Studs Terkel, weekend book festivals and other literary news

Studs Terkel has died at 96 at home in Chicago. The author-actor-radio host was an outspoken advocate for liberal causes: "I signed many petitions that were for unfashionable causes and never retracted," he once said. His oral history "Division Street: America" was a 1967 bestseller; his (probable) last, "P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening" is due out this year.

In San Francisco, the Alternative Press Expo and JCC BookFest will provide literary respite from the Halloween-heavy weekend. Highlights include Etgar Keret at the latter and graphic novelist Chris Ware being interviewed by Eli Horowitz from McSweeney's at the former.

As San Francisco goes, so does Texas -- at least this once. This weekend will also mark the Texas Book Festival in Austin. Robert Caro, William Least Heat-Moon and Andre Dubus III are on the schedule, along with LA-based authors Mark Sarvas and Sandra Tsing Loh.

The Atlantic plows through its archives and unearths writing on the Great Depression from the Great Depression. The upshot? Depressingly similar to today's writing about banking and the economy.

Another author has also left us: William Wharton, a painter and the author of "Birdy," among other novels, died Wednesday in Encinitas. He was 82.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Chicago Tribune photo of Studs Terkel by Chris Walker

Brian Dettmer's book art

At first glance, Brian Dettmer's work might look like collage, but it's really the inverse. Instead of layering images and text on top of each other, he treats books -- his main medium -- like blocks of marble, carving away to reveal complex three-dimensional creations. He has explained his process this way:

In this work I begin with an existing book and seal its edges, creating an enclosed vessel full of unearthed potential. I cut into the cover of the book and dissect through it from the front. I work with knives, tweezers and other surgical tools to carve one page at a time, exposing each page while cutting around ideas and images of interest. Nothing inside the books is relocated or implanted, only removed. Images and ideas are revealed to expose a book’s hidden, fragmented memory. The completed pieces expose new relationships of a book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception.

If carving away big chunks of books doesn't sit well with you, realize he frequently uses reference books, which tend to get purged from shelves when they go out of date. He's got one piece constructed of a children's encyclopedia set, and another encyclopedia-based series. The argument could be made that Dettmer is recycling landfill-bound materials, but that seems beside the point.

To me, what's important that he's created beautiful objects that deconstruct our idea of codfiying knowledge in something static and linear; by riffling through dictionaries with surgical precision, he constructs different meanings, with overlapping images and bits of text, than Daniel Webster could ever have imagined.

Brian Dettmer has done other kinds of work, too. There are the pretty -- and surprisingly political -- sculptures from wallpaper sample books. His mound-style pieces are so rounded and polished that reference books appear to be carved wood. He's also constructed sculptures from melted cassette tapes.

His work is shown by New York's Kinz-Tillou and Feigen Gallery, the Toomey-Tourell Gallery in San Francisco and the MiTO Gallery in Barcelona.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

After the jump: photos of more pieces by Brian Dettmer, his process, and one before-and-after.

David Foster Wallace: not enough information, and too much

David Foster Wallace, the "Infinite Jest" author who died on Sept. 12, is the subject of an extensive feature in the Oct. 30 issue of Rolling Stone (Issue No. 1064, with Barack Obama on the cover). The article's reporter, David Lipsky, spent a week with Wallace in 1996 for a feature that never ran; after Wallace's death, Lipsky returned to the material and talked to family and friends to pen "The Lost Years and Last Days of David Foster Wallace." Click on that link and you'll get some of the story -- but only a small section about his college years. The rest isn't online -- to get it, you'll have to purchase the magazine from a newsstand.

I am curious about Wallace's life, and this interview with Lipsky shows that he sensed levels to Wallace's interviewee persona, which I think makes his resulting work valuable.

But there is something sad about a feature on this great writer not making it to print during his lifetime; it's sadder still that it took his suicide to bring his life to the magazine's pages.

