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It’s been six years since Jonathan Franzen took his uncomfortable star turn for “The Corrections” — an experience that culminated with the novelist being widely vilified for disrespecting Oprah Winfrey, who made his book a selection of her club. I’ve always thought Franzen got something of a bad rap; although he overreacted, both the press and the public conveniently missed the fact that he was raising important points about the consolidation of influence, who the owner of a work of art really is.
In any case, “The Corrections” is one of the most blistering novels I’ve read in the last several years, a pitch-perfect dissection of the middle-class family, with its hypocrisy, compromise and angst. It’s also a remarkable act of literary ventriloquism, as Franzen takes us inside an array of characters and in the process gets us to empathize with even the least sympathetic people in the book.
And yet, ever since “The Corrections,” it’s seemed like Franzen has cut himself adrift in the literary wilderness, dodging the notoriety and attention he courted with that book. In 2002, he published “How to Be Alone,” a collection of occasional writings, and last year, put out “The Discomfort Zone,” a thin volume of memoirs — both nicely written but without the ambition of his previous work.
Franzen’s latest project follows in these footsteps: a translation from the German of Frank Wedekind’s 1906 play “Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy” (Faber and Faber: 88 pp., $13 paper), which closed after one night on the New York stage in 1917. If you haven’t heard of Wedekind, you’re not alone; this was my first exposure both to him and to this play, which deals with the emerging sexuality of four teenagers and has, Franzen notes in his introduction, the “youthful energy, [the] disruptive power, [the] feeling of authenticity” that defines rock ’n’ roll.
It may seem odd to see a 100-year-old play compared with rock music, but in the end, I think, it’s fitting, as is Franzen’s fascination with this play itself. In the wake of the Oprah fiasco, he was called an overgrown adolescent and worse, and while those charges are ridiculous, there’s no question that Franzen has maintained some of the adolescent’s sense of outrage, of moral indignation, and that it is at the center of his finest work.
“The Corrections” was infused with precisely this sort of energy, as were the essays in “The Discomfort Zone.” It makes sense, then, that as he continues his peripatetic wanderings, Franzen might settle for a moment not only in the efforts of another writer but in a work that at its essence shares many of the concerns and aesthetics of his own.
David L. Ulin
One result of the fiasco over James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" was that other memoirists' stories began to be heavily scrutinized about their truthfulness. One such writer snagged by Freygate was Augusten Burroughs, whose bestselling "Running with Scissors" describes his life with a foster family, the Turcottes. They filed a defamation lawsuit against Burroughs and his publisher, St. Martin’s, for the way the book characterized them. The two parties have reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount, with St. Martin’s Press, Burroughs' publisher, issuing a statement Thursday calling the result a "complete vindication of the accuracy of the memoir."
Burroughs is quoted at length in the same release, declaring that the settlement is "a victory for all memoirists. I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir, and that it was not fictionalized or sensationalized in any way. I did not embellish or invent elements. We had a very strong case because I had the truth on my side."
On the other hand, Burroughs says that, even though the word "memoir" will still appear on the cover, on the Author’s Note page he has agreed to change "memoir" to "book" and to include new language in the Acknowledgements section. This is the most interesting change given that the original simply thanked "a certain Massachusetts family," Burroughs’ new language includes the statement that the Turcottes' "memories of the events described in this book are different than my own" and that St. Martin’s and the author "regret any unintentional harm."
A lawyer for the Turcottes, Publishers Weekly reports, claims victory, pointing out that it is "unusual for a publisher to make any changes to a book post-publication." The lawyer also says that the settlement "covered their legal expenses and beyond."
Nick Owchar
 Reviews that make you go "ouch": Adam Kirsch (whose father Jonathan and grandfather Robert have long associations with The Times’ Book Review) delivers a one-two blow against Ann Wroe’s "Being Shelley: The Poet’s Search for Self" in the New Yorker:
"The most important limitation of Wroe’s method is that it leaves her with as little critical perspective on Shelley as Shelley had himself. Being Shelley means feeling as Shelley felt, and Wroe tremblingly recapitulates the poet’s sense of being too fragile for this world: ‘Rain punished Shelley, too. He stood in it, his heart naked to its freezing, battering drops.’ By the time he drowns, Wroe’s Shelley has become literally angelic, ready to return to his heavenly home: ‘White wings unfolded vastly from his shoulders, as if through this battering frenzy he could rise to the upper sky.’ But, if there is one lesson to be drawn from Shelley’s life and work, it is that you can’t trust a man who believes he is an angel."
