reeling and writhing

newsheap

Oh to be in England, now that Ted Hughes and Leonard Baskin collaborations are being discussed - thank goodness Lynne is there anyway. This is a ripper post.

Congratulations are due to Alice Pung, who has been chosen to take up a three-month international writer residency at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

From Arts Hub comes this expression of support from the US Authors Guild for the retention of territorial copyright in Australia. Director Paul Aiken said on July 13 that “It’s hard to believe a country would choose to devalue its publishers' backlists in this way, forcing publishers to compete against cheap imports for the very titles they had chosen to invest in.”

Jhumpa Lahiri has a story in Narrative Mag for you all.

You do, of course, need to know who is part of the team covering the Australian Ballet's new production in progress, Concord, selected as they were from the great unwashed army of citizen cultural journos - so here they are.

I starred this news in Google Reader last week - what a novel idea, to serialise a work on 42 different sites.

(Between posts here, you can always check out what I've marked in my feeds from the box on the lower right.)

Via The Book Bench at the New Yorker, there is news of Random House planning to publish fourteen previously unpublished short stories of Kurt Vonnegut's as 'single story e-books', to be released in advance of a new collection of his short fiction.

Vale Frank McCourt

There's a fabulous post here from Adrian McKinty, an Irish crime writer living in St Kilda, on the passing of Frank McCourt.

And another from Andrew Burke at Hi Spirits, probably the best thing I've read about McCourt all week:

His book humbly and gently painted a picture of a hard life growing up in Limerick in Ireland, before taking off for USA as a young man. It took him many decades to come to the right stance toward his material, but when he let the story tell itself, without anger, self-pity or any self-aggrandisement - just the details - it spoke volumes. A warm sense of humanity lifted the book above the pack and made it a modern classic among other Irish classics.

The profile Andrew links to, by Malcolm Jones in Newsweek, finishes plaintively. I would have thought McCourt had earned his right to leave us, having survived to write his book 'that had to be written' and the acrimony that ensued, and lived fairly happily ever after to boot, but Jones thinks otherwise:

After the appearance of each of his three memoirs ('Tis describes his immigrant experience in the United States, Teacher Man details his teaching career), I always hoped he would write even more, because that would mean that I might interview him again. Now that possibility is gone. There will be no more books and no more talk from Frank McCourt. I know that any time I want, I can go to the shelf and pull down Angela's Ashes or one of the other books, and there he'll be, almost as good as in the room. Very few people got their voices onto the page as well as he did. But "almost" isn't the same as the full Frank. There won't be that sense of amazement at the ease with which he could coin a quip on the fly. There will be no shock at the endlessly articulate talk that poured out at the dinner table. He was a fine writer, but he was perhaps an even greater talker. It was the kind of talk that no one has figured out how to get between the pages of a book, not even Frank McCourt.

Update: Stuyvesant alumnus Elizabeth Kadetzky writes about McCourt's teaching days here at The Rumpus. And there is a video at NYU's website. Apparently a lot of McCourt's old students commented at a blog at The Times - but I've yet to find that link.

a true desktop has landed

Kathryn Greenhill, Emergent Technologies Specialist at Murdoch University (and indeed for most of Australia's libraries) reviews Microsoft's Surface Computer on her remarkable blog, Librarians Matter.

Kathryn went on a tour of the United States and the Netherlands earlier this year as Australia's main library representative in all things 2.0. Not only is she a highly regarded global ambassador in these matters, but this table is EXACTLY what one of my son's former doctors should have had to manage his paperwork.
(His weapon of choice? a terrific secretary and an extraordinarily messy little backpack. I hope no one reading this knows who I mean, as he is a fantastic specialist.)

When I can find the article where the original research was quoted in which practitioners from the Mayo Clinic were surveyed some years ago to ascertain what kind of screen would best match the way they used documents, I will link to it. And I will send this picture to the specialist if I can find his email address, I think he will appreciate it.

