On Tuesday, the NEA announced its stimulus grants (aka its American Recovery and Reinvestment Act direct grants) to support arts organizations around the country. More than 25 L.A.-area nonprofits, universities and municipalities received grants ranging from $25,000 to $250,000, for a total of more than $1.6 million.
And of that, there was a single grant to an L.A.-based literary organization: PEN Center USA West, which got $50,000.
Although funds from other arts grants may trickle out to support the Los Angeles literary scene, it's hard not to feel a bit, well, underfunded. Especially when you look at how much other cities garnered to support their bookish culture.
In Minnesota, four literary nonprofits in Minneapolis-St. Paul received grants totaling $125,000, more than double what L.A. will receive. The region has a population of 3.1 million, less than a third that of L.A. County's 10.3 million. If you do the math, that's about a half a cent per person in L.A. for literature, versus 4 cents per person in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Not that the math really makes sense -- those funds are likely to support infrastructure as well as programs.
Not surprisingly, New York maintains its place as a center of literary life, with seven organizations in New York City slated to receive $275,000, far more than any other region of the country.
Literary institutions can support and maintain the cultural dialogue of a city through readings, celebrations and more. Clearly, the NEA has made it a priority to support nonprofits struggling to make it through these challenging economic times. But will book-loving Angelenos have anyplace to go? Other than N.Y. or Minneapolis, that is?
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times
Today, neurologist and author Oliver Sacks turns 76. His most recent book, 2007's "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" is, we wrote in our review, "not so much a greatest-hits collection as a purposeful set of remixes" of cases he'd written about before, shifting attention to the issues of music and the brain. The stories Sacks tells are so fascinating that his storytelling is, perhaps, overlooked. Take the title of his 1985 book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" -- it's wonderful, isn't it? It could easily have been called Case Studies in Neuroscience, or Perceptual Aberrations Today. But chances are it wouldn't have become a bestseller. In an interview with the National Review of Medicine last year, Sacks talked about taking time off after med school and traveling in Canada. I kept a journal, called Canada Pause, in 1960.
Canada Pause because travelling in Canada, especially
in the Rockies, was sort of an interim for me. I had
left England but was not sure what to do, not sure I
wanted to stay in medicine. I wanted to write, but I
had no idea what about. As he undertook his medical career, his writing developed in tandem. Tim McIntyre interviewed Sacks for the Whole Earth Review in 1985. TM: Your passion for literature seems to come through with the numerous literary references that you make in your books.
OS:
I don't think of them as "literary references." I don't feel like a
very literary person, but they just seem to apply. I mean, when I was
reading Donne's Devotions, which I quote a lot in "Awakenings," it just
seemed so close: "Diseases hold consultations. They seem to multiply
among themselves." This was not just poetry: it was actually what
seemed to be happening in front of me, and it was like a sort of
science.... I think that medicine, and case history in particular,
allows us a blending of art and science. That's why I like it. Sacks is devoted to classical music -- Bach over Beethoven, as he demonstrated when they filmed his brain as he listened to both for the recent Nova television show Musical Minds. Back in 1995, McIntyre asked him about the music, writing and reading.
TM: I think you can hear the music in a lot of the best writing.
James Joyce, for instance. His sentences have a musical feel to them,
and supposedly he had a beautiful tenor singing voice.
OS:
And for that matter there's Saul Bellow, whose "Mr. Sammler's Planet" I'm
now reading. Some of the paragraphs, you know they're obviously ...
This is a voice: this is the voice of the writer. There's the wit and
the observation of the writer and everything else, but there's also the
sheer music of the prose. And I think if that music runs through you,
you have to sing or write or talk.
Happy birthday to Dr. Sacks.