There are enough other portraits of Shelley’s life--by Richard Holmes, for example, and Claire Tomalin and Ian Gilmour (for that matter, include Edward John Trelawny, too)--that I was a little disappointed with Kirsch’s piece. He didn’t give Wroe much of a chance. Is there no room for experiment?
****
Writers and money: Ken Burns’ 2001 documentary on the life of Mark Twain had an interesting insight, among many, in describing Twain’s disastrous investment in a printing machine that never worked as well in practice as it did in theory. Twain’s faith in the machine, the documentary suggested, was increased by the fact that he was an artist: His imagination showed him how it might succeed, so it was harder for him to imagine that the venture would fail.
If you read this year’s Man Booker Prize chairman Howard Davies in last week’s Financial Times, you’d find that, Twain aside, Davies has a deep faith in the solid business sense of American writers.
Brits, by contrast, are perfectly awful, Davies says. While lauding the financial savvy of Tom Wolfe ("The Bonfire of the Vanities") and the real estate acumen of Richard Ford ("The Lay of the Land"), he complains that British writers are hopeless. "Most of our novelists are more preoccupied with life after working hours and below the waist," he writes. Ignoring the economic aspect of modern life is something to lament, he says, though he’s buoyed by some of the authors on the Booker longlist--for example, Indra Sinha, Mohsin Hamid, Lloyd Jones and Catherine O’Flynn--for including a sense of how financial pressures impinge on their characters’ lives. And yet, he asks, "where is the great hedge fund novel of our time?"
Interesting point, Mr. Davies. But don’t expect anyone at Bear Stearns to share your enthusiasm.
****
Big bucks: Fox 2000 and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions made a winning bid for "The Passage," an unfinished novel about vampires that is planned as part of a trilogy. How much did they pay for the 397-page manuscript? A whopping $1.75 million. A suggestion for the author, Jordan Ainsley (a pseudonym, various blogs report): Call the series "The Early Retirement" trilogy.
Nick Owchar
Twain photo credit: Cooper Square Press
From picture books to tween angst...
Madonna, entertainer, author and celebrity-mom extraordinaire, has four new installments for her children’s book series, "The English Roses." The handsomely illustrated volumes will arrive in stores  Sept. 13, says Sara Zick of Penguin Books' Young Readers division.
Launched in 2003, "The English Roses" introduced London grade-schoolers Amy, Charlotte, Nicole, Grace and Binah; a fairy godmother; a quirky teacher and heaps of life lessons for proper young ladies of about 7, which just happened to be the age of Madonna’s elder child, Lourdes.
The new books, once again accompanied by fashion illustrator Jeffrey Fulvimari's luscious drawings, are aimed at the tween set (just as, no surprise, young Lourdes is about to turn 11). The girls learn to cope with a new arrival, crushes on boys and the prospect of loss. They even offer study tips and fashion pointers, and volume No. 1, "Friends for Life," has a section for girl readers to write down their likes, dislikes and most embarrassing moments.
Kristina Lindgren
*
Cinéma vérité
Madonna aside, there’s another famous blond hitting the bookshelves. Want to know what that grande dame of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve, is thinking? "Close Up and Personal: The Private Diaries of Catherine Deneuve" (Pegasus Books) offers a glimpse of her thoughts while shooting six films abroad.
The book begins with a beguiling epigraph: "Let me warn you that these are mere jottings, personal records of the shootings of films, chronicles of my doubts. Almost all were written outside France, and some a long time ago. Solitary, elated, discouraged, critical. Raw. A little remorse perhaps, but no regrets."
"Private Diaries" contains some juicy extras, including director Pascal Bonitzer’s 2004 interview with the actress. The diaries begin with her 1999 jottings while filming "Dancer in the Dark" ("To  Copenhagen. Gazing at fields of rape through the plane window; they’re like a Poliakoff painting, jagged. Very sore throat. Feverish.") and extending back in time to the 1968 filming of "The April Fools" where we get the following nugget: "Dreadful costume fitting. I’m starting to think we should use Saint Laurent, and so are they.... Surprised to bump into Polanski, who persuades me into a drink at Sardi’s, where we meet Warren Beatty--he’s so smooth."
There’s much about hair and makeup and food, and fashion of course. There’s set chatter too, especially in the Bonitzer interview, in which Deneuve actually opens up about her role in cinema and her reasons for keeping her diaries in the first place: "The printed word has the weight of absolute truth. And this weight of truth endures longer than one could ever imagine."