His death -- which generated all kinds of tributes -- was recorded, in the simplest of terms, by public officials. The website The Smoking Gun has posted the case report from the Department of the Coroner of the County of Los Angeles (the link will take you only to the website's homepage; you'll find the report there easily enough, if you're sure you want to see it). The report is as prosaic as it is horrifying, as plainspoken an evocation of a tragedy as you could find.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Keith Bedford / Getty Images

Glendale library haunted by Leslie Coombs Brand

Did you know that the Brand Library in Glendale is haunted? The building -- pictured above in a vintage postcard -- was completed in 1904 as the home of developer Leslie Coombs Brand, who lived -- and, on April 10, 1925, died -- there. Twenty-one years later it became a library, as his will had stipulated.

But something wasn't right with Brand; according to legend, it's his ghost that haunts the premises. Stories are passed on of a voice saying, "Joe" (or "Go!"), of a shadowy male figure ascending the stairs, of a presence in the tower, of the feeling, when standing near his portrait, of being watched.

"You've got the outline of a classic haunting here," Richard Senate, author of "The Haunted Southland," told the Glendale News Press in 1993. "You've got drafts of cold air, the feeling of being watched, the voices and a very loose apparition. All these are indicative of a true haunting. And the fact that you've got multiple people having different experiences is substantiating."

In 1993, one employee spoke warmly of Brand's haunting, saying they all found the place so wonderful that they could understand why he wouldn't want to leave. Not all library ghosts are so welcome; the Britannica Blog's catalog of the Library Ghosts of the West includes one that pushes books off shelves (in Long Beach), one that shoves people who enter the basement (in Denver) and one that has a bloodcurdling scream (a high school library in Wyoming).

Whether the ghosts are tame or scary, they're library ghosts -- so they're always free. Just don't incur any late fees...

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Thanks to CAAF and Maud Newton, who each found the East Coast list.

In books: Dylan Thomas, Barbara Stanwyck and more

Now available for literary getaways: Dylan Thomas' childhood home in Wales has been restored to look as it did when he was born there in 1914. The owners are renting out 5 Cwmdonkin Drive as an "experiential self-catering holiday home" -- no TV or phone, but a 1914 newspaper and free rein to write or sleep in Thomas' tiny room. The BBC has a tour.

It's not open yet, but in 2009, cartoonist Charles Addams' great creation, the Addams Family, is heading to Broadway as a musical. Make no mistake, it'll be Addams drawings, not the the TV or movie versions, that'll be the basis of the production. (So that creepy/kooky/scary/spooky song probably won't be included.)

More on the settlement between Google and publishers: Boris Kachka tallies how publishers have gone through $125 million in shoppping list form ("$8 million: One over-hyped follow-up historical novel.")

In his new omnibus "Have You Seen...? A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films" longtime movie reviewer David Thomson shares his feelings about notable and notorious films. In "Ball of Fire," he says Barbara Stanwyck is "saucy, naughty, and as quick as a shortstop." Decide for yourself -- she's in the clip after the jump.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: 5 Cwmdonkin Drive

Hemingway's home repair

Mark Crick, who imagined authors in the kitchen in his book "Kafka's Soup," has followed up with "Sartre's Sink," lampooning both DIY home repair and classic authors.

In the new book, he sets Jean-Paul Sartre, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Marguerite Duras, Joseph Conrad and even gonzo Hunter S. Thomspon up with do-it-yourself projects around the house. Only marginally instructive, each entry is in the style and tone of the original author. Take, for example, this opening, which might be called "The Old Man and the Wallpaper."

Hanging wallpaper with Ernest Hemingway

Tools: Pasting brush, Wallpaper brush, Decorator's scissors, Pasting table, Plumb line

Materials: Wallpaper, Wallpaper paste

The old man had worked for two days and two nights to strip away the old wallpaper and now on the morning of the third day the time to hang the new paper had come and he was tired. His palms were blistered from long hours scraping away the old paper and the blisters had begun to weep. The old man felt the pain in his hands as he looked again at the bare walls of the room. "Room, thou art big. But I will finish this trabajo that I have begun," he   said. "Or I will die trying."

