September 11 Web Archive Collection

	September 11 Web Archive Collection This is an archived Web site from the Library of Congress.
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	Tuesday, 16 October 2001 In Letters . . . The MobyLives interview with Renata Adler draws considerable, heated mail, and a librarian reports in from the Southern Festival of Books, in the letters section of MobyLives . . . This just in: terrorism not as sexy as it used to be . . . In another show of how publishing mores changed instantly on September 11 — Random House has cancelled a huge book deal with Gerry Adams, says this Sunday Times of London report. Adams, leader of Ireland's Sinn Fein, the political party affiliated with the Irish Republican Army, was slated to deliver a memoir called "Hope and History" in return for a £400,000 advance (about $600,000) from Random House, and an undisclosed amount fromo British publisher Headline. But the Times says "since September 11 attitudes have hardened," and the Headline board said "no way." Meanwhile, "rival firms at the Frankfurt book fair said they 'would not touch it with a bargepole'." Making matters worse for Adams, Neal Travis reports in his New York Post column (second item) that Adams' agent, Andrew Wylie, is probably going to drop him as a result. It's official: Frankfurt's over, and attendance was down . . . The Frankfurt Book Fair officially closed yesterday, and attendance figures show a significant drop in attendance from last year — 247,117 people attended, down 14% from last year, according to this brief report from the Bookseller. Organizers say only 56 out of 6,700 exhibitors cancelled, but others say "the non–attendance of many large US publishers and booksellers meant that UK coedition publishers struggled to sign big deals at the fair." Carey – Moorhouse controversy continues . . . As previously reported, when it was first announced that novelist Frank Moorhouse had won a prestigious Australian literary prize, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, then it was announced that a mistake had been made and the award was instead given to Peter Carey, controversy ensued. As this update from the London Guardian reports, Carey's comment that "There are so many more really important things in the world" drew ire from Moorhouse fans. "Peter Carey didn't do himself a lot of good with the comments he made," said one. A Carey supporter said it wasn't Carey's fault, "it was Frank venting some extreme disappointment in a pretty undignified way." Others "suggest that Carey's dismissive attitude . . . is because it must seem trivial after Carey witnessed the attack on the World Trade Centre — his wife was in the first tower struck and survived." More still think the brouhaha "betrays Australia's residual resentment of self–exiled intellectuals, something Germaine Greer, Clive James and Robert Hughes are acutely aware of." Meanwhile, tomorrow night, as Carey attends the Booker Award ceremonies in London, where his "True History of the Kellly Gang" is favored to win, another top Australian award ceremony — the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards — will be held, with Carey's book going "head–to–head" against Moorhouse's once again. "Frank Moorhouse is unlikely to attend," notes the Guardian. The rush to rewrite history . . . Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, "Textbook publishers have scrambled to pen inserts and update books just now going to press," says a Christian Science Monitor report, and "many still in page proofs are speedily being amended to include material about the terrorist attacks." One textbook publisher says, "You will see more of the feeling of patriotism in general across the textbooks, reflecting the mood of the country." But there are numerous quandaries. One publisher cites the "struggle has been to ensure that what is covered is age–appropriate and not too frightening for young children." Others say "The material is being compiled so soon after the attacks that it's difficult to gain perspective. It's tempting, for example, to describe the hijackings as events that significantly altered American life, yet it's hard to do so when even the immediate future remains unknown." Shakespeare's other theater . . . Over ten years after discovering "more than half" of the remains of the Rose Theater, where many of William Shakespeare's plays were first performed, the English Heritage has put up money to begin "preliminary excavation" of the site, says a BBC News report. Tests have shown that the timber planks and posts found during construction of a London office block in 1989 were surprisingly "well–preserved," making