Orli Low
 You’d think, from the hype surrounding it, that reclusive author Harper Lee had given a full-blown speech at the ceremony she attended this week to honor fellow Alabamians. But what she said amounted to very little. As recorded by various news services, she uttered 11 words:
"Well, it’s better to be silent than to be a fool."
There are at least half a dozen stories on the Web, all of them very thin. It is nice to see a photograph (left) from the event, showing us what Lee looks like today--the boyish, brown hair of 1960s publicity photos is all white now; her face, though, still has the same amused expression and smile of her youth. Here’s Scout in her twilight years.
Lee’s off-the-cuff remark didn’t really break her silence, as several news reports declare. It was just a reminder that her refusal to discuss herself and "To Kill a Mockingbird" isn’t going to end any time soon.
"She’s certainly not at a loss for words. That’s not why she’s been silent all this time," writer Charles J. Shields tells Jacket Copy. "She’s such a live wire. Friends of hers will tell you that. When she wants to turn it on, she’s wonderful."
Shields tried to get Lee’s participation in his 2006 book, "Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee" (Henry Holt). He never received an answer from her to his book proposal. He suggests that the stunning success of her novel has enabled Lee to insulate herself from the world. (And don’t forget the 1962 movie.) "She enjoys a life of no constraints, no demands, and she has the income to do it," he says. "Her book sells about 100,000 copies a year without any sort of public appearances necessary. She doesn’t have to explain herself. She’s beholden to no one."
Nick Owchar
Photo credit: AP
Even wackier than the fact that oddsmakers in Britain are opining on who will take this year’s Man Booker Prize is that the prize’s official site is chatting it the handicapping up. The favorite, by a mile, according to one oddsmaker: Ian McEwan’s "On Chesil Beach" at 3- to 1.
"Despite the initial controversy over whether this is a novel or novella, I was always confident that it would be long-listed, and I believe it is a worthy favourite and probably one of the best Booker contenders of recent years," said Graham Sharpe, of the bookmaking house William Hill, in a press release cited on the Booker site. (Sharpe has been assessing the Booker field for a quarter-century.) Sharpe has been compiling Booker odds for more than 25 years and calls the rest of the list "the most difficult" he’s ever had to assess.
If literary wagering isn’t your thing, a perusal of the William Hill site has offers to bet on football (you know, Beckham-style), greyhound racing, cricket, darts (really), even U.S. baseball. (By the way, it’s Hillary Clinton as the 4-5 favorite to win the presidential election, with Rudolph Giuiliani at 5- to 1 and Fred Thompson (unannounced), Al Gore (very unannounced) and Barack Obama all tied for third at 6- to 1.)
If only the Pulitzers drew such interest!
Orli Low
Comics trouble: A comic book retailer in Georgia is now going to trial, Publishers Weekly reports, for giving away comics containing nude images and other sexually explicit content to two minors. The incident occurred in 2004 on Free Comic Book Day, a promotional effort started by the comics industry two years earlier to attract new readers. Major comics publishers, such as Dark Horse and Tokyopop, produce one additional special title annually just for this event, which usually occurs in the spring. The retailer faces a year in prison and a $1,000 fine.
Oh no you di'int: What would happen if you started claiming that your book was a selection of Oprah’s Book Club even though it didn’t stand a chance of being chosen? One self-published author is in some hot water for making such a claim. The talk show diva must not have been pleased.
Yuck: If you have a strong stomach, there’s a new title offered by Ten Speed Press that helps people to identify animal droppings. There’s also plenty of trivia if you’re looking (why are you looking here?) for new areas to explore--of course, you probably know already that plankton feces are the tiniest in the world--but the intended audiences for this book by Matt Pagett are hikers and outdoor lovers. Let’s hope it’s not the first in a new series.
" ‘attractive priest’ is an oxymoron": Germaine Greer’s appreciative essay on Colleen McCullough’s novel "The Thorn Birds" in the Guardian focuses not on the love story but on the land. She could care less about Father Ralph and his Meggie--it’s the evocations of Drogheda, the sheep station, and the surrounding landscape that kept her reading through the night.
Nick Owchar
With acclaimed novelist and poet Julia Álvarez arriving in So Cal today, we caught up with her to ask about "Once Upon a Quinceañera," her second work of nonfiction, a project she almost turned down.