-- Carolyn Kellogg Photo: Oliver Sacks speaks in June at Columbia University in New York City. Credit: Chris McGrath / Getty Images
The entirety of Chris Anderson's book "Free" is currently available free on the online service Scribd and at GoogleBooks. The not-quite-practicing-what-it-preaches rub: it's free to read online, but not to print or to download. What you can get for free: a downloadable 9-page excerpt at Scribd and the complete audiobook (links here). The abridged audiobook is on sale for $7.49, and no, I don't get the logic of that, either. In other news, yesterday Amazon dropped the price of its Kindle 2 from $359 to $299. The company has not released sales figures for the device, which has perhaps been overshadowed by its newer, larger brother, the Kindle DX, whose price hasn't budged from the original $489. The lower price for the Kindle 2 makes it more competitive with the basic Sony eReader, which sells for $279 in navy and silver -- not just beige -- and includes special Michael Connolly and Danielle Steele editions. And I knew it was coming: Octogenarian Ray Bradbury has more on his summer agenda than the two previously noted benefits. As they've done in years past, the Mystery and Imagination Bookshop in Glendale will throw the science fiction icon a party on Aug. 22, his actual birthday. Bradbury, who is turning 89, will be in attendance, and I believe there will be cake. Events get underway at 1 p.m. -- Carolyn Kellogg Photo: At the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture in Seoul, South Korea. Credit: Doo-ho Kim via Flickr
About a zillion years ago, a friend's roommate dated a nice, hardworking filmmaker named Hyatt. So I guess I wasn't thinking that the book by Hyatt Bass sitting on my desk could possibly be from the same person. When it dawned on me that it was -- and news came that she'd be reading tonight at Book Soup, with a wine-and-cheese reception at 6 -- I wanted to ask her a few questions about "The Embers," her debut novel. The book shifts perspectives between various members of the fictional Ascher family as they grapple with the early death of their son, Thomas.
You used to live in Los Angeles – and you’re reading here tonight. What about the city resonates with you?
When I lived in Los Angeles, I worked in film, and it seemed like everyone I met worked in film, and all we talked about was film. I regret that, because I now know that there is so much more to the city than that. I have a friend here who takes the bus everywhere, and I wish I'd done that at least, because I found being in a car all the time very strange. I actually put a lot of that isolation -- that feeling of ships passing in the night -- into "The Embers."
In "The Embers," how much does place inform character?
Place definitely informs character in this book. I really wanted to explore another place I know very well (and have tremendous fondness for), which is New York City -- as well as the Berkshires, where the Ascher family has a country house. The Ascher family is a very New York family. Joe is a famous playwright and actor, best-known for his one-man shows. He has a chip on his shoulder because he was raised in the Bronx and is "half-Jewish" -- and doesn't carry the waspy Upper East Side pedigree of his wife, Laura. Their kids, Emily and Thomas, are very New York kids -- precocious and, of course, exposed to a lot -- not just the culture of their city's museums and theaters and so on, but to the drugs and old-beyond-their-years ways that a lot of city kids have. The thing about the Berkshires is that it's this place where they all go to get away, and there is something very pure about the natural setting, and something more natural about their interactions there. Everything that happens in the Berkshires house, though, happens in the past, because in the present, the Berkshires house is gone. The house has been destroyed -- and the family, too, has fallen apart. Thomas is definitely the "purest" character in the book -- partly because he dies before he moves beyond the fairly innocent age of 18, and his ashes are scattered amidst an apple grove on the hillside above their former house. Emily is determined to hold her wedding -- a happy occasion, and one of new beginnings -- in this very grove, when the apple trees are in bloom. And the wedding will be the first time that she, Joe, and Laura have been reunited since Thomas' death 15 years before. About a place that's no place, and the symbolism of gardens.
Read more Hyatt Bass reads at Book Soup tonight »
The first lines Graham Greene uttered in the literary universe are these, from his 1929 novel "The Man Within":
He came over the top of the down as the last light failed and could almost have cried with relief at sight of the wood below. He longed to fling himself down on the short stubbly grass and stare at it, the dark comforting shadow which he had hardly hoped to see...
We're introduced to the character of Andrews, who in the course of the novel attempts to flee smugglers he has betrayed. Future biographies, however, may need to replace those first lines with these:
Alice Lady Perriham had overloaded her piece of toast. She had done so in pure abundance of spirit, because the winter sun streamed in a crisp yellow glow across the breakfast table, and because everyone around her was happy.
This comes from an unpublished, unfinished novel Greene wrote when he was 22. The Strand Magazine is taking the five chapters of the manuscript and will publish them as a serial, starting with its forthcoming July issue.