But this is not just good for kids (though the low cost table and applications her husband is developing for use in disability sound wonderful). Oh Nooooo. Click through and have a look, it's a thing of beauty all right.

and the number shall be three

Three things that are true - a meme from Kirsty at Galaxy.

One

Rain fell in the night, quiet and kind. I woke at six with a sense of something looming, the same anxiety I felt before a writing deadline: the inescapable requirement to find something new in myself. Nicola would arrive today. I lay there under the shadow.

Helen Garner, The Spare Room.

Two
In this excerpt from Helen Verity Hewitt's story, 'The Foxhole' in Island 115, Harry is an uncle with Down's Syndrome.

As soon as I could walk, Aunty let me roam around in the bush, so long as Harry was with me. I always called him Harry, I never called him uncle. He always smelt a bit musty, like old horse blankets. He knew the bush inside out, after thirty-odd years of sitting in it, looking at it, probing the dense fibrous bark of the stringybarks and the lichened rocks with his stubby fingers. In spring, he loved tickling the tiny pale pink flowers of the trigger plants with a twig to make them pounce. He was like a greenhood orchid with his bent head, hidden in the kindly bush. (my emphasis)

‘The Foxhole’ won the 2007 Alan Marshall Short Story Award – Local Writers’ Section.

No. 3.

The children of large families hardly ever learn to talk to themselves aloud, that is one of the arts of solitude, but they often keep diaries.

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower, p.59

Note - Kirsty (hard woman) has set a rule: they must be from fiction. Pretty good rule, when you think about it a bit.

candide gets an e-reader

I saw this video from French publishing company Editis and downloaded it last night from its original source thanks to a tip off on Twitter from Maud. However, the original video is full bandwidth quality and takes forever to load (I checked 250 feed items and was still waiting), so the obliging folk at if:book have found us a lower -res version on YouTube, which still looks quite good in high-quality mode.

It does give a tantalising glimpse of how the ideal e-reading solution might work in the best of all possible worlds. I could well be in line when they beam these up.

it remains to be seen

Apparently it's done and dusted now - but Seen Reading looks like it was fun, and was much appreciated in Canada while it lasted. Link via Richard Nash at books are social glue.

This goes with that - Wolcott laments in Vanity Fair, as others also have, that it's hard to look sexy with an e-book (I reckon that could  change with the right tools, though):

It goes the other way as well. How can I impress strangers with the gem-like flame of my literary passion if it’s a digital slate I’m carrying around, trying not to get it all thumbprinty? Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our identities. At the rate technology is progressing, however, we may eventually be traipsing around culturally nude in an urban rain forest, androids seamlessly integrated with our devices. 

(and came via Maud, also from Richard.)

As well as this story in the Guardian, finally, about bonding with books on an international scale.
Well, cross-Channel, anyway.

a big Melbourne week of short fiction

This is the week when you should be looking out in Melbourne for your Big Issue vendor, and purchasing the Fiction Issue, which has a new story by Cate Kennedy, and a bit of adult fiction by successful YA writer Penni Russon.
(Regular issues, of course, carry fiction reviews edited by the Readings bookshop newsletter editor, Jo Case, and are worth your five dollars just for those.)

*Update: Get it at once, it is EXCELLENT. Ask your street vendor if he/she still has copies this week.

I should open a book on how many of these will make Best Oz Stories '09. Fabulous selection, Jo.

dovegreyreader asks - A.S. Byatt, no less

Lynne strikes gold again, this time with A.S. Byatt, speaking of The Children's Book. Again, there is a reading list, and recommendations in the modern era include Michelle de Kretser. Enjoy.

surfing the ephemera at Sheaff's

As noted recently by the wonderful Peacay at Bibliodyssey, and also Ampersand Duck. Oh my ephemera, my new-found land... This is for exploring.

There is a blog mentioned there to promote The Handy Book of Artistic Printing, a publication from Princeton Architectural Press which looks delicious - the Sheaff site says, 'This 2009 softcover book by Doug Clouse and Angela Voulangas very nicely covers many aspects of Artistic Printing, and shows examples.' 