it "the only Elizabethan theatre left in the world of which there are substantial remains." The article notes that London's "newly–built Globe Theatre, which is a reconstruction of an Elizabethan open–air theatre, was modelled on the remains of the Rose." • PREVIOUSLY: In a small town in Viriginia, a replica of the Blackfriars Playhouse has recently opened. A Washington Post story (previously posted on MobyLives) says proprietors claim Blackfriars was actually Shakespeare's preferred theater. RIP: Anne Ridler . . . Poet Anne Ridler died yesterday in England at age 89. Although best known as "one of the leading British woman poets of the mid-century " — the publication of her "Collected Poems" in 1998 led to her election to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature — she was also, as this Times of London obituary puts it, "a busy toiler in the literary vineyard." She was, for example, secretary to T.S. Eliot and worked in publishing. She got her start as both a publisher and poet when, during World War II, the small publishing company she ran with her husband, and where they had just completed printing the entire run of her first book, "Poems," was bombed, and "she had to watch the wrappers fluttering down the street." Critic: Foster Wallace and Winchester articles on bad writing are badly written . . . In an essay for the Vocabula Review, Mark Helpern says there's a good side and a bad side to the fact that "our two leading upper–middlebrow journals, Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly, have almost simultaneously run long pieces about language usage and books that offer to guide us on it." Helpern says the articles, by David Foster Wallace and Simon Winchester, "are reassuring to see" because it means "that questions of usage are still live ones, and that editors can be induced to publish articles on them." On the other hand, "it's dismaying to see how poor even educated thinking on such matters is, and how little editors demand in the way of quality in what they print on the subject." Graywolf in the pink . . . From humble beginnings in Port Townsend, Washington, where it was founded in 1974 by Scott Walker, Graywolf Press quickly developed a reputation for fine literary fiction and poetry (thanks to writers including Tess Gallagher and Jane Kenyon). But by the time Fiona McCrae took over, it had moved to St. Paul, Walker was gone and Graywolf was facing such severe financial deficits it had to reduce its staff by half. According to this in–depth profile from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, things have revived considerably under McCrae, who hints at a distribution deal with a large New York house and says, "I want Graywolf to fill a widening gap between large trade houses and small nonprofit publishers." Now that we're done discussing whether irony is dead or not, time to go back to discussing the future of the novel . . . "Even if our demands for unqualified, sweeping greatness are simply a product of our millennial derangement," says Tom Bissell, "no form of art has been taxed more beneath its poll than the contemporary domestic novel." Using this review, from the Boston Review, of the novel "Love Among the Ruins" by Robert Clark, as a jumping–off point, to consider how, while literature "does seem less important today than it was to previous generations," domestic novels nonetheless "remind us that profundity is most often an intensely private phenomenon" anyway. Zadie Smith, meanwhile, in this commentary for the London Guardian, has replied to the Guardian essay by James Wood, which, Smith says, aimed "a hefty, well–timed kick at what he called 'hysterical realism'. It is a painfully accurate term for the sort of overblown, manic prose to be found in novels like my own White Teeth and a few others he was sweet enough to mention." Yardley: Washington an uncomfortable "paramilitary state" now . . . While many writers have commented on life in New York City after September 11, few have described life in Washington D.C. But in this Washington Post column, Jonathan Yardley notes that in his Washington neighborhood — six blocks from the Capitol building, three blocks from the Supreme Court — things are radically different. "Of immediate concern," he says, "are the various ways in which the U.S. Capitol Police are turning parts of Capitol Hill into what is beginning to have the look and feel of a paramilitary state." By "capitulating to the terrorists' mind games," Yardley says, "we're merely playing right into their hands." And now, the perfect Christmas gift for your favorite politician . . . A new dicitonary, "The Evasion–English Dictionary," is