When her publisher first pitched the idea of writing about this coming-of age ritual imported from Latin America, Álvarez says she told them, "You’ve got to be kidding! I never even had a quinceañera. I don’t know anything about them." 
But after seeing a documentary on the topic, it dawned on her that these increasingly elaborate — and expensive — celebrations for Latinas on the occasion of their 15th birthday made "the perfect lens to look at this thing we are creating here in this country, this Latino cultural identity.
"We're Mexicans, Dominicans, El Salvadorans, Panamanians," said Álvarez, herself a native of the Dominican Republic. "But we’re creating this amalgam culture, inventing it as we go along, picking up things from the mainstream American culture and weaving it into our own."
These rites of passage, in which a ball-gown-clad girl is crowned with a tiara and she tosses a rag doll into the crowd, are fantasies that only postpone the inevitable, she said. "The reality is that Latinas are ending up at the bottom of the American heap.... We need to prepare our girls for the life they are facing."
The stats she cites in her book are hard to swallow: Girls of Latino heritage have the highest teen pregnancy rate, the highest teen suicide rate and a high-school dropout rate second only to boys of Latino descent.
"This book is about what is happening in our community and about putting a new story in girls' heads," Álvarez said.
The author, who dazzled critics in 1991 with her first novel, "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents," will read from "Once Upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA" at 7 p.m. tonight at Borders Books and Music, 6510 Canoga Ave., Canoga Park, and at 7 p.m. Thursday at Librería Martínez Books and Art Gallery, 1110 N. Main St., Santa Ana.
Kristina Lindgren
President Bush’s political guru Karl Rove may not be leaving the White House payroll until Aug. 31, but he’s already talking with a high-powered Washington lawyer who has brokered publishing deals for former Fed chief Alan Greenspan, first daughter Jenna Bush and Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Publishers Weekly reports today.
And publishers, by and large, are curious to see what Rove--dubbed "the architect" and "boy genius" by President Bush, and "Bush’s brain" by critics--might have to say.
"He’s clearly one of the most controversial, notorious and elusive figures in politics, and I think that people would be interested in looking behind the curtain and seeing what the Wizard of Oz is actually saying," Jonathan Karp, publisher of the Twelve Imprint at Grand Central Publishing, told the Associated Press.
In announcing his resignation Monday, Rove told reporters that he planned to return to his hometown, Ingram, Texas, with no particular plans beyond wanting to teach, "make some money" and write a book on Bush’s presidency. But just how forthcoming would Rove be?
"He said the president has encouraged him to write a book, so one would not expect complete candor," added Karp, publisher of the newly released "Hard Call" by GOP presidential contender Arizona Sen. John McCain. "Rove’s historical value would be in a candid rendering of the Bush presidency."
Indeed, candor may be what publishers will demand, HarperCollins executive Steve Ross told AP.
"If he’s ready to talk about what he’s been doing, to lay out how he developed his architectural plans and then implemented them and what his vision is, I think that book would have significant readership," said Ross, who published "The Audacity of Hope," a bestseller by Democratic presidential hopeful and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for Crown last fall.
Candor aside, Ashbel Green, a senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf, says Rove is unlikely to command more than an advance in the mid six figures, not the multimillion-dollar contracts inked by the elusive Greenspan or the charismatic Bill Clinton.
"He doesn’t have the personality," Green said of Rove.
Robert Barnett, a lawyer with the Washington firm of Williams & Connolly, has spoken with Rove, but referred further queries on the depth and breath of Rove’s book plans to the White House.
Many other Bush administration officials have collaborated on or penned books, including former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill’s unflattering account of his tenure, the bestselling "The Price of Loyalty." Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is also at work on a book and was making the rounds of publishers earlier this summer, Publishers Weekly has reported.
Kristina Lindgren
Sacré bleu, Monsieur Harree!: The long wait may be over for English-language readers of Harry Potter, but the French are still waiting. A French translation of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is scheduled to appear at the end of October, but a teenager there has gotten into trouble for translating three chapters into French and posting them on the Internet. The Quill and Quire’s blog reports that the 16-year-old was arrested not by just any police, but by the "anti-counterfeiting police," and that J.K. Rowling’s lawyers have been notified.
This is ridiculous. Look, the book is already out: The English version, the report says, is even being sold by some French bookstores now. What’s going to happen to this kid? Shouldn’t they give him a mild slap on the wrist or, for that matter, a translation prix instead of a court appearance?
