Tonight, we'll be at Poets House, where Douglas A. Martin and Eileen Myles will read their work. Myles's new book is Inferno, an autobiographical novel about becoming a poet in New York. Like most good autobiographical novels about writers, this one is gossipy (watch for stories about Ted Berrigan) (and even Richard Hell), sometimes cutting (a passage about Kathy Acker comes to mind), but never quite spiteful.
Jonathan Lethem, best known for his novels about Brooklyn (though he's also written about Manhattan) (and about black holes), will set his next book in Queens. Will the Bronx or Staten Island ever make the cut?
Michelle Kerns urges book reviewers—particularly the ones who don't live in New York City—"to take this opportunity to rise up against the oppressive power of the Publishing Dictators of the East." She offers her own Martin Luther-esque "95 Theses; Or, Things to Nail on the Door of Random House." A lot of them complain about New York City, so we're guessing Kerns is immune to novelist and Columbia professor Janette Turner Hospital's celebration of the city's literary supremacy.
Salman Rushdie says that writers who challenge official doctrines are "in more danger perhaps than they've ever been."
Last May, Laura Miller speculated on the generalization that men don't read as much as women do (and on the fact that the book industry is a world with more women than men). Now, Publishers Weekly revisits the issue, wondering: "Does the lack of men in publishing hurt the industry?"