getting some attention lately. Recently featured in New York on WNYC radio, it offers the chance, as this Vocabula Review description notes, to "turn contemporary clicés and banalities into biting insight" by explaining how some words really mean other words. Excerpts available from CafeMo.com include, for example, the way "feel" can actually mean "am," as in the phrase "I can't believe I did that to you. I feel terrible." Shocker: Oates says she "loves to write" . . . In a speech at the 75th anniversary celebration of the literary journal Prairie Schooner in Lincoln, Nebraska, Joyce Carol Oates, says this Associated Press wire story, "told about 500 people at the Cornhusker Hotel that she loves to write, and does it while she is running, on sheets of paper when she is flying and in the backs of limousines when she is riding in style." NOTE: Daily newspapers often change url's when archiving, so some links won't work beyond the day they are first posted. Monday, 15 October 2001 The Frankfurt Book Party? . . . The Frankfurt Book Fair prepared to wrap things up today by holding, last night, the awarding of the Fair's annual Peace Prize, given this year to German philosopher Juergen Habermas , as an Associated Press wire story reports. News of signings continues to break, as well, although many deals reflect the troubling times that kept attendance down this year — for example, this Publishing News story about an Orion deal for a memoir by Battalian Commander Richard Picciotto who, after rescuing "50 elderly and disabled citizens" from the World Trade Center on September 11, was "on the 17th floor and leading his team upwards when the world exploded around them." Or this PN report, about a deal for one young woman's "life–under–Taliban" memoir called "My Forbidden Face." Or this item about a deal for a book on the historic race in New York to build the world's tallest building — in 1928. Meanwhile, David D. Kirkpatrick says that while Frankfurt was once the most powerful and important event in the publishing industry, "international travel, overnight shipping and telecommunications eliminated much of the need for its original function," and "for many the heart of the fair is now a roughly five–day–long party that extends well into the night." And, Kirkpatrick says in this New York Times profile, Grove Atlantic head Morgan Entrekin, "with a college student's appetite for drinking and dancing, is its unofficial impresario." • MORE: Meanwhile, this Reuters wire story notes another big change at Frankfurt: "In contrast with the euphoria of last year, when some electronic publishers predicted paper books would become museum pieces within a generation," this year the industry now "admits most readers would still rather curl up with a book than a bulky screen." From the I hate it when I do that file: Times attack of Adler for inaccuracies contains errors . . . Her last book was "savagely trashed" in the New York Times "in almost every section of the paper except sports," New York Post reporter Richard Johnson notes in his column, and now he says Renata Adler gets more of the same for her new book in a Times review by former Times editor Bill Kovach, who "blasted her for 'troubling' inaccuracies" and "a lack of 'verification' and 'evidence'." There's only one problem, reports Johnson: "Kovach made several goofs himself." Meanwhile, Adler's editor at St. Martin's Press, Michael Denneny, "called the Times Book Review twice a day for two weeks" trying to get them to run a correction but never had his calls returned. Johnson says the Times did answer, however — by running a correction that admitted only one of Kovach's "goofs," and putting it not in the Book Review but buried in the Metro section, which isn't distributed outside greater New York. Still, he takes some kind of prize, don't you think? . . . Even before the terrorist attacks on America, French novelist Michel Houellebecq was under fire for comments he made about Islam in his newest book and in interviews. For example, the protagonist of Houellebecq's new book has a girlfriend who is killed by Muslim extremists; afterwards, "every time he learns that a Palestinian child or pregnant woman has been shot, he feels a 'shiver of enthusiasm that there is one Muslim less'." As this London Observer article notes, infuriated Muslims are suing the writer and his publisher for "inciting racial hatred and religious violence." Still, the book was the "most critically acclaimed and popular novel of the year" in France, and "had been hotly tipped by bookmakers and critics to carry off the Prix Goncourt." In the wake of September 11, however, the book has been removed from