Are book reviews useful?: Check out this item on Lynne Scanlon’s blog, The Publishing Contrarian, about the use and misuse of book reviews. The title of her piece gets right to the point: "The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Book Reviewers."
The writing life online: A previous posting in Jacket Copy discussed the recent Ithaka study, which said that academic publishers, for their financial survival, may need to shift from print to online publishing. The posting included some comments about how it is difficult to treat online publishing with the same gravity as a book in print, especially if you’re of a certain age and were raised before the rise of the Internet. On this topic, also consider blogger Jason Boog’s point of view at The Publishing Spot . His thoughtful piece suggests, among other things, how online writing has led to the same hectic demands for copy that writers for pulp magazine faced in the early to mid-20th century.
Nick Owchar
The Book: "Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga" by Ian Christe (Wiley: 320 pp., $25.95)
 Overview: If David Lee Roth’s 1997 memoir, "Crazy From the Heat," just wasn’t enough for you, Christe supplies the story of how an obscure band from Pasadena became a mega-act suffering from mega-dysfunction.
Overwritten?: "Like the stories of other great Americans from Henry Ford to Walt Disney to Fievel the Mouse, the saga of Van Halen began in an ancient land, far from the United States and its constant supply of hot water and electricity. As a narrator would say in the old movies: Among the windmills, tulips, and wooden shoes of lovely Amsterdam, Holland, there once lived a kindly musician named Jan van Halen." (By the way, Henry Ford and Walt Disney were born in the U.S.)
Most irritating: The chapter titles. Why do we need headings referencing Pink, R.E.M., the Beastie Boys and others? Then again, the timeline divisions--Rothozoic, Hagarlithic--are funny, but, hey, is Christe suggesting that the boys are musical dinosaurs?
Shocking revelation: Michael Anthony’s real name is Michael Sobolewski (Anthony is his middle name). Or maybe you already knew that.
Bottom line: Christe has sat through countless YouTube viewings of guitarists playing "Eruption" to learn how to play Eddie’s show-stopping, finger-hammering epic. He’s not fooling around. And his prose is always playful.
****
The Book: "Rat Salad: Black Sabbath: The Classic Years, 1969-1975" by Paul Wilkinson (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s: 240 pp., $24.95)
 Overview: A biography-discography that looks at the band’s rise (first as Polka Tulk, then Earth and finally Black Sabbath), interactions and problems (one word: Ozzy) and includes Wilkinson’s analysis of their first six albums.
Overwritten?: Discussing the cover of the 1975 release "Sabotage," Wilkinson writes that bassist Geezer Butler is "kitted out in some prescient incarnation of Sonny Crockett from the eighties’ TV series ‘Miami Vice.’ His lapis lazuli jacket, boasting slightly padded shoulders, foreshortened sleeves and a tailored waist, sits over a skin-tight camisole-type top, horizontally striped, with a plunging ‘V’ motif drawing the eye to what, under normal circumstances, would be the cleavage."
Most irritating: Sometimes the author tries too hard to push Sabbath into the realms of high art. Is the song "Children of the Grave" really the metal equivalent of World War I poet Wilfred Owen’s "Anthem for Doomed Youth"? Oh, c’mon!
Shocking revelation: Ozzy sat through the movie "The Exorcist" six times (well, maybe that’s not so shocking).
Bottom line: Wilkinson’s a fan beaming with pride; some of the book’s best parts are about being young and rebellious in 1970s England and hunting in record shops for music that inspired him. Worth the price.
Nick Owchar
Anything can become a movie: Often, critics of authors such as John Grisham complain that they cater to Hollywood by writing thin novels that amount to nothing more than screenplays in disguise. Now, however, it seems that an author doesn’t even need to worry about having a plot to interest filmmakers.
Disney has bought the rights to Conn and Hal Igulden’s "The Dangerous Book for Boys," a surprise bestseller, that collects a miscellany of hobbies and pursuits for boys short on imagination and bored with videogames. The book offers a nostalgic, golden picture of boyhood the way I imagine Tom Sawyer might have experienced it. Various entries include tips on building paper airplanes, facts about pirates, the rules of stickball and the best methods for skipping stones.
What’s interesting is the way this plotless book has succeeded in landing a film deal--to the understandable frustration of all those writers out there trying to develop original stories to pitch to the studios. 
An unexpected critique: New York Times reporter Tim Weiner’s history of the CIA, "Legacy of Ashes," is getting attacked by its subject: the CIA.
