Ken Follett's "The Pillars of the Earth" gets a sequel

Hollywood’s not the only place to bank on sequels. Ken Follett, who in the last decade or so has focused on writing thrillers ("Whiteout," "The Third Twin"), is returning to the medieval past and his greatest success, "The Pillars of the Earth," the whopper-sized 1989 novel about the building of a Gothic cathedral in 12th century England.

Scheduled for a fall release, the 988-page sequel, "World Without End," will be published by Dutton Books. Dutton announced the book earlier this year, and the advance galley arrived this week in the mail along with another huge historical novel scheduled for fall publication by the Overlook Press: an unabridged version of John Cowper Powys’ Arthurian epic, "Porius."

Why mention them now? Out of sheer relief. One of the challenges reviewers face is in fully appreciating a very long novel when the turnaround time between assignment and deadline is mercilessly short--something exacerbated when publishers bar early access to a hot book (the Harry Potter series, for example). Dutton certainly could’ve orchestrated some buzz over Follett’s book by keeping it out of reach until it arrived in bookstores. Powys, on the other hand, is not an easy author to warm up to: He wrote long, sometimes rambling (and spectacular) epics that required plenty of time and patience. In both cases, the early arrival of review copies seems aimed at building good word of mouth among newspaper book sections and other literary publications so that both will stay visible among the crowd of fall releases.

Nick Owchar

‘The Blair Years’ arrives soon in the U.K.

Here in the United States, we await next week’s arrival of two competing books on Hillary Rodham Clinton--publishers Little, Brown and Alfred A. Knopf have been changing publication dates in recent weeks in the rush to beat each other to the bookstores.

In the U.K., public attention is on the forthcoming release of Alastair Campbell’s diaries in one volume, "The Blair Years," in which the British prime minister’s former press secretary describes behind-the-scenes turmoil in Tony Blair’s government.

Even though, as the Guardian reports, there have been "extensive cuts to protect the confidences of world leaders such as Bill Clinton, George Bush and the Queen," the book is said to be very unflattering to Blair. Blair, his wife and others have called (without success) for the book’s publication to be delayed. Advance word is that the book is raw and candid. But what does this mean? Are readers going to learn that politics in Blair’s government involved backroom deals, arguments and profanity? Wow, what a revelation. One hopes that any candor the book might show will pertain to substantial issues, such as the origins of policy decisions affecting millions of people. British readers will find out soon (American readers too if they visit Amazon’s UK site); Campbell’s book is slated for publication there in early July. 

Nick Owchar

(Photo: The Associated Press)

Sister Prejean memoir

Sister Helen Prejean, the bestselling author of "Dead Man Walking," has been hard at work on her autobiography, "River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey to Death Row."

Publisher's Weekly reports  that the Pulitzer Prize-nominated nun has signed with Random House executive editor Daniel Menaker. The book, to be released in early 2009, will chart Prejean's work with the poor, her relationship with a priest and her transformation into political activist.

Kristina Lindgren

Ryszard Kapuściński and the Communists

The only news event that Alfred A. Knopf probably expected to tie with the appearance of "Travels With Herodotus," the final book by the late Ryszard Kapuściński set to be published  on June 11, was the author's death in January at age 74.

But the International Herald Tribune along with several German publications report that secret police files have been released indicating that the famed Polish journalist, whose books include "The Soccer War" and "The Shadow of the Sun," was an informer who wrote reports for Communist intelligence agencies from 1967 to 1972.

Long thought to be a Nobel Prize front-runner, Kapuściński, in his final book, reflects back on his many global assignments and how the ancient Greek historian taught him to appreciate and understand events. But instead of attention focusing solely on that book, a debate is developing in Poland between those condemning Kapuściński for not revealing his involvement and those attempting to exonerate him, several German papers report, "on the grounds that -- the informing -- didn't harm anyone." The website Sign and Sight  has posted details from the European press concerning Kapuściński's code name as well as the names of other prominent  intellectuals who, in the past, were outed for their Communist involvement.

