Book news: Dave Eggers, Elmore Leonard, Jean-Luc Godard and more

Maybe it's been all drowned out by the buzz about "Away We Go," the movie Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida, wrote together; but even if you haven't heard about it, Eggers has a new book on the way. How "Zeitoun," a nonfiction book about an Arab American family in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, compares to the fictional autobiography "What is the What" is one of the topics Eggers discusses with The Rumpus' Stephen Elliott. He also speaks about his optimism for print, and why McSweeney's next issue will be a newspaper:

There’s room in the world for both online and paper. It doesn’t have to be zero-sum. I guess that’s one of the things that’s always frustrating to hear, that the rise of the Internet means the death of print. There’s always this zero-sum way of painting any given industry or trend, while the reality will be more nuanced. I think newspapers that adjust a bit but will survive and still do great work.

Speaking of still doing great work, there's Elmore Leonard with "Road Dogs," his 40th or so book. What does the 83-year-old Elmore Leonard know now that he didn't know when he started writing 56 years ago? "I know not to use adverbs," he tells the Barnes & Noble Review.

Will the 78-year-old Jean-Luc Godard make a film version of Daniel Mendelson's Holocaust book "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million"? Mendelson's book, in which he tried to trace what happened to members of his Jewish family in Poland in World War II,  won a National Book Critics Circle Award and France's Prix Medicis. The Hollywood Reporter says he's "circling" the project (via Gallycat).

The multifaceted website formerly known as Nextbook is now Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life. Its literary coverage remains interesting -- even for WASPs.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Joe Meno reads at Skylight Books on Monday. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

Comments

[Steven Augustine]

"There’s room in the world for both online and paper. It doesn’t have to be zero-sum." I think Eggers means to use the concept of mutual exclusion here. "Zero sum" isn't the right phrase. "Zero sum" is better for describing a "no net gain" situation, which is not what Eggers is bemoaning here. Dave: word choice! Important.