I don’t want to make any heated edicts or promises I can’t keep, but Amazon seems bent on forcing me to reconsider my agnosticism. I note all this, despite the fact that it exposes me as less than ideaologically pure, because I want to warn Amazon how they are alienating content producers — even friendly ones — bit by bit.
Wherein I get caught in the Amazon fray and am forced to reconsider my agnosticism.
K8lin!’ I yelled, hitting the screen with a rolled up People. K8lin winced, balancing on her juice-stained little wings.
So begins my Twitter serial, “@M1racleM0m,” being tweeted today — from now to 3pm — via @storyvilleapp. There are Easter eggs, for those who would find them. My story “Miss Tennessee” — from my collection Why They Cried — is featured this week in the Storyville iPhone app.
Like Ami Greko, I’m not exactly sure what the cover of this week’s New Yorker is trying to say. Books are dead? E-books are bad? Old white men are befuddled? In any case, my friend Daniel Radosh long ago taught me the appropriate response to non sequiturs in The New Yorker. That’s right: a caption contest. There is a prize.
Authors don’t have time for social media, but Dickens sent the equivalent of 81,000 tweets.
In today’s column: Miss Lonelyhearts and the Resented Publisher.
In today’s column: Happy Birthday, Nathanael West.
My story collection Why They Cried has been available — exclusively as a Joyland eBook from ECW Press — for one year. I want to share some lessons learned, but first, here’s how I got here.
In today’s Plus Ça Change column, lessons learned from the first year of Why They Cried.
Per Wikipedia, My Antonia is considered one of the greatest novels by American writer Willa Cather. Per some bored, listless student, the book becomes more interesting with a hint of cannibalism, or perhaps a zombie angle?
I know this is the middle school version of the “between the sheets” fortune cookie thing, but it still tickles me.
You know who I think about from time to time? The Underground Literary Alliance. Remember the ULA? If not, here’s what I (and Wikipedia) remember about them. They were a bunch of writers — of, to me, unknown talent — who showed up at various literary events from 2000 to 2006 to make trouble and bring attention to the elitist nature of publishing. They were like a cross between Smashwords and the Westboro Baptist Church. And, of course, they hated Rick Moody.
Today in Plus Ça Change, “Are We All ULA Now?”
Head over and “like” Brock Brower’s Facebook page to see the original, 1971 cover art for The Late Great Creature, being re-released by Overlook this October.
Something fun we cooked up at Sonnet Media. You must see the covers from the “unshockable seventies.” (SPOILER: One of the covers actually has the phrase “unshockable seventies” on it.)
With shrinking reviews pages — blah, blah, blah — authors have had to find alternative ways to promote the existence of their books. And since some people’s lives are too boring even for the “Lives” column (believe it or not), some number of these authors will decide to “take on” the issue of ebooks. They will do this whether or not they read them or know anything about them. And if they really know nothing about them, their publicists will pitch their perspective as “fresh.” The smell of books may be mentioned, although even the Times is getting tired of that. And these essays will mostly appear in the Times, under that new “Mechanic Muse” rubric that seems to have been created just to contain these, um, musings.
In today’s “Plus Ça Change” column on Google+, I try to come to terms with the ebook essay surplus.
Having an imaginary argument with a misremembered quote by David Foster Wallace might seem totally ridiculous—and it is—but I doubt that it’s so rare. I was too old to get the full John Lennon effect from Kurt Cobain’s suicide, but DFW’s? It didn’t even seem possible. He’s my Kurt Cobain. He’s the only writer of his (my?) generation with whom reckoning is not optional. His Hendrix-like virtuousity simply can’t be ignored, even when it’s maddening.
In today’s “Plus Ça Change” column over at Google+.
Books are being replaced by reading.
Not a month goes by that I don’t quote this observation from Jack Shafer, who was just laid off at Slate.
You always hear that Don DeLillo worked in advertising before he became a writer, but you never hear if he was any good at it—or about what happened on his last day. Did he give the appropriate notice? Did the office manager circulate a card in a manila envelope with “For Don DeLillo” written on the tab, and if so, what was the title of the highest ranking company official who signed it?
Today on Google+, “Don DeLillo’s Last Day.”
Here is the first — and, I presume, last — installment in a photo series I’m calling “Vernacular Remixes of Publishing Logos Spotted on HVAC Repair Trucks in NYC.”
Who says publishers don’t have strong brands? Seriously, I think Penguin might have a case.
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