Random links: title-dropping, virtual Nobel laureates and more

Best use of book title-dropping? The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, author of the bestseller about globalization, "The World is Flat." According to early reports about his new online interview show, every interview (with newsmakers like Bill Gates) will begin with the question, "When did you realize the world was flat?"

If you just can’t wait for Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek’s work to arrive in bookstores, she’s posting chapters of her new novel, "Envy," at her website. In an interview she has explained her reasons for showing her work in progress. But, meine freunde, if you don’t sprechen deutsch, don’t bother.

Anyone who knows any of the secrets about the Harry Potter series finale should be very careful. Fans are not taking any would-be spoilers lightly. And just as New Zealand enjoyed a surge of tourism after Peter Jackson’s "The Lord of the Rings" movies, trips to Scotland are way, way up to see the real-life models for Hogwarts and other familiar places in the novels.

Norman Mailer understands Günter Grass’ long silence about his World War II service in the Waffen SS. Some parts of one’s personal history are just difficult to explain, Mailer said at a recent New York Public Library event that also featured an appearance by Grass.
Nick Owchar

A New Jersey of the mind ...

Yes, I know ... New Jersey is the great nowhere between New York and Pennsylvania, famous for its turnpike and its refineries and, for the last several years, the exploits of Tony Soprano and his crew. But New Jersey has also spawned a lot of writers — including William Carlos Williams and Philip Roth. Joyce Carol Oates lives in Princeton; Richard Ford wrote an entire trilogy about the place. Now, a new generation has emerged to take on the state’s odd mix of the blighted and the benighted: the suburbia to end all suburbias, a universe of endless sprawl.

In “Living on the Edge of the World” (Touchstone: 242 pp., $14 paper), editor Irina Reyn has assembled 18 essays by writers including Tom Perrotta, Jonathan Ames, Lucinda Rosenfeld and Dani Shapiro, who look at New Jersey not as a state of the union but as a state of mind. It’s a great idea — not because it plays against our preconceptions (it doesn’t) but because it encourages us to engage with the place at a level that’s beyond cliché.

New Jersey, after all, is a lot like anywhere: a place to run from, a place to run to, a place where you might find out who you are. And in a nod to the state’s lingering status as cultural punch line, all the contributors here are identified by the highway exit they live near, a deft touch that reminds me of Michael Rumaker’s masterful New Jersey story “Exit 3.”

David L. Ulin

Behind the boy wizard...a billionaire?

It’s no surprise that Bloomsbury is racking up orders on the final installment of the "Harry Potter" series. You can find plenty on the Web about how the publisher is being deluged.

But what is surprising is Bloomsbury’s next move. You might expect more books cut from the same cloth--look at all the Knights Templar books that flooded the market last year in an attempt to capitalize on "The Da Vinci Code" craze and stoke the fires. But the subject mentioned in news reports about the publisher’s post-Potter plans is not a Potter clone but a book about Warren Buffett.

A study of the legendary investor’s philosophy and life, titled "The Snowball," will be published by the firm in spring 2008. In light of Buffett’s large and devoted fan base and his amazing career--some might even say it’s (that’s right) magical--maybe the decision isn’t that strange.
Nick Owchar

The review that never ran...almost

Deciding not to publish something doesn’t always conclude a matter, especially when it happens in the British press. The Spectator pulled its review of Tina Brown’s "The Diana Chronicles" for unspecified reasons, but today the piece has surfaced, courtesy of the Guardian.

Was it too sharp? Too snarky? Wait, isn’t that what the Brits do best?

The Spectator’s reviewer, Sarah Bradford, has written books on the late princess, as well as on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lucrezia Borgia. She calls Brown’s book a combination of "self-consciously pacey modern schlock and sentimental drivel," then goes on to list everything she finds insufferable about the book, including the attention the author focuses on herself at the expense of her subject--including the absence of photographs in the British edition. Well, there is one. "Perhaps the publishers find themselves strapped for cash after the much vaunted advance they allegedly paid," the reviewer says near the end. "Punters, on payment of an advertised £18.99, will have to be content with an alluring picture of the other blonde, Tina Brown."

Set this review beside our own, and it seems like the reviewers didn’t read the same book. What gives? Our reviewer, Patt Morrison, found "The Diana Chronicles" to be "adroit and penetrating." Maybe she would have hated it, too, if she had been the Diana chronicler everyone had first thought of--until Brown came along.

Nick Owchar

Dillard’s big finish?

The one time in my adult life that I ever stopped writing for an extended period, I was in a bad mood for months. That’s why I’m dubious when writers announce that they’re retiring — I just don’t think it’s possible. Kurt Vonnegut famously decided to stop writing in 1997 after the publication of his final novel, “Timequake”; in 1999, he published three (yes, three) books, and later contributed pieces to the progressive magazine In These Times — pieces that became the basis for his 2005 bestseller “A Man Without a Country.” Alice Munro made similar noises late last year after the publication of her short-story collection “The View from Castle Rock,” only to tell interviewers of the stories she still intended to write.