"To me what is wonderful about all of this is that Greene published a few short stories in the old Strand," said Andrew Gulli, the Strand’s managing editor, "so I feel we’re continuing the tradition."
According to Gulli, the manuscript was discovered by Greene scholar Francois Gallix at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin.
"Gallix set up a team of people and transcribed the handwritten material," he said.
Gulli gave Jacket Copy a preview of this first chapter, which is titled "The Empty Chair." One’s initial reaction is that the novelist who wrote this is (understandably) a far cry from the one who went on to produce "The Third Man," "The Power and the Glory" and "The Human Factor."
How so? That's after the jump.
Read more Long-lost Graham Greene work to be serialized in the Strand »
Song lyrics, lovelorn notes and math problems appear on the walls of the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library, all graffiti left there by students. In some, like the photo above, a chain of comments was left that may not have been seen by the original defacer — but probably served to amuse those who came after. Sometimes the graffiti is literary.
Perhaps the students who read this thought of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five." Or maybe they just thought it was kind of profound. Or recognized Shakespeare in this, below.
There is graffiti in Arabic, Greek, Russian, Latin, Hindi. There are warnings — "Never take a class by Edward Wallace" — and declarations, like the one below, that get high marks from a reader ... who has spelling anxieties.
Nerd storage ... after the jump.
Read more Library graffiti at the University of Chicago »
David Lynch, Dangermouse and Sparklehorse will be at Book Soup tonight signing the book "Dark Night of the Soul," part of their music-and-visuals project that is, well, jeez, just look at it.
The rules about the signing,which begins at 8 p.m., are strict, and there are no tickets -- it's first-come, first-served. Only 5,000 of the books have been printed. I won't be there because I absolutely can't, not that I don't feel like I should. Like I said. Look at that.
And you can listen here.
The phrase "Dark Night of the Soul" came from St. John of the Cross in the 16th century and is actually about a spiritual rebirth. I hear that Lynch has had himself one; luckily, his creepy vision of middle America remains as dark as ever.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: David Lynch / from "Dark Night of the Soul"
 As part of our monthlong, fractured discussion of postmodern fiction, Garth Risk Hallberg weighs in on Joseph McElroy's weighty "Women and Men."
Given the decidedly premodern overtones of the word "canon," the idea of a postmodern one may seem like a contradiction in terms. Indeed, one approach to constructing a postmodern canon is to set the parameters so wide — Kathy Acker, Philip K. Dick, Grandmaster Mele Mel — that the term becomes practically meaningless. In the narrower purview of literary critics, however, references to canonical postmodernism tend to cluster around a group of white male fiction writers of a certain age: Barth and Barthelme, Gaddis and Gass, DeLillo and Coover and Pynchon.
Obviously, this canon is as hobbled by omissions as the prepostmodern canon it subtends. Still, in light of its demographics, it seems doubly baffling that Joseph McElroy, who turns 79 this year, is so often left off the list of po-mo masters. Like his rough contemporary Thomas Pynchon, he is the author of eight works of fiction acclaimed for their encyclopedic embrace of contemporary life. The New York Times wrote:
- To ignore ["A Smuggler's Bible," 1966] would be as shameful an act of self-deprivation as that which so many of us performed when "The Recognitions" and "Under the Volcano" were first published.
- ["Hind's Kidnap," 1969] is full of marvels.
- "Lookout Cartridge" [1973] is the rarest kind of achievement.
Yet Google Joseph McElroy, author, and you'll come up with about 5,000 hits, compared with roughly a quarter million for Pynchon. What gives? The short answer, it seems to me, is a single book, a behemoth called "Women and Men."
"Women and Men" belongs to the maximalist subspecies of postmodern novel that includes "Gravity's Rainbow," "The Recognitions" and "Underworld," somewhat the way the Chevy Suburban belongs to the "light truck" vehicular class, or Andre the Giant belonged to the World Wrestling Federation.
If those other books swing for the fences, "Women and Men" swings for the parking lot. If they represent, in their rigor, a form of literary calculus, "Women and Men" is chaos theory. And — no getting around this — if these books are big, "Women and Men" is bigger. At roughly 700,000 words (that's 1,192 closely printed pages), it is one and a half times the length of "War & Peace."