Nick Owchar

Michael Connelly trivia quiz

Want a signed first edition of Michael Connelly's latest novel, "The Overlook," without leaving your house? Take the trivia quiz on the thriller writer's website  by June 22. Five winners, chosen at random from among those who get all 15 questions correct, will be selected on June 23. The test comes with a warning, however: "This quiz contains spoilers for the book! Do not play unless you've read the book."

Kristina Lindgren

Touring L.A.'s literary landscape

On Saturday, a company specializing in offbeat tours of L.A. will offer "Pasadena Confidential," touted as "delving deep into the weird and horrible past of one of L.A.'s most exclusive suburbs."

Topics explored on the Esotouric bus tour include more than 70 murders, arsons, kidnappings, robberies and suicides having a Crown City connection. Included are the Robert F. Kennedy assassination (Sirhan Sirhan was living in Pasadena at the time), "Eraserhead" star Jack Nance's death and magician-rocket scientist Jack Parsons' "death by misadventure."

Also on deck: A June 16 tour titled "John Fante's Dreams of Bunker Hill," and later in the summer, "Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles."

Orli Low

Useless America

At the end of his appearance at the Central Library last night, Jim Crace raffled off a copy of “Useless America,” perhaps the rarest and most elusive of his works. This, after all, is a book that doesn’t exist, the product of a computer error — or, more accurately, a series of computer errors — that began when Crace signed the contract for his latest novel,  “The Pesthouse” (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese: 256 pp., $24.95). At the time, Crace didn’t have a title; so that his British publisher, Penguin, would have something to put on the contract, he offered the only sentence he had written: “This used to be America.” Somehow, that got transposed into “Useless America” and so the non-existent book was born.

“You know how computers are,” Crace joked from the stage of the library’s Mark Taper Auditorium. “They’re promiscuous.”

Pretty soon, “Useless America” was listed at Amazon UK, where it rang up 28 customer reviews, most of them five-star. Eventually, Crace himself began placing orders, boosting his Amazon UK ranking to 86. Here’s a metaphor for how the publishing industry does (or does not) work. So compelling was the saga that Nan A. Talese, Crace’s American editor, decided to publish “Useless America” after a fashion, putting out 75 copies of a trade paperback edition, complete with dedication, note on the text, and an array of fictional blurbs on the back. The volume even has an ISBN number, as well as a brief introduction in which Crace explains the origin of the work. The catch? Every other page in the book is blank.

Of course, a blank book is another kind of metaphor, a symbol of the possibilities that literature provides. Yet as Crace understands, we live in an era in which those possibilities are often sublimated to faster, flashier entertainments, or to the exigencies of the bottom line. Already, Crace noted, collectors have offered $1,000 for a signed copy of “Useless America,” which is itself a comment on the relative value of artifacts and words. The author’s advice? “Auction it on EBay,” he suggested to the woman who won the raffle, after promising to sign the empty book.

David L. Ulin

Photo: Jim Crace (The Associated Press)

History doesn't have to be stuffy

Charles Rappleye has been awarded the third annual George Washington Book Prize for his "Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution."

Interested in golf books? Go ask Alice (Cooper, that is)

As humiliating as a bad round of golf can be (and it can be pretty humiliating), golf can save your life. That’s Alice Cooper’s message in the memoir “Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock ’n’ Roller’s 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict,” written with Keith and Kent Zimmerman (Crown: 272 pp., $24.95) Playing a round of golf every day turned out to be the perfect answer to all the chemical temptations of the rock-star life. Not to mention that all that sun has been good for Cooper’s pale complexion. One of the more amusing parts of the book are the photos contrasting his “creature of the night” stage wear with his wise choice of looser, milder threads on the links (black leather gets in the way of a full swing).

Literary debut for Ralph Ellison’s literary executor

On its list of new releases, Fulcrum Publishing has a political novel titled “A Man You Could Love,” which the publishing house plans to release at Book Expo in June and then follow it up with a multi-city author tour. The book might have quietly joined the many early summer releases arriving at bookstores if it hadn’t been written by John Callahan.

