Lorin Stein considers the reasons that "short stories fell off our radar"—and explains the important role they play in his life now.
While the rest of the East Coast was preparing for Hurricane Sandy, the Supreme Court convened on Monday to hear a case that's likely to have serious implications for international publishers and book pirates. Publisher John Wiley & Sons took student Supap Kirtsaeng to court this year after catching the Thai graduate student selling international textbooks online. These textbooks, while nearly identical to American ones, are significantly cheaper, and have netted Kirtsaeng roughly $100,000 in profit from $900,000 in sales. While it's unclear if this is illegal, it raises the question of "what protection the holder of a copyright has after a product made outside the United States is sold for the first time." Ebay and Google have sided with Kirtsaeng, worrying that a ruling against him could have a negative impact on e-commerce, while Wiley has contended that this is a clear case of copyright infringement.
On a related note, in the November issue of The Atlantic, Peter Mountford tells the unlikely story of how Google Alerts led him to the man illegally translating his novel into Russian, and explains why he decided to offer the translator some assistance in his task.
Thought Catalog has been posting a liveblog about Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath.
New work by Richard Howard; David Trinidad's dog poems; a first-person account of meeting Huysmans; Henry James on William Thackery: We've been enjoying both the old and the new work published in Turtle Point Press's online magazine Traveltained.