The book reached advance readers in 1987 in the form of two 600-page galleys. The reviewer for the New York Times made no secret of having sped through the book in a matter of days. And his tone, which mixed acknowledgment of the novel's ambition with barely disguised resentment at having to read the damn thing, typified critical response. Apparently the audience for literary fiction needed little encouragement to avoid a book that weighed 4 pounds in hardcover. "Women and Men," reportedly 10 years in the making, was not so much a publishing event as an anticlimax.
I happen to have a soft spot for underdogs, and another one for the postmodern mega-novel, and having some free time last summer, I picked up a "like new" first edition of "Women and Men" for something in the neighborhood of 10 bucks. I carried the book with me everywhere for six weeks, moving through it at a rate of about 30 pages a day. It quickly became obvious why the book is so rarely read. In persevering, however, I discovered some reasons why I think it should be.
Why it should be read ... after the jump.
Read more The lost postmodernist: Joseph McElroy »
 Writer John Wray's third novel, "Lowboy," came out this year to high praise. In the book, a paranoid schizophrenic teen rides the New York subways as, in a parallel narrative, a missing person's specialist tries to find him. Our reviewer Akiva Gottlieb compared the book to iconic novels by Paul Auster and Jonathan Lethem, concluding:
Wray fully envelops the reader in both the existential and quotidian concerns of his afflicted protagonist. Lowboy's hero-projections and hormonal overdrive are, in this author's hands, tragically epic expressions of an ordinary teenage fatalism. "The world is inside of me," Lowboy warns, and the author does not mean to contradict him. This poetic, stirringly strange novel offers an empathic reminder that, for many, the light at the end of the tunnel can be taken for a harbinger of doom.
Wray's first book, "The Right Hand of Sleep," earned him a prestigious Whiting Award, and he was named one of America's best young novelists by Granta in 2007. In a profile this spring, New York Magazine called him "a phenomenally versatile writer."
He's a writer with serious literary credentials, one who, by all accounts, is due for more attention than before. So why wouldn't Esquire ask him to write some short-short fictions to accompany a fashion spread? And why, like any writer who needs to make a living, wouldn't Wray say yes?
The result, Esquire's Collected Short Stories of Summer Style, shows that sometimes it might be better to make like Nancy Reagan and just say no.
The four pieces by Wray are inelegantly written and belabor the obvious: Objects in fashion photos are sexualized, or they're meant as signals for sex. Fashion photos are carefully created to tell stories -- yes, pants hanging on a wall imply that someone is, sexily, pantsless -- and in each instance, Wray fails to tell a better story than the photographer and stylist did in the first place.
Clearly, Wray is a gifted writer, one who is willing to experiment with his writing. Which means now and then an experiment is going to go wrong.
Or did it? Take a look and tell us whether you think Wray should skip the fashion next time.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: John Wray. Credit: Bebeto Matthews / Associated Press
With Michael Jackson's memorial dominating headlines this week, it's hard not to think about death. Or pop stars. Or people who are obsessed with the death of pop stars. Or, if you happen to be a publicist, how you could turn this new frenzy of attention to your advantage. Jacket Copy received this press release yesterday:
The unfolding of Michael Jackson's will and estate, and the confusion surrounding it, is a stark reminder of the importance of providing a plan for those we leave behind. Although a majority of Americans are aware that they need a will, about 70 percent don't have one. The irony is that for many, the legalities involved are not very complicated. Estate planning is largely the same.
Stephen Maples, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wills and Estates, Fourth Edition," is available to comment on the process Michael Jackson's family or others will have to contend with when dealing with the estate of a family member or friend who has recently died. He can discuss aspects to writing a will and how to start getting affairs in order.
Indeed. Well, they've gotten their publicity. But I won't be calling the "Idiot's Guide" author. Nor would I recommend that anyone who wants to leave their affairs in order begin at the idiot level; I'd say a lawyer is a safer bet.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: The hearse containing Michael Jackson's casket arrives at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
What's remarkable about the Oxfam Bookshops is not that they are having their first annual Bookfest in hundreds of locations, now through July 18. It's not that the proceeds from the sales of its used books go to the international aid organization Oxfam. It's that, with 130 shops and $2.6 million in monthly sales, Oxfam is the third-largest bookseller in the United Kingdom, according to this article in the Guardian:
Its average selling price for a book is £1.60, but it has twice made £18,000 at auction for titles discovered in its stores....