Shiver me timbers

R.L. Stine, author of the beloved "Goosebumps" series of creepy, crawly stories, is heading to "HorrorLand." The ghoulish theme park will be the springboard for 12 new tales, with Scholastic Books planning to release the first two next April.

The "HorrorLand" series will include new characters and revive some "Goosebumps" villains. Each story will stand on its own, but an overarching mystery will be threaded through the dozen books.

Stine's "Goosebumps" series has sold more than 300 million copies since it debuted in 1992. As part of its marketing push, Scholastic plans to reissue the books with new cover illustrations and launch specialized websites to complement each story.

-- Kristina Lindgren

Around the world in 42 days

Feeling hemmed in lately? Maybe you want to pick up a copy of the recently re-released classic by Frenchman Xavier de Maistre, "Journey Round My Room." It tells of the author's imaginary journeys during his house arrest for 42 days as a punishment for dueling while serving as an officer in the Piedmontese army.

Celebrating Studs

Studs Terkel turns 95 today, and to honor him, the New Press has reissued "The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century" (with a new foreword by Calvin Trillin), featuring selections from the many oral records that he has created during his career. His memoir, "Touch and Go," is scheduled to be published by the press in November.

That's not all, though. The publisher has also set up a Studs link where people can post tributes and read a variety of quirky entries about him and find unexpected features, including his favorite martini recipe or a link to buy red socks online like the ones Terkel wears. The New Press announced in its press materials that a skywriter was chartered to fly over Chicago at 11 a.m. today and write "Happy 95th B-Day Studs Terkel" above the city Terkel has called home since childhood.

No spoilers, please

Scholastic

At the Leaky Cauldron, one of the preeminent Harry Potter websites, you can be assured of one thing about the forthcoming "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows": No leaks about the novel will be tolerated. The website has posted a strident warning that anyone sending on a spoiler could find themselves in legal hot water. So, if a copy of the book miraculously lands in your hands early, the message is clear: Keep it to yourself! That's also the message that J.K. Rowling herself has issued, according to news reports.

— Nick Owchar 5/15/07

Tour Without End

Thriller writer J.A. Jance stopped by Book Review on Monday after delivering the keynote speech for this year's Festival of Women Authors. This sold-out event, hosted by UC Irvine, drew 500 readers to hear Jance, Cristina García, Carolina Aguilera-Garcia and other authors, as well as a panel on Nancy Drew.

Down, but not out

The national slump in retail sales may have slammed bookstores too, but some independent sellers are seeing signs of hope.

"I'm really heartened," said Allison Hill, vice president and general manager of Vroman's Bookstore. "Eric Schlosser was here, and we had hundreds of schoolchildren who were dying to meet him."

Wanted: Extreme bibliophiles with deep pockets

Who says those wacky predictions in high school yearbooks don't amount to much? On the auction block: a copy of Ernest Hemingway's 1917 senior yearbook from Oak Park, Ill., which includes several photographic portraits of the young man, including one graced by the quote, "None are to be found more clever than Ernie."

Extending the shelf-life of forgotten classics

Most publishers look for new talent;, but a few look for neglected ones -- and that author pool is considerable. New York Review Books, for example, has found a thriving niche by reissuing forgotten classics. In Southern California, the same has been done by Green Integer and its publisher, Douglas Messerli. Go to Green Integer's website, and you'll find reissues of books by Arthur Schnitzler, Knut Hamsun, Emile Zola, Yuri Olyesha and Paul Celan as well as more contemporary voices like Paul Vangelisti and Dennis Phillips. After looking at the entire catalog, you'll realize (if you hadn't already) that Penguin Classics may fill up a lot of shelves, but there are plenty of gaps in what it has to offer.

Oprah to the rescue...again

HarperCollins posted a gain in profit in the quarter ending March 30, Publishers Weekly reports, and thanks go once again to Oprah Winfrey.

Keeping up with the headlines

It's been less than four weeks since North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper dropped charges against three members of the Duke Lacrosse team who were accused of raping a black stripper last year.