I really should apologise for turning Peacay's links around the other way, but it's the way I travelled there. Via. How's those skating owls.

there will be links

A new online mag - via Stephen Romei, the ALR editor at the Ragged Claws blog, there's news of a shiny new publication with a contributors' page living in Facebook Land called The Group.
It will be curated by Larry Buttrose, Mark Mordue, James Bradley, John Birmingham and Billy Marshall-Stoneking, and its main interface is here.

And if I were in Britain, this would be fun.

Speaking of the UK (and also Ireland) the Australian Poetry Centre's international circuit places have been awarded to Robert Gray and Alison Croggon (reported here by the Currajah weblog at Walleah Press.)

I've been coming across Ivy Alvarez' work here and there - and found this Hong Kong journal, Cha, via the Canongate writers' network, Meet at the Gate, with two of her poems in the current issue.

Would you just look at this lovely thing (and the great snaps).
And these 'nice publications'.

Hardly a bustle in the hedgerow - more of an alphabet.

And finally blogpost title of THE WEEK.

to review the reviewer

The title of James' recent post at City of Tongues (also listed here at The Group) is taken in vain by Ramona Koval's programmers to introduce a session at Radio National's Book Show on literary criticism, with Delia Falconer and Geordie Williamson.
This session acted also as publicity for the ASAL conference on Common Readers and Critics, held last week in Canberra. (we should be able to read some of those thought provoking presentations in JASAL early next year.)

This BookShow session is notable chiefly for Williamson's remarks on protecting Australian writing from comparisons with work from overseas, and, rather incredibly, his handpass to Falconer in the final five minutes of play, on Koval's nimbly explosive suggestion that it shouldn't be necessary to publish negative reviews if there are lots of good books around. (Not quite why I prefer not to publish negative reviews here, but a surprising suggestion nonetheless.)

And all GW says is, "well, I think that's one for you, Delia." !!!

The answer to that question might be, 'yes, it's something lone bloggers can get away with, I think, Ramona, but editors and writers working together can afford to cover a broader canvas.' It's not even a really useful excuse for a blogger. Where would any media program (RN Book Show included) be if it was friendly all the time because everything it cast its eye over was 'pretty noice, thanks'?

Falconer rises to the occasion like a right sport - do check out her wonderful article on James Wood here if you haven't already (among many other things). It is a shame that Koval chooses to cut her off at the end as she does, and I thank a friend who's an attentive listener for alerting me to Williamson's clumsy pass.

something ingenious and lovely...

...to enjoy.
And remixing will be provided (see the Made tab for details).

Bless good ship Cordite and all who sail in her. This will be my main online reading for the next week or so.

the Notificator...makes for a great post title

Ooh. Mr Nash finds cool stuff for us on Twitter.
If you are not on there, or like me find it a bit hard on the eyes sometimes, you can subscribe to his RSS feed.

Meanwhile here's a blast from the past on asynchronous messaging. (Thanks, Mr. N.)

final word comes from the floor

”Look straight ahead; never reply with a word in the papers; if in your writings you become polemical, then do not direct your polemic against this or that particular attack; never show that a word of your enemies has had any effect on you; in short, appear as though you did not at all suspect that there was any opposition.”

(Ibsen to George Brandes, quoted here at Ed's blog, within his interview on Alain de Botton's recent adventures in the blogosphere.)

There have been, to put it mildly, words on Twitter and in other places this week, leading to this discussion of reviewing response etiquette in The Telegraph by Philip Hensher, taking a somewhat unfortunate (but by no means unusual) delight in the hurt he has occasioned.

But let's begin at the beginning. So, first author and sometime reviewer Alice Hoffman got excited about the review of her latest book and decided to voice her concerns on Twitter, then deleted her cranky tweets which included the reviewer's email address and phone number.

Then Alain de Botton, no less, went onto a blog to make his disaffection with reviewer Caleb Crain both real and permanent.

His interview with Ed Champion on Ed Champion's Reluctant Habits has now attracted the suggestion that de Botton is somewhat naive.