"Book sales have been helping us in our fight against poverty for more than 50 years, as we've sold everything from the first ever Sherlock Holmes story to the latest Harry Potter novel," said David McCullough, Oxfam's director of trading. "During Bookfest, we want people to donate to and buy from our bookshops so they can really see the impact that buying a book from Oxfam can have on the lives of poor people around the world."
Bookfest's hundreds of events includes everything from actor Bill Nighy and author Monica Ali ringing up books for buyers today in London to an author-heavy Edinburgh launch of "Ox-Tales," a four-book series of short stories from Kate Atkinson, Sebastian Faulks, Helen Fielding, John le Carré and more. But it's all happening in the U.K. -- it's not easy for Americans to participate.
And though I wish we had a chain of Oxfam Bookshops across the U.S., it's hard to imagine that used books would carry such a premium here at home.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Actor Bill Nighy helps out at an Oxfam Books in London on July 6. Credit: Joel Ryan / Associated Press
Two Chinese writers locked themselves up with coffee and cigarettes, no cellphones and no sleep for 48 hours -- and emerged with a finished Michael Jackson biography. "Moonwalk in Paradise" hit shelves this weekend, fewer than 10 days after the pop star's death. The newspaper China Daily reported:
The 130,000-word book, titled "Moonwalk in Paradise -- the Michael Jackson biography," written by Jiang Xiaoyu and Xing Han, and published by Chinese publishing house Xiandai was available for pre-order sales online on Friday and on bookshelves Saturday. ...
A report in China Youth Daily said the writers never met or interviewed Jackson and simply wrote the story from their "accumulated knowledge about the king of pop."...
[co-author Jiang Xiaoyu said] "I am not only a music critic but also a fan of the King of Pop, so I understand what fans really need.... fans cannot wait for months."
Jiang Zengpei, a Chinese publisher, expressed concern about "instant books" like this one, which have begin making regular appearances in China. "Many instant books have been fabricated with information from other books or the Internet. Publishing, an important part of the culture industry, should be creative work."
Although U.S. publishers may be trying to rush Jackson products to shelves, domestic efforts are hardly instant. The earliest Jackson books will include an updated version of J. Randy Taraborrelli's 1991 biography "Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness," coming out as "Michael Jackson: The Magic, the Madness, the Whole Story: 1958-2009" on Aug. 5 from Hachette, and "Life Commemorative: Michael Jackson" due Aug. 18.
Here in L.A., Jacksonmania continues: Over the weekend, 1.6 million people signed up for a lottery for the memorial to be held at the Staples Center, and the winners queued up this morning -- radios blaring Jackson music, of course -- to pick up their tickets.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Michael Jackson with mime Marcel Marceau in rehearsal in 1995 for an unaired HBO television special "Michael Jackson: One Night Only." Credit: Kathy Willens / Associated Press
Robert McNamara, chief architect of the Vietnam War, has died at age 93. As U.S. secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, he was considered both a whiz kid and a lightning rod for antiwar activists. In later years, he turned his attention toward nuclear-arms issues and helping the world's poorest nations. With his critical role in Vietnam, McNamara garnered the attention of historians and biographers. The 1992 biography "Promise and the Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara" by Deborah Shapely set the tone. In a review in Foreign Affairs magazine, Douglas Brinkley wrote: McNamara's flaws overwhelm a lifetime of achievements, for the portrait
that emerges from Shapley's book is of a man who was the primary
culprit in America's ill-fated military engagement, a historical
assessment that is likely to stick no matter how many nuclear arms
reduction speeches and articles he churns out. The McNamara story is
one of tragedy, for a dedicated public servant and for America, fueled
by our frustration that a man of such promise chose, out of a misguided
sense of mission, not to tell the American people what he knew about
the dim prospects for victory in the Vietnam War when it might have
made a difference. In its obituary, the Washington Post turns to David Halberstam's assessment of McNamara in his bestselling history, "The Best and the Brightest."