The compassionate conservative

If you want a sense of just how far the conservative revolution has drifted, give some thought to the late Barry Goldwater. In 1964, as the GOP nominee for president, the U.S. senator from Arizona was vilified as a pro-nukes, pro-confrontation crackpot, a perception cemented by President Johnson's legendary "Daisy" campaign TV commercial, which lingers in the public imagination, although it aired only once. Yet 43 years later, Goldwater begins to look like a visionary, a man for whom conservatism had nothing to do with "values voters" but, rather, with government staying out of people's affairs. Late in his career, Goldwater ruffled many Reagan-era Republicans by opposing restrictions on abortion and gay rights; when the Rev. Jerry Falwell said Christians ought to oppose the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court, Goldwater famously retorted, "I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass."

 

Goldwater's perspective can be found in "The Conscience of a Conservative" (Princeton University Press: 144 pp., $14.95 paper). Originally published in 1960, and reprinted with a foreword by George F. Will and an afterword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the book lays out, clearly and succinctly, his uncompromising views. Goldwater held freedom as the highest value in American society: freedom from law, freedom from government, freedom from anybody else's vision but your own. You can argue with him on the particulars, but there's something compelling about his quintessentially American notion of self-reliance, the idea that "[e]very man, for his individual good and for the good of the society, is responsible for his own development." This is the line where conservatism blurs into libertarianism, where the rights of the individual are affirmed over those of the state. These days, that's a radical concept — perhaps most of all among those who see themselves as Goldwater's political heirs.

— David L. Ulin 5/04/07

Bachman's baaack...

Poor Richard Bachman. Twenty-two years after Stephen King killed him off with "cancer of the pseudonym," this fictional alter ego will not stay dead. In June, Scribner will publish "Blaze" (276 pp., $24), the sixth Bachman novel, and the first since 1996's "The Regulators." In a foreword, King calls the book "a trunk novel" — the kind that's been stashed away for many years. Originally written in the early 1970s, it is the work of a very young writer, a piece of gothic crime fiction that wears its influences (Horace McCoy, Edward Anderson, James M. Cain) on its sleeve.

Were King a less iconic figure, "Blaze" would probably have remained in its trunk. Yet, there's an undeniably charming quality to this youthful attempt to inhabit the soul of a dimwitted kidnapper, who is in over his head in a set of circumstances from which no good can come. The same is true of the decision to assume the Bachman pseudonym again, which comes off as the kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink posture of a writer enjoying himself. This has been a hallmark of King's career, the notion that writing can, and should, be fun.

And...they're off!

The race is on between Little, Brown and Alfred A. Knopf. According to Editor & Publisher, both houses have moved up publication of forthcoming biographies of Hillary Clinton so that the books will appear on the same day.

(AP)

Last week, Knopf announced that Carl Bernstein's "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," originally scheduled for August, would appear June 19. This week, Little, Brown decided to go head- to- head with Knopf by scrapping its own August publication plans for "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton" by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., both New York Times reporters. That book is now set to come out on June 19 as well.

Your move, Knopf.

— Nick Owchar 5/03/07

Blurring the lines?

The Hosseini deal is just the latest instance of Amazon.com reinventing itself in the face of a rapidly changing online culture. Already, the bookseller is offering a series called Amazon Shorts, featuring self-contained exclusive works in which writers like Jim Crace, Melissa Fay Greene and David McCullough explore some signature themes. (Go to the Amazon books page and scroll down the far left column to "More to Discover" to see the Amazon Shorts collection.)

Yet if all this makes for terrific marketing, it also raises tricky questions about the boundaries between publishers, booksellers and consumers. That's only heightened by Amazon's decision to release early copies of "A Thousand Splendid Suns" to its Top 100 Reviewers, "a collection of Amazon.com's leading customer reviewers, in order to share this book with new and previous fans of his work." Setting aside the idea of a select group of customers getting preferential treatment, it's discomforting to see readers treated like advance scouts in a publicity juggernaut. Who, exactly, is working whom here? And what does it say about how publishers and booksellers view their audience?

— David L. Ulin 5/02/07

A gift outright

Since they left Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1972, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and his wife, Marie, a painter, have lived and worked in a cottage near Glanmore in the Wicklow Hills south of Dublin. On Saturday night, the couple returned the favor of local generosity by donating manuscripts and paintings to a local auction intended to raise money to convert an abandoned police station into an arts center for the nearby village of Ashford.