The old man held the line delicately in his right hand. He threaded it through the eye on the lead weight, then he made fast the end of the line to hold the weight in place...

                      

U.S. readers will have to wait for the "Sartre's Sink," which hit shelves in the U.K. this month. But three sections are available now at the Independent, if you can't wait for a project like The Great Red Porcupine Trapped in the Snake Pit Narco Guerrilla Gardening ... OR Putting Up a Garden Fence with Hunter S Thompson.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Literary Halloween costumes

Literary Halloween costumes are soooo much cooler than dressing up as Sarah Palin -- as if everyone and her sister hasn't already thought of her. Bookish costumes are almost endless -- you can go as a character, an author or even an idea.

I'm not sure how you might dress as, say, semiotics, but if you could do it, you would be welcome at the Brooklyn Bookstore McNally Jackson on Friday night. That's when the store is having its second annual literary costume contest.

Inspired by the bookstore's Halloween festivities (or maybe just hoping for a few costume ideas), the New Yorker's Book Bench blog has created a Flickr group for photos of literary Halloween costumes, and the blog would love for you to submit your pics.

Mine -- only one of which has been added -- include my friend Terry, left, dressed as Leonard Maltin. Soon to come is me as Nancy Drew. Too bad no photos survive of the year I dressed in a trashed wedding gown and wore only one shoe -- yes, I was Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations."

See, you knew that, because you're literary, but I did spend an awful lot of time that year explaining. "Creepy dead bride?" partygoers guessed, and the baby powder would fall from my "gray" hair as I shook my head no. The best way to avoid this conundrum is to do as Terry did and bring a book with you as kind of a literary visual aid.

--Carolyn Kellogg

Photo of Terry as Leonard Maltin by Carolyn Kellogg

The Google-publishers-authors settlement: What will it mean?

On Tuesday, publishers, authors and Google announced they had reached an agreement in their dispute over the digitization of books in copyright. There will be a payment from Google, a new book rights registry, increased access to scanned books, particularly through colleges and public libraries, and full print-on-demand available -- after approval by a U.S. District Court.

Google will pay $125 million, $45.5 million of which is lawyer's fees. Of the remaining funds, the Authors Guild will get more than half -- $45 million -- to settle its 2005 lawsuit to stop Google from scanning books that were still under copyright. Google's position was that by displaying only a few lines of text at a time, their actions were "fair use"; under the new agreement, the parties can agree to disagree, because copyright holders will be paid.

There will be an initial payment and later profit sharing. On the Authors Guild website, Roy Blount Jr. writes:

There’ll be at least $45 million for authors and publishers whose in-copyright books and other copyrighted texts have been scanned without permission.  If your book was scanned and you own all the rights, you’ll get a small share of this, at least $60, depending on how many rightsholders file claims.

Which raises some questions: How many authors "own all the rights" to their work? How many still share the rights with publishers? Don't the rights shift, depending on time and sales, according to different contracts? Well, there are provisions for keeping track of such pesky details.   

$34.5 million will go to set up a new books rights registry. It'll track who owns what, who should be paid for what, whose work is being accessed and/or printed, and make further payments based on usage and access.

Is this good or bad? Some thoughts after the jump.

Forget the boardroom: Families need management help

Pat Lencioni has been very successful at helping corporate managers improve their staffs -- in the process, he has written a string of successful books for the publisher Jossey-Bass/Wiley. But businesses aren't the only organizations that suffer from poor management -- families, Lencioni realized, need just as much help as your modern-day business firm. So, in his latest book, "The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable," Lencioni draws lessons from the business world to apply at home. Nick Owchar caught up with him for Jacket Copy to learn more about how his new book came about.