contention "because it has been deemed too controversial." Which means, of course, that they are just dumping them . . . When the frozen food retailer Iceland took over the food company Booker last year, it inherited the £300,000 sponsorship of England's most famous literary award, the Booker Prize. But now the company is expected to announce that it has withdrawn its sponsorship because, as this BBC News wire story reports, "the award, says Iceland, is giving it no commercial benefit." In this Times of London report, however, a Booker Prize spokesman says, "they are working with us to find a suitable home for the prize. They are not just dumping us." Naipaul defenders have their say . . . Initial reaction to the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to V.S. Naipaul seemed to focus on the fact that, as this Salon commentary notes, "Naipaul has offended nearly everyone at some juncture or another, including Hindus, Trinidadians, Britons and fellow writers of every stripe," making the "cranky, controversial and politically incorrect" Naipaul "the most daring choice in years." But many of the writer's fans have begun to speak on his behalf. Naipaul's "notorious misanthropy and grumpy self–absorption" are "the cost of doing business for a literary genius," says Robert McCrum in his London Observer column. Naipaul's "edgy exactitude" is so "effortlessly classical and yet at the same time brilliantly contemporary, as sharp and lucid as a spear of glass," that it renders him "truly great and truly deserving," McCrum says. Alice Goldfarb Marquis, in an Idler essay, says "If there is one theme in V. S. Naipaul's writing, it is the embittered cultural collision now playing out before our eyes." He deserved the Prize, she says, for his "many humane, rational, almost clinical reports from the front–lines between those who seek solutions for their situation in a militant past, and those willing to strike out for a better future." Mad Dog Caron apparently still mad . . . He was "one of the worst bank robbers in history" — "worst" as in "no good at it" — but Mad Dog Caron was good at writing about bank robbing and being in prison. He won awards for his book "Go–Boy!" and, upon his release from prison, became a Canadian celebrity. Now, however, he's been picked up apparently casing an Ottaw shopping mall, with "a loaded .32–calibre, semi–automatic handgun, a wig and scarf, several hats and some clothes," according to this Canoe wire story. "I thought maybe he learned his lesson," says Caron's literary mentor, author Pierre Berton, "but maybe he hadn't." Must be a different Philadelphia . . . About 150 people from around the world gathered in Philadelphia for the 11th annual P.G. Wodehouse convention this weekend, according to this A.P. wire story, and, "in true Wodehouse style they had a ripping good time. They played cricket, badly, and gave out prizes to the best dressed players. They dressed up as their characters for an elegant banquet. They also attended a series of lectures, from fans and academics, on various aspects of Wodehouse's life and work." It was, says reporter Catherine Lucey, "a brief retreat from increasingly scary real life into a timeless, idyllic place." Time to confront pessimistic writing . . . As Americans keep buying books about Islam and Afghanistan and terrorism, Raleigh News & Observer books editor J. Peder Zane says, "It is heartening to see the new sense of purpose and resolve that fills once–oblivious Americans as we try to understand the murkiest parts of the Muslim world." However, he says in his newest column, "it is not enough. As we look outward, we must also peer inward, using our new curiosity to correct the false picture we have of ourselves." He says "the America portrayed by Jonathan Franzen and too many others borders on caricature," and says "we must recognize and confront the deep pessimism that has informed so much that Americans have written about America during the last half–century." Literature and "the extinction of personality" . . . In a recent by–election in Toronto, candidate Bob Hunter became embroiled in controversy when it was discovered that in a book he wrote 13 years ago "the narrator enjoys tourist sex with children in Thailand." Hunter was "smeared as a pervert and pedophile" but protested the book was "fiction, parody, satire and fantasy," while the dustjacket proclaimed, "It's All True!"  