David Halberstam, describing McNamara's
trips to Saigon, wrote in "The Best and the Brightest" that McNamara,
the ultimate technocrat, was "a prisoner of his own background . . .
unable, as indeed was the country which sponsored him, to adapt his
values and his terms to Vietnamese realities. Since any real indices
and truly factual estimates of the war would immediately have shown its
bankruptcy, the McNamara trips became part of a vast unwitting and
elaborate charade, the institutionalizing and legitimizing of a
hopeless lie."
In Halberstam's judgment, McNamara "did not serve himself or his
country well. He was, there is no kinder or gentler word for it, a
fool."
McNamara himself decided to weigh in with the 1995 memoir, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." McNamara wrote, "We sought to do the right thing ... but in my judgment hindsight proved us wrong." Today, the N.Y. Times writes, "He published his denunciation of the Vietnam War and his role in it ... for which he was in turn denounced." In fact, one of those denunciations was written by David Halberstam, who reviewed "In Retrospect" for the L.A. Times. This is a shallow, mechanistic,
immensely disappointing book. Had it been published 25 years ago while
the battle itself and the debate over it was still raging -- had McNamara
come forth then and said, as he does here, that what had come to be
known as "McNamara's War" was "wrong, terribly wrong," it would have
been an extremely valuable part of the ongoing debate; indeed, it might
have ended the debate then and there.... In this book, much heralded by his
publisher as a mea culpa, the agenda is McNamara's, not the reader's.... [H]e not only gets to give the
answers he wants but he also gets to choose the questions he asks
himself.... This should
have been an important book. But it is not. It permits us some insight
into McNamara's inability to come to terms with his role and its
consequences, and it involuntarily offers a rare insight into the
difference between the mind of a truly public man and the mind of a
bureaucrat. But that is little recompense. McNamara comes to us now as
a sad and greatly diminished figure from a tainted past. The debate has
long since passed him by. With the Vietnam-era decision-makers passing on, only these competing accounts remain. Will Halberstam's be definitive? Or will McNamara have a voice in his own place in history? -- Carolyn Kellogg Photo: From left, John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1961. Credit: Henry Burroughs / Associated Press
Bill Clinton is many things -- among them a U.S. president for two terms and a leader of international diplomacy and relief efforts -- but he's also a kind of bookish guy. He's the author of the 1,024-page autobiography "My Life," which came out in 2004. And he likes to read.
In 2007, after a book signing at the Texas bookstore BookPeople, Austinist wrote that he purchased "For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women" by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, "Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography" by Charlotte Chandler, "Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity" by Samuel P. Huntington, "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen and "The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples."
A 2004 exhibit at the Clinton Presidential Library had Clinton's 21 official favorite books on display. It included Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou and Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations."
"Meditations" has been a Clinton favorite since at least 1999, when he attended a dinner full of literary heavyweights at William Styron's house. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote about the evening for Salon, and his account makes it sound like a book geek's dream.
Clinton said his [favorite] was the "Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," and Carlos Fuentes stuck loyally to "Absalom, Absalom," Faulkner's stellar novel, no question, although others would choose "Light in August" for purely personal reasons. Clinton, in homage to Faulkner, got to his feet and, pacing around the table, recited from memory Benji's monologue, the most thrilling passage, and perhaps the most hermetic, from "The Sound and the Fury."
I wonder what Cinton is reading today? Maybe it's another classic by a Southern writer, or something by one of our founding fathers. Or maybe he's put his book down, is having some barbecue and waiting for the fireworks to start.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Bill Clinton reads from "My Life" on Oprah Winfrey's television show in 2004. Credit: George Burns / Associated Press / Harpo Productions
Comedian Lewis Black was born in Washington, D.C., in 1948 and brought up in Silver Spring, Md. He first did stand-up when he was studying at the University of North Carolina, and he went on graduate from the Yale School of Drama. A long career in the theater -- including the 40 plays he's written plays -- has been eclipsed by his intense, ranting comedy persona, made popular on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."
Black's most recent book, "Me of Little Faith," came out in paperback last month.
