two umbrellas

Last week I received the latest issue of Granta, “The Deep End.” (The previous “Best of Young American Novelists 2″ as of now is still online – an issue that was not disappointing and yet not too impressive either). I just happened to read the introduction, which I am sorry to admit I don’t always read, and to my surprise Ian Jack wrote that he will be leaving the helm at Granta:

Granta is leaving Hanover Yard and I am leaving Granta as its editor. I wish I could say exactly why I am leaving…The best I can do is to say it just felt right.

I have enjoyed my subscription under Ian Jack’s watch – I don’t know who will be replacing him. I am very curious to see how the magazine will (if at all) change.

This evening I was browsing the course offerings at Temple University’s Center City campus for some fun continuing education classes. Being somewhat one dimensional in my hobbies, I went right for the Writing/Literature offerings and there were some interesting courses: Writing Short Stories, Playwriting, Write Your Novel in a Month (which sounds very tempting if I had a novel in mind; but, alas, I don’t), and some typical reading group type classes. But there was one that stuck out: A Sneak Peak [sic] at Next Year’s Bestsellers. It wasn’t just the misspelling that had me intrigued. Here’s a bit of the course description:

You will read special advance copies of the books and then, as a class, critique each book and predict what readers and critics will say when the books are actually published. Contributing publishers will include: W.W. Norton, Knopf, Random House and others to be determined…The manuscripts will be mailed to you or made available for pick-up before the class begins.

Currently, I work for a publisher. I understand that some of the lines between marketing and editorial are blurred. However, this “class” costs the student $95.00. That’s right. The student pays Temple $95.00 to host a class to critique new and not yet published books from the big time publishers. Unbelievable.

Last week at the BEA, Richard Charkin of Macmillan Publishers decided that he thought it was fitting to steal a couple of Google’s computers to prove a point about Google’s Book Search. He feels that Google is stealing content(?) and so he then felt it would serve them right to steal their computers. I am not quite sure that is a cogent argument or defense. Lawrence Lessig chimes in:

…the obvious point is this: Physical property and the intangible property we call copyright are different. [Thomas] Jefferson pointed to one difference. But the really crucial difference that I’ve been trying to get people to see is that physical property systems have a host of techniques to assure that the property system is efficient. Copyright does not. Copyright is the least efficient property system constructed by government — which is saying a lot. And rather than continue sophomoric debates about who is “stealing” what, it’s about time that policymakers — and industry leaders — took responsibility for the inefficiency that copyright is.

I am no expert on copyright law (as Prof. Lessig is) and I would typically find myself biased toward the publishers: I work for a publisher and one day would like to have a book published by something larger than my printer. However, I feel there is a fundamental issue at risk – intellectual property. What are the publisher’s really fighting for? They didn’t write the books. The words are not theirs. They belong to the authors. I am working at my second publishing house and again all copyright of the author’s work reverts back to the publisher not the author. I know I am simplifying the issue a bit; but I fear that, unfortunately, the law may redefine what property really is and slowly turn everything into a commodity.

David Lynn, editor of The Kenyon Review, writes about electronically archiving the magazine with a collaboration with Google Book Search:

I’m leaning toward making the plunge now. Nothing’s decided, but I am leaning. Here’s why. Our principal mission at The Kenyon Review is, as I understand it, to publish the best stories, poems, and essays from around the world and then to have as many people read them as possible. The more the better.

I couldn’t agree more. What I find most appealing about Google’s project is the democratization of literature and learning. I understand copyright concerns (mostly because of this man and because I used to work for one of the publishers that is involved in the lawsuit against Google – one of their biggest concerns was not getting a cut of the AdSense revenue that Google would generate from the Book Search) and I understand the concerns of Google becoming Big Brother. However, I feel that it is more important to share information – real information or even literature – with as many people as possible. I find it very troubling that books cost so much money and libraries have trouble maintaining their funding. It creates a large gap between what is available to read and who can reasonably have access to it.
(via TRE)

The Guardian profiles Philip Gourevitch, the new editor of The Paris Review:

I love what the Paris Review was, its traditions, what it stands for; but I didn’t feel that I was being hired to act as the curator of a museum piece. Rather, that I should treat it as a living thing, with its own new form. It’s a sign of my respect for Plimpton that I’m not trying to be him…

We’re living in complicated and dramatic times, and I feel that our literature, especially the periodical fiction, is rarely up to the wildness and boldness of the times, that it seldom expresses the outlandishness and range of the actors and actions that are shaping our world. Without trying to run a timely publication [the Paris Review is a quarterly] I feel it’s exciting to see what gets thrown off at a glancing angle from the actual headlines: not only as non-fiction narrative, but as fiction, as poetry, even as interview.

