Could Amazon become the victim of its own success? At Salon, Evan Hughes argues that if the internet behemoth puts bookstore chains out of business, then readers will have a hard time learning about new books. Hughes points out that surveys indicate that “roughly 60 percent of book sales—print and digital—now occur online. But buyers first discover their books online only about 17 percent of the time. Internet booksellers specifically, including Amazon, account for just 6 percent of discoveries. Where do readers learn about the titles they end up adding to the cart on Amazon? In many cases, at bookstores.”
On Saturday, Cormac McCarthy turned eighty. The author of Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy hasn’t released a novel since 2006. That’s because he’s been working on a screenplay for a movie called The Counselor, about an attorney who gets involved in drug trafficking. The film, which was directed by Ridley Scott, will be out this fall, and a print edition of the screenplay will be available in October.
At Flavorwire, Michelle Dean examines the curious phenomenon of the review written by the “white male critic... that seeks to correct certain gender imbalances in literature as a whole, and then ... fails utterly in the attempt.”
A previously unpublished story by a young Joseph Heller, “Almost Like Christmas,” will come out this week in the Strand Magazine.
For your enjoyment: The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator.
A judge in Mississippi has dismissed a case brought forward by the company that controls the rights to Faulkner’s writing against the film studio that released Woody Allen’s movie Midnight in Paris. The case was filed earlier this year over a line in the movie, in which literary time-traveler Owen Wilson remarks, “The past is not dead. Actually, it’s not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party.” While Faulkner Literary Rights alleged that this was an unauthorized use of the ine from Requiem for a Nun, the judge wasn’t buying it, and in his ruling, remarked that he was "thankful that the parties did not ask the court to compare The Sound and the Fury with Sharknado.”