Seamus Heaney  (AFP)

The poet donated eight items in all, but the evening's star attraction was a lot consisting of three handwritten working drafts and a holograph copy of Heaney's "Glanmore Sonnet VII," which he wrote shortly after moving into the area. Irish manuscript collector Liam O'Leary beat out an unidentified telephone bidder from Belfast and purchased the drafts for just under $37,000.

One of the event's organizers, Noel Keyes, told the Irish Times that Heaney "has a great sense of community about him. There are few others of his type who would donate documents as important as this. It's very generous."

— Tim Rutten 4/30/07

California writers among 2007 Guggenheim Fellows

Among the recipients of this year's Guggenheim fellowships are several California fiction writers and poets: Oakland's Daniel Alarcón ("Lost City Radio"), now a visiting writer at Mills College; Christopher Buckley ("Sleepwalk") of UC Riverside; and Steve Erickson, a novelist ("Our Ecstatic Days") and instructor at California Institute of the Arts.

The 189 recipients were chosen from a pool of about 2,800 applicants, with the awards totaling $7.6 million. The press announcement states that selections were made based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors. Then, approval is given by the foundation's board of trustees. Six of the boards members are past recipients: Joel Conarroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles Ryskamp, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Edward Hirsch.

For a complete list of recipients, click here.

— Nick Owchar 4/30/07

'Húrin' takes a hit

As expected, J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Children of Húrin" is selling extremely well since its release last week. On Amazon's bestsellers list, for instance, the novel has been holding a solid second place only to orders of the final Harry Potter installment.

But that doesn't mean Tolkien's book is without its critics. Tolkien has always had them. Think back to Edmund Wilson's attack on Tolkien's work as "juvenile trash" in his 1956 piece "Oo, Those Awful Orcs" in the Nation.

Homage to Halberstam

Since the death of David Halberstam in a Northern California car accident on Monday, the appreciations have flowed in. No one expected this tragedy -- who would? -- but many were ready with the right words. Newsweek's Jon Meacham wrote an eloquent tribute to a person he considered "always present at the creation, reporting, watching, thinking, and writing about the unfolding drama of what Henry Luce called the American Century." Meacham is joined by several other Newsweek writers in praising this chronicler's singular body of work, which includes "The Best and the Brightest" and "The Teammates."

Words, words, words

Now here's a sense of how far we've come: In the same mail delivery two books arrive that are distant cousins: "The First English Dictionary, 1604" (Bodleian Library: 154 pp., $25) and "The New American Heritage College Dictionary," 4th edition (Houghton Mifflin: 1,636 pp., $26.95), which has a password for downloading applications.

Robert Cawdrey, the author of that first dictionary, was a recalcitrant 16th century preacher whose lexicon arose from his realization that plain English -- not bookishness -- was crucial in the pulpit. At the time, English was straining and changing as foreign words flooded the language. So Cawdrey devoted himself to compiling a long list of "hard words...gathered for the benefit & helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other vnskillful persons." He called it "A Table Alphabetical": no fancy flourishes of language, no literary examples of the sort Samuel Johnson later accomplished -- just the straight dope on meanings. Definitions are short, curt and sometimes a little salty for those workingmen in the congregation. A "eunuch" is certainly "gelded," but just in case that meaning was still too delicate, Cawdrey added: "wanting stones." You get the idea.

Cawdrey's spirit infuses the "New American Heritage Dictionary" -- it's still for the common man -- with the bonus of some online software. It's embarrassing to encounter a word you've never used before, like "edamame," and then stumbling on it as the waitress giggles. One of the best parts of this dictionary is the audio component, which is available after downloading eReference Suite using a passkey code included with purchase (if only the downloads were a little easier). A preface by Geoffrey Nunberg reminds us that the English language is still in flux (the dictionary includes some 7,500 new terms), though the sources are different from those in Cawdrey's day. Today, Nunberg says, "digital technologies have had a sweeping effect," which is why readers will find, for instance, the standard entry for "net" followed by "netizen" and "netiquette."