The agency has issued a statement complaining that the book unfairly emphasizes failures rather than offering a balanced history. Weiner’s book, the statement says, "paints far too dark a picture of the agency’s past. Backed by selective citations, sweeping assertions, and a fascination with the negative, Weiner overlooks, minimizes, or distorts agency achievements." Hmm, wonder whether the publisher can get a blurb out of that for the paperback edition.
Isn’t it better this way? The Tuesday announcement of the Man Booker longlist arrived with the reaction that few major authors are on it because few have published this year. And those who did, such as Doris Lessing and J.M. Coetzee, were passed over. Is that really a shame? Shouldn’t we be excited that there’s more room for a newcomer to come along and shake things up?
Nick Owchar
It goes without saying, we’re passionate about books--and about encouraging reading. So is First Book,
a nonprofit organization founded 15 years ago with the sole mission of getting new books into the hands of needy children.
As part of its latest literacy campaign, the First Book folks polled authors, celebrities and plain old kids to answer this question: What book got you hooked?
Ray Bradbury’s short story "The Rocket Man" was the inspiration for bestselling novelist Michael Chabon ("The Yiddish Policemen’s Union," "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay"). "I read it for the first time when I was 10 and the pleasure I took in reading was altered irrevocably," Chabon tells First Book. "Before then I had never noticed, somehow, that stories were made not of ideas or exciting twists of plot, but of language."
Wendelin Van Draanen, author of the "Sammy Keyes" and "Shredderman" series, says Bradbury’s "Dandelion Wine" hooked her on writing for children because "it perfectly captures the magic of being a kid."
Lois Lowry, who has captivated many a reader with "The Giver" and "Number the Stars," said she was 8 when "The Yearling" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings "changed my literate life." She credits her mother with "the insight and wisdom" to read the book aloud. "I still remember the sound of her voice, the shape of her shoulders as she held the thick hardcover book, and the hall light illuminating her as she sat in the hallway and read to me and my sister, each in our bedrooms." Actor John Krasinski of NBC's "The Office" is still smitten by memories of Roald Dahl’s books. "Every book from ‘James and the Giant Peach’ to ‘The BFG’ to ‘The Witches,’ nobody wrote more imaginative stories for kids. These worlds he created had the nonsensical appeal of Dr. Seuss, while at the same time, the characters were all written with wonderful complexities and enormous heart. It was a feast for any imagination!"
More than 100,000 people responded to First Book’s poll. The vox pop’s top five are:
1. Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene
2. “Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr. Seuss
3. “Little House on the Prairie” by Laura Ingalls Wilder
4. “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott
5. “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss.
“Many of us remember the one book that we wanted to read over and over again — the book that really stirred our imaginations and left us wanting just one more chapter before bedtime,” First Book President Kyle Zimmer told Publishers Weekly. “The fact that there are millions of children in our own country that will grow up without these kinds of memories because they have no access to books is devastating. We are delighted that so many people shared their stories in order to help us shine the spotlight on this critical issue.”
Want to know what rapper Bow Wow, violinist Joshua Bell, author Joyce Carol Oates and actor Edward Norton chose? Just click here. Do you remember the first book that grabbed you? Tell us about it.
Kristina Lindgren
 Publishers Weekly called it "very possibly the greatest American novel." The Washington Post declared that it was the "best novel to have ever come out of the South...it is unsurpassed in the whole of American writing." It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was turned into an iconic, Academy Award-winning movie. Are we talking about "To Kill a Mockingbird"? Something by Mark Twain? Carson McCullers? William Faulkner? No, this is a different Southern novel--Margaret Mitchell’s "Gone With the Wind."
I’ve never gotten the whole "Gone With the Wind" thing. The book is, frankly, turgid, and I can’t sit through the film. But as a lead-in, of sorts, to the November publication of Donald McCaig’s novel "Rhett Butler’s People," Scribner has reissued "Gone With the Wind" (960 pp., $17 paper) with a preface in which novelist Pat Conroy ("The Prince of Tides," "The Great Santini") suggests it "shaped the South I grew up in more than any other book."
I’m willing to give Conroy the benefit of the doubt on this one; who can say what makes a book a social force? What I don’t understand, however, is why we need another novel about Rhett and Scarlett when the original still has such a resonance. St. Martin’s Press, which will publish "Rhett Butler’s People," paid the Mitchell estate $4.5 million just for the right to do a sequel--and it’s not even the first sequel at that. (Alexandra Ripley’s "Scarlett" was a bestseller in 1991.)
