paper trail

Jan 6, 2011 @ 9:00:00 am

Jami Attenberg

According to an entertaining article in the New York Observer, it’s a good time to find a job as a writer or an editor—if you’re “talented,” that is! But don’t expect to be lavishly wined and dined: Today’s biggest hires happen over a beer or a cup of coffee.

When is author Shalom Auslander's editor going to get around to reading his manuscript?

Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben is distressed that Huckleberry Finn has been pushed out of schools because of the book's use of a racial epithet. So, he's creating a new edition of the novel that expunges the slur. Gribben says: "After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach . . . Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can't do it anymore. In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable.” Meanwhile, Cindy Lovell, executive director of The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum says "The book is an anti-racist book and to change the language changes the power of the book. . . . He wrote to make us squirm and to poke us with a sharp stick." Discuss.

“What was African-American literature?” A podcast with professor and author Kenneth W. Warren.

New Yorkers: Jami Attenberg’s excellent novel The Melting Season is now out in paperback, and she’s throwing a party at Brooklyn’s Word bookstore tonight. On hand to help her celebrate will be artist Emily Flake, and authors Rosie Schaap, Lisa Hanawalt, Emma Straub, Sarah Glidden, Jason Diamond, Renata Espinosa, Maris Kreizman, and Ron Currie, Jr.