The latest writer to announce retirement plans is Annie Dillard, the 62-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” and a dozen or so other works. Dillard has just published her second novel, “The Maytrees,” but New York magazine is reporting that this is it for her. “I’m tired,” Dillard told Daniel Asa Rose in an item for the magazine’s Intelligencer column. “I worked so hard all my life, and all I want to do now is read.”

That’s a lovely sentiment, but I remain unconvinced. Writing, after all, is less a vocation than an obsession, a disorder of the blood. Even J.D. Salinger, hiding out for 40-plus years in New Hampshire, has reportedly produced an office full of manuscripts for release after his death. And though Dillard has never made any bones about the fact that writing is a struggle — “I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend,” she acknowledged in her 1989 book “The Writing Life” — 62 is awfully young to give it up.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Dillard write again.

David L. Ulin

Heck, if Oprah can get America to read, so can you

Remember the dreary announcement by the National Endowment for the Arts, in 2004, that literary reading in the U.S. was on a steep decline? The endowment’s report, "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America," shocked and irritated many with its description of falling reading standards. Part of the decline, the report said, was due to our media-saturated culture distracting people away from timeless texts. But unlike other prophets and their dire predictions, the NEA didn’t stop there. It followed up its words with action in the form of "The Big Read," a program developed by the NEA and other groups. The program is designed to bring vibrant discussions of great books to a neighborhood near you by awarding grants and developing book clubs and discussion groups.

This fall, several Los Angeles-area organizations--including the L.A. Public Library, Will & Company, Cal Poly Pomona Foundation and Rancho Cucamonga Public Library--will be among 117 groups nationwide rediscovering (or, for that matter, discovering for the first time) novels by John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Rudolf Anaya, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston and many others.

According to an NEA announcement Monday, the grants will range from $5,000 to $20,000. Each community reading group also will receive reading guides for specific books, online support and other materials to make this a rewarding experience for all comers. "The Big Read" begins in September, and any group that’s sorry it missed the opportunity to participate will have a second chance: Another "Big Read" begins in January 2008, and the application deadline is at the end of July. 

Nick Owchar

Dropping a dime

What exactly is a dime novel? According to a fascinating new book, “Dashing Diamond Dick and Other Classic Dime Novels” (Penguin: 344 pp., $15 paper), the form had its roots in the 1860s, when publisher Irwin P. Beadle developed a series of short, lurid fiction titles called Beadle’s Dime Novels. The genre hit its stride in the late 19th and early 20th centuries  as America became a mass culture with the technology — including “advances in printing methods and papermaking” and “the development of communication and transportation systems” — to produce books that were disposable and cheap. Dime novels were mostly potboilers, short (around 100 pages) and full of action: westerns, detective stories, love sagas and novels about sports.

“Dashing Diamond Dick” features five dime novels, all originally published between 1894 and 1904. Edited by J. Randolph Cox, the book includes a Frank Merriwell baseball novel (“Frank Merriwell’s Finish or, Blue Against Crimson”) and a Nick Carter mystery (“Dr. Quartz II, at Bay; or, A Man of Iron Nerve”), as well as a handful of other less iconic efforts that give readers the flavor of the form.

It ain’t literature, but it is fun, and not just for the adventures (which — let’s be frank — don’t all age well). No, it’s more the sense of catching a glimpse of American popular culture while it was still in a nascent state, in the process of becoming, and, as such, more than a little bit weird and wild. What these novels offer is a look at another America, at its fascinations and entertainments. They also laid the groundwork for 1930s pulp fiction, which — much like the blues and baseball — ultimately rose above disposable status to become a quintessentially American popular art form, a throwaway genre that transcends itself.

David L. Ulin

Another book review section to fold?

San Diego book agent Sandy Dijkstra is calling on the area’s readers, writers, booksellers and publishers to protest planned changes to the Union-Tribune's coverage of books, which she said includes a shuttering of its Sunday book review section after the June 24 issue.

Beginning July 1, Dijkstra said in an e-mail alert fired off Friday afternoon, book reviews will be folded into two pages within the Sunday entertainment section, and reduced in number by 50%.

Chris Lavin, the Union-Tribune's senior editor, special sections, said late Friday that the paper does "have plans to adjust the way we’re presenting book coverage," but said that Dijkstra's information "is not complete or accurate."

Any changes, Lavin said, "will both improve and broaden our coverage of books." However, he declined to discuss specifics, saying, "We’ll do that in the pages of the newspaper when the details are final. Our readers will be the first to know."

Financial pressures at newspapers across the country have resulted in cutbacks in newsprint space devoted to books, including at the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News and the Los Angeles Times, where the Sunday Book Review section was packaged with the Opinion section beginning in mid-April. (The Times' Book Review has also launched Web-based review columns and books coverage.)

The cutbacks have produced an outcry from literary communities wherever they have occurred, with some likening it to an "intellectual brownout."

Dijkstra urged the "reading community" in San Diego, which she described as one of the top 10 book-buying cities in the country, to "deluge" the Union-Tribune with letters demanding the book section's restoration.