In a video on his website, he gives advice to aspiting writers.
I would just like to say to those of you who are thinking of writing a book: don't. Unless of course you get great joy out of sitting at a desk and staring into space wondering why you agreed to write a book, and now you haven't got one thought in your head... What's the worst thing about writing a book? Remember what it was like when you were a kid Sunday, late afternoon, just after a really great weekend -- you hadn't thought about school at all. And just as the sun begins to fade into darkness, you hear your mother: she says, 'did you do your homework?' that's what every day is like until the book is written... you have homework every day. It never stops. It's always there... there are few things worse in this life than homework every day.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Lewis Black in West Hollywood on June 29. Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images
Amy Tan, 57, was born in Oakland to the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from San Jose State. Although she is the author of five novels, she is best known for her first -- the bestseller "The Joy Luck Club." In 2005, she talked to the Guardian about the legacy of that first book.
I accept that probably for the rest of my life I will be identified with The Joy Luck Club -- I will always be introduced as the author of the Joy Luck Club. On my tombstone -- if I wanted a tombstone, which I don't -- it would say Author of The Joy Luck Club. That's fine. I hope that I continue to write my best book with each book that I write. I am very lucky that that happened to me.
In addition to continuing to write novels, Tan has performed in the literary group the Rock Bottom Remainders and appeared as a character on "The Simpsons."
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Amy Tan in New York in 2005. Credit: Joe Tabacca / Associated Press
John Irving is the author of more than a dozen books, including the National Book Award-winning "The World According to Garp." Five of his books have been made into films, and Irving wrote "My Movie Business" about the 13 years he spent turning "Cider House Rules" into a viable screenplay -- for which he won an Oscar. During high school, Irving excelled at wrestling but struggled in his classes with something like undiagnosed dyslexia -- it took him longer to complete his assignments than his classmates. But, he later told the American Academy of Achievement, "I knew how to work. I knew how to concentrate, because I
had to." And that fed his reading: I read Charles Dickens when I was 14 or 15. It might be hard
for many 14, 15-year-olds today to read Dickens. That language seems so
old fashioned, if not exactly dated, to us now -- the amount of detail,
the sheer complexities of those stories and plots. But those were the
novels I read that made me want to write novels. If I had read,
frankly, some more modern or post-modern novels at the time, I might
have wanted to do something else. I've always been a fan of the 19th
century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and
where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major
minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters
in the story. Those old 19th century novels, all of them long, all of
them complicated, all of them plotted. Not just Dickens, but especially
Dickens, but also George Eliot, Thomas Hardy. And among the Americans,
Melville and Hawthorne always meant more to me than Hemingway,
Faulkner, Fitzgerald. I'm not a modern guy. Irving's thirteenth novel, "Last Night in Twister River," will be published by Random House this fall. -- Carolyn Kellogg Photo: John Irving at home in Vermont in 1994. Credit: AP Photo/Craig Line
First came "The Man's Book: The Essential Guide for the Modern Man" in May. It is divided into "man-logical" sections -- health, sports and games, women, dress, outdoors, drinking, smoking, cooking, idling, arts and sciences, almanac -- that are dappled with quotes from famous men and include practical how-tos. Author Thomas Fink, who knows how to tie a bow tie, can make a Singapore sling and discern the difference between a Winchester and a Remington, is an American-born theoretical physicist who lives in London. Ladies, if you're looking, he's single, but only 25- or 26-year-olds should apply: According to his formula, a man ought to marry a woman half his age plus 7 (man 24, woman 19; man 48, woman 31; man 37, woman 25.5). That was quickly followed by the smaller, blacker, sleeker, more metrosexual-appearing "Stuff Every Man Should Know." This book also explains how to tie a tie, with the help of a diagram. It has many diagrams: for building campfires, holding babies, giving massages, shotgunning beer. The manly things here are more practical, perhaps, than "The Man's Book" -- how to jump start a car, how to bet on horses -- but are just as confusingly organized. I mean, man-logical. And suddenly another suit-pocket-sized book landed on my desk: "100 Must-Read Books for Men," which can be forgiven for not including the two others because it came out in the U.S. in February, before they were released. It's doesn't try to explain how to be a man -- "Although this may not be a man's world any longer," the editors write in the introduction, "once you open books by our chosen authors, you'll find that at least a man's word carries plenty of weight." Books on the list include "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London, "Fight Club" by Chuck Palanhuik, "Miles" by Miles Davis, "Venus in Furs" by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch and "The Adventures of Augie Marsh" by Saul Bellow. If I had a vague notion that this collection of books would teach me something about men, I guess I've learned: a) gift books for a guy should include sex, fighting, substance abuse or some other right of passage; b) there is a lot of anxiety around the tying of ties; and c) men aren't born knowing how to shotgun a beer. -- Carolyn Kellogg Photo: Arnold Schwarzenegger during the filming of the 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron." Credit: Los Angeles Times
 The cover of this book reminds me of the thousands of pairs of Ugg boots I see girls wearing around L.A. Perhaps Bigfoot -- since we can never seem to pin that guy down completely -- is supporting himself somewhere out in the woods by designing the original pair of Uggs?
