literature

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Storied Paris Bookstore Gets Long-Due Makeover

After Joyce and Hemingway, Shakespeare and Co. spruces up

(Newser) - Shakespeare and Company, the English-language bookshop on the left bank of Paris, has been a refuge for writers from James Joyce to Ernest Hemingway to William Burroughs. Its owner, the sainted George Whitman, is still around at 95—but as Amazon keeps growing, he's handed the shop over to his...

Lame Dads Rule in Kids Books
 Lame Dads Rule in Kids Books 
OPINION
May 26, 2009 4:09 AM CDT

Lame Dads Rule in Kids Books

Old dad, poor dad as out of it as ever in kid lit

(Newser) - Despite major upheavals in gender roles, clueless dads unable to parent or set a table still rule in children's books—if they exist at all—laments one stay-at-home father. "I’m aware that there is plenty of good-natured humor to be had from lampooning fathers," writes columnist Damon...

Scammer: I Forged Author Signatures

'Autographed' first editions brought big bucks in eBay fraud

(Newser) - A man who made more than $300,000 by selling "autographed" first editions of books that actually contained forged signatures pleaded guilty to fraud in a Philadelphia court today. Forrest Smith's offerings on eBay included books by Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Anne Rice, Tom Wolfe, and Tom Clancy,...

At House Tonight / Obamas Plan / First-Ever Poetry Slam

Mayda Del Valle, ELEW among invitees

(Newser) - Check off another campaign promise. President Obama is hosting the White House’s first-ever poetry slam, part of his vow to open up “the people's house” to artists, WNBC-TV reports. The 100 guests include actor James Earl Jones, writer Michael Chabon, jazz musician Esperanza Spalding, and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda....

Levi Plans Book to Fund Custody Fight

(Newser) - Levi Johnston is shopping a tell-all memoir about his experience with the Palin family, the National Enquirer reports. Insiders say the estranged father of Sarah Palin’s grandson is hoping to start a war chest in advance of an anticipated custody battle. “If Levi could get a million bucks,...

Hard Times Send Books Straight to Paperback

Cheaper books lose 'second-best' reputation

(Newser) - With customers watching their wallets, publishers are pinning their hopes this year on trade paperback books—not super-cheap mass-market paperbacks, but not hardcovers either, USA Today reports. And critics and authors who once disdained the format are warming to it. “I realized that I really want as many people...

4 Years Overdue, New Dan Brown to Land in Sept.

(Newser) - The follow-up to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code should finally see the light of day later this year, the New York Observer reports. Publisher Doubleday says The Lost Symbol will hit shelves Sept.15, 4 years after originally hoped. The first print run will be 5 million copies, the...

Shakespeare Debate Splits Supreme Court

Stevens finds alternate author theory beyond a reasonable doubt

(Newser) - John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia don’t agree often, but the justices are united on one case: Neither believes Shakespeare’s plays could possibly have been written by a hick like William Shakespeare. Stevens has even written papers on the topic, and searched the Bard’s home for clues....

Young Jewish Writers Cool With Being Jewish
Young Jewish Writers Cool With Being Jewish
GLOSSIES
Apr 9, 2009 12:58 PM CDT

Young Jewish Writers Cool With Being Jewish

alt hed: 'New Yiddishists' Bring Ethnic Pride to the Page

(Newser) - America’s young Jewish writers are “turning the narrative of assimilation on its head,” writes Daniel Sax in Vanity Fair, and hitting the best-seller list in the process. Unlike Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who angrily “wrote from experiences directly connected to the traumas of immigration and...

From Romantic Lemons, Literary Lemonade
From Romantic Lemons, Literary Lemonade
book review
Apr 9, 2009 10:30 AM CDT

From Romantic Lemons, Literary Lemonade

It's fizzy, too—and comes complete with recipes and regrets

(Newser) - Recipes for "Morning After Pumpkin Bread" and "Ineffectual Eggplant Parmigiana" should clue readers in that Giulia Melucci's I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti is no how-to on gaining a man's heart through his stomach, Joyce Wadler writes for the New York Times. Melucci—"a...

