garland is waking up from her trip to Oz, only to realize that her family was representatives in her dream, and that, in fact, there was no place like home.

But instead of seeing her family, Judy Garland now wakes up to talking versions of your candies, and she reacts with delight. That you have violated the awe and wonder of the original scene, failing to respect its wonderful riffs on home and family, transforming it into a shameful sell for your product, and that you have seen fit to air this during a time block that is supposed to celebrate movies, demonstrates to me that not only is your company rapacious and shameless in its self-promotion, but that it has become a company I will now boycott with disgust.

Since you have seen fit to defecate upon a work of art, you have lost my business for life in the same manner that Hoover did years ago when they created a commercial in which Fred Astaire danced with a vacuum cleaner. I will avoid M&Ms, Mars bars, Milky Way bars, Snickers bars, Twix bars. If I ever own a pet, I will likewise eschew Pedigree, Cesar, Whiskas, Sheba, Kitekat, Trill, Aquarian and Winergy. No Uncle Ben’s rice for me. No Dolmio or Suzi-Wan, not that I would ever eat that crap anyway. And certainly no Klix or Flavia to drink.

Since your company cannot respect one of the most popular movies in the most popular medium of our time, I will neither respect nor endorse any of your products. I will encourage all of my friends to do likewise (at least three of them have agreed to boycott your company upon learning about the commercial this afternoon). I will also post this letter publicly on my website, so that others can recognize your company’s evils and refuse to give your company so much as a dime.

It’s probably a wise choice anyway, seeing as how your company hasn’t created a single good thing for the human body. But, oh, how you could have profited from my silly midnight munchies, or even the Halloween candy I buy for the kids each year, if only you had actually thought before destroying the poignancy of a really kickass movie.

Very truly yours,

Edward Champion

Just when you thought it was safe to return to the op-ed battlefield comes Michael Medved. Medved, thankfully reduced to fulminating on the Salem Radio Network, claims that “the source of Jew hatred today is Islamic extremism and secular Leftism — not Christianity.”