Dijkstra, in her e-mail blast, also called on the book community to descend on the newspaper's offices "bearing a coffin filled with the books of the many authors whose works would no longer be reviewed" and "stage a read-in."

"Now is the time to act!" she wrote.

— Kristina Lindgren

At last, Jack Kirby’s visionary comic books are back...

A few years ago, you could still find Jack Kirby's fantastic comic books about "The New Gods," but only in a black-and-white edition. It's so odd and frustrating that DC Comics would decide to give us Kirby's vision stripped of all its colors.

Now, over the next few months, DC is bringing back the entire Kirby saga, known collectively as "The Fourth World," in several big, beautiful hardcover editions with all the rich colors of the originals. The first of these, "Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, Volume One" (DC Comics: 396 pp., $49.99), has just been published and includes appreciative essays by comics writers Grant Morrison and Mark Evanier.

Here are the first appearances of the warrior Orion from the world New Genesis; the evil Darkseid from the molten planet Apokolips; a heroic, powerful Jimmy Olsen with stories of his own; and the hero known as Mister Miracle who draws his power from new technology and gadgetry. There's also the band of young heroes called "the Forever People," who are straight out of the Age of Aquarius. With names like Mark Moonrider and Beautiful Dreamer and some corny dialogue — "Dig this place! It's got the ingredients of the cake but it needs more baking!" — these super-powered kids seem more suited to hanging out at a Grateful Dead show than battling cosmic evil.

The work presented here shows why Kirby, who died in 1994, deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Will Eisner, say, or Alan Moore and Frank Miller. All these comics creators pushed and expanded the genre into new areas. In some ways, Kirby's comics are a rich time capsule — not just for his tribute to the Flower Children of the '60s with the Forever People, but in recurring themes about fallen father figures, the power of young people and youth movements, the tensions caused by unwinnable wars and the standoff between two major powers, New Genesis and Apokolips, which undoubtedly was inspired by the Cold War. "I hear you, Orion!" Darkseid yells as they first confront each other. "The battle begins!"

These Kirby creations came in the early 1970s, after his bitter departure from Marvel, where his style had set the tone and brand for that house. According to Morrison and Evanier, Kirby felt snubbed by Marvel's management, that he was treated as a mere penciller while Stan Lee was given sole credit for some of their mutual creations. "They thought everything good on the pages had come from Stan," writes Evanier, who had worked with Kirby. "One lawyer-type even told Jack he was delusional to think he was anything more than a dime-a-dozen pencil- pusher. It was enough to drive a person to rage. Or at least over to the competition."

Ronin Ro's Kirby biography, "Tales to Astonish," published by Bloomsbury in 2004, describes the artist's bitter struggles. Evanier will publish his own Kirby biography later this year.

In the end, Kirby triumphed — not with vast wealth, but by not being forgotten. The DC omnibuses are evidence of the enduring appeal of his stories. Future generations will come to see Kirby as an exciting myth-maker whose message was life-affirming. In light of Kirby's career ups and downs, the words of Mister Miracle seem to also apply to him: "My enemies think that escape from this is impossible. But they’re in for a rude shock!"

— Nick Owchar

Retirement's the time for Shakespeare

You can find plenty of histories (by Robert McCrum and David Crystal, for instance) tracing how much the English language has changed — read: "changed" as "deteriorated" — since the Elizabethan era.

Or you can turn to a new edition of "Shakespeare's Sonnets" and find clear evidence of this decline on every page. Published by Duckworth Overlook (474 pp., $37.50), this splendid volume has been edited and supplied with commentary by David West, a renowned translator of Virgil, among others.

In his introduction, West confides that he began this project "knowing nothing about Elizabethan history" — wait, how can this be a wonderful edition if it's by a Shakespeare novice? More on that later.

Printed beneath each sonnet is a simple paraphrase that is ideal for directing classroom discussions and clearing away confusion over certain lines. Take the opening lines of Sonnet 30, which gave Scott Moncrieff the title for his translation of Proust: "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, / I summon up remembrance of things past." West’s paraphrase is: "hen I think about the past...."

This approach is perfect for the teacher struggling to get students to unplug their iPods and give the Bard a chance. The paraphrases reduce the intimidating language into something more familiar that they will understand. But, alas, there is that villainous word "reduce": On each page, two moments in the English language's history stare back at the reader — the boldly ornamented figures of the late 16th century and the flat, simple prose of our own. Which do you prefer, Sonnet 33's rich declaration ("Full many a glorious morning have I seen") or the homely paraphrase ("A bright morning often means a dull day")?

West came to this project for his own pleasure. "Having spent my working life on Lucretius, Horace and Virgil, I took to the Sonnets in retirement," he writes. He was curious about them, not intent on developing a project. But as he sought out commentaries to guide him, he became increasingly dissatisfied and convinced of the need to write his own.

Though he doesn’t have the fluency and familiarity of preeminent poetry critic Helen Vendler, West is an ideal commentator. He gives fascinating discussions of the classical allusions that Shakespeare, like all Elizabethan poets, sowed into their works. West also offers a meditative model of retirement for all book lovers — if, of course, their 401(k) money holds out.

— Nick Owchar