From LRB, Nothing for Ever and Ever: Frank Kermode reviews The Letters of A.E. Housman. From The Common Review, "Coin of the Realm": Daniel Born on writing about money; Michael Berube on Harry Potter and the power of narrative; and Kevin Mattson on movies as history. A review of Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm by Daniel Leab. If The Da Vinci Code came out of a chapter in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and if Mr. Eco's other best seller, The Name of the Rose, itself came out of an eightpage Borges story, might each Borges story be no more than a thriller in kernel? A review of Diary of Indignities by Patrick Hughes, a book that started out as a blog by the name of Bad News Hughes and written with brutal honesty. Pith and Pen: A review of The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes.
France is world-famous for being protective of its language but have you ever wondered who is the guarde rapproche (body guard) of the French language? A literary fraud who is not a fake: How a writer's value has plummeted just because its author wasn't actually pimped out as a child. Sarah's Antidote: Is the J.T. Leroy scandal what you think it is? Parents, beware: Beloved childhood classics such as Winnie the Pooh may be teaching kids false facts about the world — like tigers are bouncy and donkeys are chronically depressed.
Publishing? It’s an art form: When mainstream publishers rejected his novel as too literary, Tom McCarthy turned to the art world. It took success in the US to make them come running. The joys of not being published: Every aspiring writer dreams of getting a publishing contract - but there are lots of other equally satisfying ways to get your writing into the world. Jack Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia says publisher is part of a vendetta against him. Is the internet killing proper research? Time was, preparing a novel meant months in libraries; websites now offer instant insights. How profound they are is another matter.
An article on the state of the magazine industry. Getting rid of books creates tension for many, although it is often one of the first things people have to do when downsizing or simply trying to organize their lives. The library fix: When politics gets mean and dumb, you can cheer yourself up by walking into a public library.