But then, the "Gone With the Wind" saga has long since ceased to be about storytelling and become a tale of commerce instead. With "Rhett Butler’s People," and a "Gone With the Wind" musical set to open next year in London’s West End, perhaps Scarlett was right when she declares at the end of Mitchell’s novel: "[T]omorrow is another day."
David L. Ulin
The power of love: Harlequin, the publisher synonymous with romance, has reported modest gains in this year’s second quarter, which ended June 30. It’s not entirely because of an increase in readership--even though authors like Debbie Macomber are cited as boosting sales--but also because of a traditional corporate strategy: cutting jobs. The folks at Galley Cat also offer a bigger picture of the industry, supplying the latest numbers on book sales (they were up in June) from the Association of American Publishers.
Reviews that make you go "ouch": Across the Atlantic, in a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement (July 27), Edward N. Luttwak ends a long piece on "The Reagan Diaries" with a sharp swipe at its editor, Douglas Brinkley. In part, Luttwak writes: "Regrettably, there is still a place for shoddy, thoroughly unworthy editors. Douglas Brinkley, to whom this precious historical document was unaccountably consigned, has not done any of the things that should have been required of the editor of such material." Brinkley, to disclose here, contributes to our section. Luttwak once wrote for the section, but that was a long time ago.
With the previous item in mind: I stopped at writer Jason Pinter’s blog, The Man in Black, and noticed a July 31 posting, "What’s a Review Worth?" He describes what it feels like when a reviewer is snarky about one’s book--veteran or debut author, it hurts all the same, he says.
What a surprise: What new book is breaking publishing sales records? If you needed more than 10 seconds to say it’s the final Harry Potter novel, then you must be from another planet. Scholastic is now reporting that U.S. sales in the last 10 days are at 11.5 million copies. Previously the publishing house said that the book sold 8.3 million of those copies within 24 hours. Scholastic also plans to print another 2 million copies to keep up with demand. Whew.
Nick Owchar
One of the things I love most about poetry is that it’s adaptable. You can find poetry almost anywhere, if you look for it--a bus billboard, a T-shirt, the lyrics of a song. I have one friend who used to publish poems on matchbooks, and another who put poetry on postcards, or in storefront window displays. If the poem is sharp enough, it almost works better in an unexpected setting because it takes us by surprise.
Charles Harper Webb’s chapbook "How to Live" is an illustration of this idea in action. Containing a single poem (taken from his 2006 full-length collection "Amplified Dog"), it’s an instantly digestible poetic experience, a crash course on the good life.
Published by Blue Q, a novelty store in Pittsfield, Mass., "How to Live" is a lovely little volume--maybe 2 x 2 ½ inches, with different-colored pages and block letter text--that packs a punch because Webb’s work is so cogent, humorous and wise. "Try not to lie; it sours the soul," he writes at one point. "But being a patsy sours it too." Later, he declares, simply: "Enjoy success."
Webb, of course, is a local stalwart--a professor of English at Cal State Long Beach and one of the pioneers of Southern California’s Stand Up poetry scene. With "How to Live," he reminds us that there is more than one way to get a poem across.
David L. Ulin
 Charles Simic, whose darkly humorous and surreal poetry has captivated a generation of readers and won him numerous awards, will become the nation’s 15th poet laureate, the Library of Congress announced today. " I’m overwhelmed," the 69-year-old Simic told the Boston Globe, adding that he hasn’t decided how he will put his mark on the job of promoting poetry across the nation.
"I am especially touched and honored to be selected because I am an immigrant boy who didn’t speak English until I was 15," he said in the statement from the Library of Congress.
If that isn't honor enough, Simic just won the 14th annual Wallace Stevens Award for "mastery in the art of poetry" by the Academy of American Poets. It comes with a $100,000 prize.
Why Simic, why now? Because he's "a poet of immense, humane consideration," academy chancellor James Tate told the literary blog GalleyCat. "He carries our souls around in his back pocket like a map of the lost world." The Yugoslavian-born poet — an essayist, translator and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire — has written 22 books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1989 collection of prose poems, "The World Doesn't End."
Simic, who lives with his wife in Stratfford, N.H., follows in the footsteps of such distinguished poets as Robert Penn Warren, Joseph Brodsky, Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins and Louise Glück. He succeeds another New Hampshire poet, Donald Hall.
"The range of Charles Simic’s imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual imagery," said James H. Billington, librarian of Congress. "He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising. He has given us a rich body of highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor."