American Wins French Literary Prize

I’ll just have to wait until 2008 for the English translation published by HarperCollins.

aside HarperCollins, by the by, will be publishing a book of essays by Milan Kundera in 02.07 called The Curtain.

This year Penguin celebrates sixty years of publishing Penguin Classics. To celebrate they are offering five limited edition covers. (Unfortunately, these are not available in the same economical fashion as the originals.)

The Guardian has a nice condensed version of the Penguin Classics’ history.

Top Ten Books on Google Book Search Program for Sept. 17-23:
(via The Book Standard.)

Diversity and Evolutionary Biology of Tropical Flowers, by Peter K. Endress
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms
Measuring and Controlling Interest Rate and Credit Risk, by Frank J. Fabozzi, Steven V. Mann, and Moorad Choudhry
Ultimate Healing: The Power of Compassion, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, edited by Ailsa Cameron
The Holy Qur’an, translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
Peterson’s Study Abroad 2006
Hegemony Or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, by Noam Chomsky
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage
Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense, by Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson
Build Your Own All-Terrain Robot, by Brad Graham and Kathy McGowan

I am very excited about Google’s Book Search. It democratize literature and opens many opportunities for publishers. Unfortunately, some publishers still feel that their businesses should be run as they were 100 years ago, but I guess if the model works there’s no need to build a new one, since the argument between Google and Famous Five Publishing Houses who are suing Google is simply one of revenue.

An interesting discussion on the value of Google’s project was published in Bookforum in the Feb/Mar 2006 issue. Here’s an exerpt from Lawrence Lessig (for a good laugh watch the video of “the amazing talents hidden in a lawyer”):

…Copyright owners are now asserting claims in connection with a whole range of uses that they would never have had the opportunity to control before the Internet. For example, there’s no copyright issue when you read a book, because in real space, when you read a book, it doesn’t produce a copy. There’s no copyright issue when you set up a library, because setting up a library doesn’t produce a copy. Before digital technologies, those uses were free of copyright regulation. Now, merely because the architecture of cyberspace entails that every use generates a copy, copyright owners can claim they get to control every use.

So one of the adjustments to fair use must be in response to this extraordinary—and unintended—explosion in the reach of copyright. For it is this that produces many of the issues we’re seeing. Merely because an architecture of copyright law designed for the twentieth century interacts with twenty-first-century technologies in a way that produces a right to control all uses of copyrighted works, doesn’t mean that policy makers should automatically accept the conclusion that this is the appropriate baseline from which to work. The baseline ought to be what makes sense.

Young Author Admits She Copied Another Writer

Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore accused of plagiarizing parts of her recently published “chick-lit” novel, acknowledged today that she had borrowed language from another writer’s books, but called the copying “unintentional and unconscious.”

The book, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” was published by Little, Brown this spring to wide publicity. On Saturday, the Harvard Crimson reported that Ms. Viswanathan, who received $500,000 as part of a two-book deal for “Opal,” had seemingly plagiarized language from two novels by Megan McCafferty, an author of popular young adult books.

A sad state of affairs to lose one’s integrity for $500,000 at only 19. Yet, I’m sure she will go one to publish more books for more money and then there’s the movie rights, Saturday morning cartoons….etc…etc…

The Times Online published an article entitled: Publishers Toss Booker Winners into the Reject Pile.

The exercise by The Sunday Times draws attention to concerns that the industry has become incapable of spotting genuine literary talent.

Typed manuscripts of the opening chapters of Naipaul’s In a Free State and a second novel, Holiday, by Stanley Middleton, were sent to 20 publishers and agents.

None appears to have recognised them as Booker prizewinners from the 1970s that were lauded as British novel writing at its best. Of the 21 replies, all but one were rejections.

A collective sigh is heard from all of the unpublished talent who are trying to write art and not a product.