Ah, wilderness

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

"Running With Scissors" lawsuit is settled

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," writing about money: Some random links

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

A tale of two blonds

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

Harper Lee said some words

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

Bookie takes on the Booker

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

A comic book retailer on trial, an Oprah no-no and more: Some random links

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

Latinas reinvent the quinceañera......

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

Will Rove tell all?

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

Random links: Potter in Paris, book reviews and the writer’s life online

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