— Nick Owchar 4/23/07

2007 Eisner Award comics nominees

If you haven't heard, the nominees run the gamut for this year's Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. It's especially pleasing to see Jeph Loeb, with Darwyn Cooke, in the running for Best Single issue for "Batman/The Spirit #1: Crime Convention." Loeb's a super-fine storyteller (Cooke's no slouch either).

The reality-based category includes Alison Bechdel's poignant memoir of her childhood, "Fun Home," as well as Brian Fies' stirring "Mom's Cancer." (Too bad Marisa Acocella Marchetto's "Cancer Vixen" and Miriam Engelberg's "Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person" didn't make the cut: Both of these are powerful titles about the cancer journey.)

For a complete list of nominees in all 29 categories, click here.

— Nick Owchar 4/23/07

Where's the juice?

Is it our imagination or have books about sex gotten weightier, more academic and generally off-putting? Has there always been an inverse proportion between sexual marginalia and sensuality? Four new and upcoming titles form a pretty dour bunch, more like a group of disapproving matrons than lusty inquiries.

"Overexposed: Perverting Perversions" by Sylvère Lotringer (MIT Press) sports an inscrutable photo on the cover of a table and two chairs. A promisingly mysterious epigraph from "Lolita" reads: "I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists. . . .  " Hmmm. Chapter titles such as "Arouse" and "Tease" start out in the right spirit but fizzle into "Bore," "Reject" and "Deter." There are no pictures -- just dense, relentless type.

Me, Myself and I

"The Education of Henry Adams" (Massachusetts Historical Society: 500 pp., $34.95) is one of the oddest and most wonderful books in American literature -- a memoir, such as it is, of the eminent late-19th and early-20th century historian, who also happened to be the grandson of John Quincy Adams and the great-grandson of John Adams.

What makes the book so revelatory, however, is the way that, more than half a century before postmodernism, Adams deconstructs the autobiographical form. Writing in third person -- "Under the Shadow of the Boston State House," the book begins, "in the third house below Mount Vernon Place, February 16, 1838, a child was born, and christened later by his uncle...as Henry Brooks Adams" -- Adams tells not so much the story of his life as a fictional re-creation of it. He casts himself as a naif adrift in a world whose rapid changes have, paradoxically, rendered his traditional education obsolete.

The view of a boss run amok

Is Sally Koslow's "Little Pink Slips" another novelistic treatment of a terrible boss, a la "Blind Submission" or "The Devil Wears Prada"? The novel doesn't officially arrive in bookstores until today, but there's been plenty of buzz about the storyline: a razor-thin roman a clef inspired by Rosie O'Donnell's plunge into the magazine biz a few years ago. Koslow was editor-in-chief of McCall's before O'Donnell arrived in 2000, ready to revamp the magazine -- complete with a name-change to Rosie -- and to take on O, The Oprah Magazine. The venture failed in 2003, and Rosie folded.

Another day, another award

Last night, at New York's Columbia University, Philip Roth picked up the first Grizane Masters Award from the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America "in recognition of his merit as a writer and for introducing the work of Primo Levi to a wider American audience." This is the latest in a long string of awards for Roth -- who earlier this month took home the inaugural PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction -- but the first, one has to think, that honors his role as a reader, in addition to his acuity with the written word.

Certainly, no contemporary fiction writer could be more deserving. Not only does his career, which now spans half a century, offer a remarkably coherent vision of American life since the 1940s, but he has long been a champion of other writers -- Levi, as well as such novelists as Bruno Schulz, Tadeusz Borowski and Milan Kundera, who were first published in this country as part of the Roth-edited series "Writers From the Other Europe."

The long and the short of it

Alice Munro's "Away From Her" (Vintage: 76 pp., $9 paper) is not a new book -- not really. Rather, it's a stand-alone edition of her 1999 short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," retitled as a tie-in for the film that it inspired. According to a preface, director and screenwriter Sarah Polley read the story and couldn't shake it; the resulting movie, which stars Julie Christie and Olympia Dukakis, opens May 4.