García Márquez Finished With Writing: Agent

Giant of Latin American literature's oeuvre is complete

(Newser) - The world has probably already seen the complete work of Gabriel García Márquez, the Guardian reports. Friend and fellow author Plinion Apuleyo Mendoza said last year that the creator of magical realism was working on a new novel, but his agent recently quashed that rumor. "I don't...

His Dad's Death, Not Plath's, Spurred Hughes Suicide

(Newser) - Nicholas Hughes’ depression and eventual suicide were caused by the loss of his father in 1998, the Times reports. The younger Hughes and his father shared a special bond, and when Ted Hughes died, renowned fish biologist Nicholas “lost the relationship that mattered most to him,” a friend...

Mom's Spicy Book May Make Anderson Cooper Do a 360

(Newser) - Anderson Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, is a published author with a romantic novel to her credit, sure, but her new book could give the CNN anchor pause, the New York Daily News reports. Obsession, an erotic tale, hits stores in June. “Master, I whisper as you surrender to...

Sylvia Plath's Son Commits Suicide
Sylvia Plath's Son Commits Suicide
Mar 23, 2009 9:02 AM CDT

Sylvia Plath's Son Commits Suicide

46 years after she killed herself, Nicholas Hughes hangs himself

(Newser) - The son of writers Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes committed suicide last week, hanging himself at his home in Fairbanks, Alaska, following a battle with depression, reports the Times of London. Nicholas Hughes, 47, was a professor of fisheries and ocean sciences but had recently left his position to take...

Where Bernie's Headed: Dante's Ninth Circle

Hell's worst area is frozen land ruled by Satan

(Newser) - If 150 years in prison seems like meager penance for Bernie Madoff, consider where he would go in Dante's Inferno: the Ninth Circle of Hell. There, the world's worst sinners—betrayers—freeze in an iceworld kept cool by Satan himself. "Betrayal destroys the trust that binds humanity, and...

Bucking Trend, 2nd Novel Gets $5M Advance

Niffenegger wrote surprise 2003 hit The Time Traveler's Wife

(Newser) - Defying reports that publishers are in the poorhouse, Audrey Niffenegger, author of the huge bestseller, The Time Traveler’s Wife, has received a nearly $5 million advance for a new novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, the New York Times reports. Her agent said the whopping payout from Scribner, a unit of...

The Twilight of Students' Radical Reading

What happened to Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg?

(Newser) - A few decades ago, college kids turned to radicals to satisfy their literary thirst, but on today’s campuses, “you're more likely to hear a werewolf howl than Allen Ginsberg,” writes Ron Charles in the Washington Post. Other than Barack Obama’s tomes, the bestselling books among college...

'Sexy' Classics We Say We've Read

We think fibbing about reading classics makes us appear intelligent, 'sexier'

(Newser) - The Bible, War and Peace, 1984, and Ulysses are some of the classics people say they've read but actually haven't, a new British study has found. Why? Two-thirds of those surveyed fibbed about their reading mainly to appear intelligent and "more sexually attractive," a researcher tells the Daily ...

WWII Nazi Opus Ignites Passions (Pro and Con)

Publishers roll dice on shocking French work by Yank Jonathan Littell

(Newser) - A novel about a Nazi officer with a taste for sodomy and incest might not scream “bestseller”—especially at nearly 1,000 pages long and translated from French. Yet Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones topped charts in France and precipitated a bidding war among US publishers. HarperCollins...

In Life and Last Novel, Wallace Sought 'Adult Sanity'

(Newser) - David Foster Wallace declared war on depression and addiction in writing his last, unfinished novel, D. T. Max writes in the New Yorker. The writer's suicide by hanging last year was the culmination of a struggle to live normally, to achieve what he called “adult sanity," without antidepressants...

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