Simic, who was 16 when he came to the United States in 1954, told the Boston Globe that he started writing poetry at his suburban Chicago high school (Ernest Hemingway's alma mater, it turns out) to attract girls. "They were always surprised. 'You wrote this for me?' " he said.
Of his most recent book, "My Noiseless Entourage" (2005), poet Carol Muske-Dukes wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "It takes just one glimpse of Charles Simic's work to establish that he is a master, ruler of his own eccentric kingdom of jittery syntax and signature insight."
Simic, who won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1984, will publish a new volume of poetry, "That Little Something," next February. He assumes his duties this fall with a reading of his work during the Library of Congress' annual literary series on Oct. 17. He also will be a featured speaker at the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival Sept. 29 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. poet laureate title was first given in 1986 to Robert Penn Warren. Poets generally serve one- or two-year terms. Laureates receive a $35,000 award plus a $5,000 travel allowance. Warren has the distinction of being the only poet to serve twice as the Library of Congress' official poetry emissary, having been chosen its "Consultant in Poetry" in 1944. The honorary position, renamed by an act of Congress in 1985, was endowed in 1937 by railroad scion and scholar Archer M. Huntington.
Kristina Lindgren
Photo Credit: Library of Congress
 The footage that some of you may be waiting for -- Nan Talese (left) criticizing Oprah Winfrey -- is up on C-SPAN2’s BookTV.
The four-minute video clip shows Doubleday’s Talese, who was taken to task by Winfrey last year for not checking the facts in James Frey’s memoir "A Million Little Pieces," speaking at a Texas writers conference last weekend.
Talese responded to a conference participant's question during a keynote speech and a Q&A with Joyce Carol Oates (in the video, Oates can be seen patiently standing at the podium in the background while Talese is speaking). Talese, the editor of Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood and many other preeminent writers, can be heard saying, among other things, that Winfrey "verbally flayed [Frey] in public.... It was a public scourging." The clip ends with the audience’s applause.
Nick Owchar
Books are beautiful artifacts. When a writer friend and his family remodeled their apartment recently, he didn’t give a thought to their living space. Instead, he spent hours dreaming of--then designing--bookcases to wrap around a new staircase. If you’ve ever read Nick Basbanes on book collecting, you know that bibliomania has inspired and illuminated people’s lives throughout history. But if the cost for even a small print-run gets expensive for some publishers, shouldn’t even stalwart book lovers give online publishing a chance?
That’s what university presses may need to consider, according to a new study reported at the site Inside Higher Ed this week.
For professors, "publish or perish" is the oft-heard mantra; for the presses attached to the nation’s universities, "publish and perish" may become theirs. New technology, higher production costs (the added expense of color plates in art history books is one example) and smaller annual budgets are making it more difficult for these presses to widely serve academic communities in the ways they always have. That’s the argument of "University Publishing in a Digital Age," a study conducted by Ithaka, a not-for-profit group looking at technology and higher education, and available on its Web page.
"I wouldn’t want to see online publishing replace scholarly books entirely," says Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan University’s new president, who stopped by our offices Tuesday. Roth’s own books include "Knowing and History" and "Freud: Conflict and Culture." I asked him how he would have felt if his books had gone directly online.
"It’s tough when you’ve grown up with books to see the end result of your work as something that’s not exactly a physical book," he said. "Maybe this matters less to younger generations who don’t have the same experience."
Like Roth, I struggle with the idea of reading a text online rather than on the printed page. And I’d certainly have difficulty seeing all my intellectual labors floating in cyberspace rather than between the covers of an elegantly designed book. But if the aim of writing is to share ideas and reach readers, shouldn’t we all just let technology take us in new directions?
If your scholarship is published on the Web, search engines will find it. Your study of Proust’s use of wine in "In Search of Lost Time" will draw many Proust lovers (and probably a few winos). If it were located only on the shelves of certain libraries, it might take a long time for an interested reader to see a copy.
The study doesn’t say that books should be eliminated entirely at university presses (one could also download and print them); instead, it emphasizes that university presses must adapt to new technology to ensure their survival. On the other hand, despite the study’s forecast, some are thriving--I think of Harvard University Press and the Belknap Press, which have found brilliant ways to straddle academia and the mainstream.
Then again, says Roy Tennant at Library Journal.Com, all this is old news: Collaborative scholarly websites are already running; he cites eScholarship Repository as an example. Judge for yourself.
Nick Owchar
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