Cynthia Crossen writes about literary books that aren’t depressing or leaning heavily on tragedy. Light, she notes, is relative.
All posts by Phil
Free e-Book from Anthony Powell
Patrick Kurp can’t get enough of a highly praised British novelist Anthony Powell, to which he testifies before the congregation here. What’s more Kingsley Amis says Powell is “the most brilliant and penetrating novelist we have.” That’s got to count for something.
The University of Chicago Press will be offering the first novel of Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time for free during December, so next Wednesday, if you’d like to dip your feet into an important British novelist’s epic work, download your copy here. (I neglected to say earlier that I got this link from the great Dave Lull.)
John Thompson of Merchants of Culture
Cambridge University professor John Thompson talks about the problems with the publishing industry in this interview with The Brooklyn Rail. He is the author of the book
“The real trouble for the publishing industry, in my view,” Thompson says, “has more to do with the gradual unfolding of this economic transformation that led to this structure of publishing, where we now have five large corporate groups and a small number of retail chains dominating the industry.” He says the large corporations must maintain profitability, and 95% of their revenue is still from printed book sales. When profit margins stretch thin, they must eliminate people or other overhead costs to keep the large companies in the black. Everyone in the process must demonstrate growth for the corporation or risk being let go, and if they understand that to mean selling more books, despite the thousands they currently sell, then they try to crank out more books. Naturally, an environment like this produced the desire for the bestseller, those few great selling books which bring in the dough and relieve the pressure to sell other books, making one’s sales load more manageable.
Other factors putting publishing in its current bind include the rise of agents and the changes in book retailing. Will the whole thing collapse soon? Thompson doesn’t think so. Despite all of the industry changes likely to come, he states, “books are a deeply embedded part of Western culture, indeed of other cultures, too, and I don’t think that is likely to change quickly.”
Thanks, But This Isn't for Us
The post intended for this space was thoughtful, well-written though a little long-winded, and it would have made beautiful reading for thousands of BwB readers, however it simply was not the tenor of post we wish to distribute here. We wish the writer all the best success with other blogs for that post. Instead for this space, the self-congratulatory editors of BwB offer our readers a link to this article in the Independent of Ireland on famous statements made when rejecting manuscripts which later made bestselling books, e.g. J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel, which was rejected by nine publishers before one man’s eight-year-old daughter said it was so much better than anything else.
A commenter on Twitter pointed to this article, saying it was the reason agents send out bland, boilerplate rejection letters. They fear saying “guitar groups are on the way out” to a band like The Beatles.
On the subject of rejections, Molly-Ann Leikin has a short list of them here.
William Faulkner’s novel, Sanctuary
, was tossed back in his face with the editor’s horrified remark, “Good God, I can’t publish this. We’d both be in jail.” It was eventually published, of course, and nobody ended up behind bars.
Concerning Lions
Kudos to a great new band based in Chattanooga, Concerning Lions. This isn’t a great video, but the song is cool and, I believe, will be in an upcoming album. I wish I could point you to the lyric, but if you’re in a place where you can crank the volume, then you’ll be able to hear the words yourself, which is, like, better.
Concerning Lions – Young Curmudgeon – TBP from Concerning Lions on Vimeo.
Free Chapters of New Books
Jonathan Acuff, author of Stuff Christians Like
Maybe not.
Matthew Spalding of The Heritage Foundation offers a free chapter of his book, We Still Hold These Truths, which is filled with great quotes from our nation’s founding leaders. There’s a 20 minute video to promote the ideas of the book.
Let me promote a book you may not see many places. Shared Hope International has published the story of their founder, Linda Smith. From Congress to the Brothel describes Linda’s paradigm-shifting journey to a Mumbai brothel district.
What's Wrong With the Public Schools?
Joseph C. Phillips talks about the failure of public schools and the need to ask hard questions. He points to last years scores on student performance.
These are not students failing because they do not have access to the internet or don’t have Olympic sized swimming pools. The sad fact is that the report demonstrates that middle-class black boys are scoring about as well as poor white boys. These are students who are not proficient in the basics of math and English.
With education experts always calling for more money, is it evident at last that the experts either don’t know how to educate children or more likely have conflicting goals which practically hinder education?
Lars' Popular Thanksgiving Post
One of our most popular posts, not by the comments it drew but by the traffic it has attracted over the years, is this story from September 21, 2006 about a microwave and a turkey. It’s linked from an urban legend page which talks about a pregnant turkey prank, which may or may not have happened despite being believable (but that page has been removed in the ever-changing Internet).
If you haven’t read either story, here’s your chance to catch up.
Movie Problems and Plot Holes
Bird on Thinklings points to a list of 10 plot holes in sci-fi or imaginative movies, commenting on the Star Trek and Star Wars holes. Shrode makes note of two, pretty serious Bourne Identity problems. I haven’t seen those movies, so I don’t know how the red bad error would hit me. About Star Wars though, I love this list of design flaws in Star Wars technology. John Scalzi writes, among other things:
Stormtrooper Uniforms: They stand out like a sore thumb in every environment but snow, the helmets restrict view (“I can’t see a thing in this helmet!” — Luke Skywalker), and the armor is penetrable by single shots from blasters. Add it all up and you have to wonder why stormtroopers don’t just walk around naked, save for blinders and flip-flops.
Scalzi also has a Star Trek critique list: I love it.
But looping back to that plot holes article, writer Matt Blum complains about The Princess Bride, asking “how does Fezzik know Rugen is the six-fingered man?” He says, Fezzik isn’t observant enough to notice Rugen and report on it later, but I suggest the fact that Inigo didn’t know Rugen had six-fingers doesn’t mean that wasn’t a generally known fact. Neither he nor Fezzik dealt with Rugen or his people for their adult lives, I gather, so they didn’t know, but surely everyone around Rugen knew, everyone in the castle, and many in the villages. Some of these people are the type who talk about other people’s details (you know the type), and when Fezzik took up with the Brute Squad, he was in the company of people who knew and talked and I suppose Rugen himself.
This list has spoilers, btw, but you might have figured that out already.
Speaking of plot holes, here’s a gratuitous photo of a gorgeous Rita Hayworth, who is marketing war bonds in 1942.
"Stieg Larsson set out to defy the conventions of the crime novel"
The Wall Street Journal has some emails from Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and following popular crime novels. The author writes of his intention to work around the usual formalities of crime novels. Main characters are not from typical crime novel stock, and he didn’t want his serial killer offing anonymous people, so he spend time introducing minor characters. In real life, no one is completely anonymous. He also states:
A rule of thumb has been never to romanticize crime and criminals, nor to stereotype victims of crime. I base my serial murderer in book I on a composite of three authentic cases. Everything described in the book can be found in actual police investigations.
The description of the rape of Lisbeth Salander is based on an incident that actually took place in the Östermalm district of Stockholm three years ago. And so on.
Lars reviewed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo here, and the following book, The Girl Who Played With Fire in this post.