In all seriousness though, Bigfoot really is an American tall-tale. Up there with the Loch Ness monster and other such mystic creatures we can never seem to find, he eludes us and yet we always choose to believe in him, just a little bit. Bigfoot embodies American ideals: Western ruggedness, the great outdoors, old-fashioned masculinity and perhaps a strange backwoods idea of what it is like to be larger than life.
In the case of author Joshua Blu Buhs, he tells us right away that Bigfoot is nothing but a myth - a figment of our wonderful imagining. And yet, Buhs wrote "Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend" to explain the complicated origins of the beast.
Jacket Copy: Straight from the start, you tell us that Bigfoot doesn’t exist. Even though you say there is no Bigfoot, why did you choose to pursue this mythical creature in your writing?
Buhs: Initially it was the fact that I didn’t think Bigfoot existed, which was interesting to me. It was also about American ideas of what the natural world is. Sort of like: Here’s a screen on which people can project their ideas about nature. Though it turned out not to be as much about nature as I originally thought it would be.
JC: Did you ever believe in Bigfoot as a kid?
Buhs: I think, looking back, it is possible. As I grew up, I became more interested in standard and mainstream science.
JC: Why are Americans obsessed with this legend? Where did the myth come from?
Buhs: The myth of Bigfoot really started in the 1950s. It certainly hadn't penetrated the modern American conscience until the '50s. The legend was popular with white, working-class men, where it sort of fit in, and eventually it worked its way into the mainstream.
JC: How did the Bigfoot myth appeal to working-class men?
Buhs: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, white, working-class men saw a stagnation in their opportunities and the amount of money they were making. Bigfoot then became a symbol of what they feared. And Bigfoot could also be what readers fantasized about -- escaping into the wilderness.
JC: Even if people know for a plain fact that this monster doesn’t exist, why do we still choose to believe?
The answer... after the jump.
Read more Bigfoot: Why do we believe in you? »
On his blog, Seth Godin argues that the job of a book cover is not to attract everyone's attention, just the right people's attention in the right way.
Is the purpose of the cover to sell books, to accurately describe
what's in the book, or to tee up the reader so the book has maximum
impact? The third. It's the third because if the book has
maximum impact, then word of mouth is created, and word of mouth is
what sells your product, not the cover. His argument makes sense. The people who should be attracted to a book are the people who would like that particular book, who will be thrilled when they get to its contents. Disappointed customers won't help an author's reputation, while happy readers will build it. Then again, in a competitive marketplace, isn't it nice to capture any attention you can? I am a big fan of the cover of Julie Oringer's short story collection "How to Breathe Underwater" -- to me it implies freedom and secrecy and emergence. But a male literary friend -- who liked it a lot -- really only saw hot, almost-naked chicks. I imagine both reactions would please the book jacket's designer, and author. Should a cover sell books to any old passer-by? Or should it speak to a specific audience, setting them up for maximum impact? -- Carolyn Kellogg
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Book Editor, Los Angeles Times
Deputy Book Editor, Los Angeles Times
Lead blogger, Jacket Copy
email: jacketcopyla [at] gmail.com
Assistant Book Editor
Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times