Jacket Copy: Your firm, The Table Group, helps companies overcome management difficulties. Now, in “The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family,” you’re applying some of your professional lessons to families. Are families REALLY similar to companies? In what way?

Lencioni: Running a family is different than running a company, but I do think there is a clear link between the two. Sometimes we forget that being a parent is a leadership role.  And, while employees at work are not the same as children, there are requirements to being a leader in any context that apply across the board. Building trust, entertaining healthy conflict, inspiring commitment, holding people accountable and focusing on results are the hallmarks of leading any organization.

A family also needs to have a clear plan with focus, and constant communication -- no different from a business. For some reason, however, we tolerate lack of focus and clarity at home that we would not accept at work. This doesn’t make much sense given that most of us say our families are more important that our jobs.

JC: This book follows the same format as other books that you’ve authored -– management issues are contained within a fictional narrative. Why did you decide to give readers an anecdotal approach rather than a traditional outline, which is what other management books do?

Lencioni: When I wrote my first book, I wanted to write something that people would enjoy reading.  And I thought that readers would actually learn more through a fable format because they might be able to relate to the characters and the issues they were facing in their businesses. I was also an amateur screenwriter for a while, so I enjoy the creative process of bringing an idea to life through characters and dialog. 

JC: What inspired this book?

Lencioni: Many of my clients over the years have told me that their families are more important than their work, but most of them said that their home lives were far more chaotic and frantic than their lives at work. When I realized that very few of them were applying any simple planning and management techniques to their families at home, I thought there was something missing, but I didn’t think too much about it until I was in the thick of chaos with my own family. 

With four little boys at home, my wife and I were frustrated that our household was frantic and reactive, but we had resigned ourselves to thinking that’s just how it has to be. Then it occurred to me that if I help companies be more purposeful, why couldn’t I do the same for my family?  My wife and I started talking about some of the concepts I use with my clients, and it helped us create context around what kind of family we want to be. We now operate with a little more clarity, less guilt and more courage when making important decisions for our family.

JC: What’s your own family life like? Is it frantic?

Charlie Kaufman on 'Synechdoche, New York'

Charlie Kaufman, some have said, is a literary writer who just happens to have a job writing screenplays. And now, directing them -- his directorial debut, "Synechdoche, New York," is open in limited release. The film inspires literary comparisons; Carina Chocano cited both Jorge Luis Borges and Jean Baudrillard in the first paragraph of her L.A. Times review.

Kaufman sat down with podcaster Ed Champion for his Bat Segundo Show and talked a little bit about literary forefathers; in response to a question about Beckett, he said although he'd read him, he wasn't familiar with the specific play Ed mentioned, making clear, "I don't intentionally write as an homage or reference other people's work."

He even revealed a little bit about his writing process, saying he's always trying to be honest, to "sort of get past what I would do to impress you." Which must be a lot of work, since the resulting films -- including "Eternal Sunsine of the Spotless Mind" and "Being John Malkovich" -- have been described as complex, off-putting, ambitious, surreal. But don't think he's all work; sometimes his writing is really just play. In the interview, Kaufman explained some of the film's clock imagery:

I once walked by a clock that was graffittied on a wall and I looked at it, and in my sort of haste and confusion, I thought I was late, based on what time it was on the clock on the wall. And I thoought that was really funny -- and stupid, but funny -- and so I decided ito put it in as a thing in the movie.

During the interview he even plays with Ed a little bit. Although he's interviewed Paul Auster, Ethan Canin, Cynthia Ozick, Tobias Wolff and hundreds of other authors, I don't know if Ed has ever encountered anyone who so effortlessly bends his carefully constructed questions into a simple convex mirror. At one point, Kaufman responds to a question by disagreeing, then saying, "So I’m trying to break down what you asked me.  And I don’t know.  How am I an idea man?  To turn this around.  On you, Ed."

Points to Ed for having the sense of humor to excerpt that exact Q&A on his site, where the audio is available to stream or download.

--Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Evan Agostini / Associated Press