Some authors have seen it all as an attack on free speech. Novelist Barbara Gowdy, for one, says, "Any child can tell you A. A. Milne is not Winnie the Pooh." But Alex Good, in a commentary at GoodReports, asks whatever happened to T.S. Eliot's notion that "literature . . . involves the extinction of personality"? "Unfortunately," says Good, "we live at a time when personality is just about all most authors have to sell." Also, now he puts an olive in that martini like he should have in the first place . . . Studs Terkel says that when Gore Vidal first suggested the idea to him, "I couldn't quite dig it. I looked at my martini, and all I saw was a lemon peel." But at age 89, Terkel decided to go ahead and do the book Vidal suggested – a book of interviews with a wide variety of people on what they think about death. "I didn't expect it to be so full of life," Terkel says of the result in this San Francsico Chronicle interview. "I say it's the most alive book I've ever done. That's the exquisite irony of it." The first fiction about September 11? . . . Is it the first published fiction about the September 11 attacks? In a New York Press feature, Neal Pollack writes, "I was sitting at my desk in my Brooklyn loft, preparing to write an article about the rise in popularity of the Latin Grammys. At 8:50 a.m., the phone rang. It was a fashion editor with whom Iąd slept two nights earlier. 'You'd better go up on your roof,' she said, 'and bring a notebook.'" Writing about Hitchcok without referring to Truffaut, Wood: Can you do that? . . . It may be the most radical tactic ever taken by any of the many authors who've written about Alfred Hitchcock: In "The Hitchcock Murders," Peter Conrad never mentions Robin Wood. As D.K. Holm says in a review from Cinamonkey, "A Hitchcock book without ritual obeisance to Wood is almost unimaginable, but the man who more or less ignited Hitchcock studies in the English speaking world goes uncited." Nor does Conrad pay much attention to some other seminal sources on the Master of Suspense, such as Raymond Durgnat, Francois Truffaut, James Naremore, or Leonard Leff. In fact, says Holm, "Conrad's book is a critic free zone." And he likes it. Poets band together to, um, attack another poet . . . At least four poets are unhappy with the choice of Billy Collins as the Poet Laureate, if the Melic Review's "Poems About Billy Collins," an anthology of poems by Jeffrey Bahr, Sterling Green, Sharon Lourous and Shann Palmer, is any indication. "'Do you believe in angels?,' he asks / between mouthfuls of risotto, wiping his chin slowly . . ." begins one of the poems. Another says, "If I Could Write Like Billy Collins / I would direct you to that lampshade / made of human skin and tell you / to concentrate on the warm glow / and forget the camps . . . " Another reason why it's great to be a capitalist: You don't have to have any manners . . . "Coaches, athletes and sportscasters" have realized it's an inappropriate time for war metaphors and "have generally abandoned the hoary rhetorical silliness, despite its time–tested ability to raise testosterone levels," says the Miami Herald's Richard Pachter. "But one setting remains essentially valid for martial analogies: business." In this review, he says "From Battlefield to Boardroom: Winning Management Strategies for Today's Global Business," by Dennis Laurie, makes the case. Or maybe he's just out of cash . . . It was turned into a British and PBS TV series, was translated into 35 languages, and was on British bestseller lists for four years. Now, with the help of a scientist who went on to co–write "Star Trek," Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking will re–write the 144 page "A Brief History of Time" so that it is briefer and "more accessible" — a "tacit admission," says this London Guardian report, "that many of his 10 million or more readers found the original impenetrable." Friday, 12 October 2001 Naipaul wins Nobel Prize, stirs controversy . . . For V.S. Naipaul, the official announcement that he was the first British writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature since William Golding in 1983 (and the first who writes in English since Seamus Heaney in 1995), marked the achievement of "the wildest dream of his iron–willed, sometimes viper–tongued and initially impoverished lifetime," says this London Guardian report. Naipaul, the grandson of an indentured Indian laborer in Trinidad, was in fact so stunned to win he was unable to do more than thank his publisher, Picador, and release a three–sentence statement: "I am utterly delighted. This is an unexpected accolade. It is a great tribute to both England, my home, and India, the home of my ancestors." But the awarding is seen by some as "ironic and controversial," notes Maya Jaggi in another Guardian story. Among his many detractors, she notes, are Edward Said, Chinua Achebe, and an earlier Nobel winner from the Caribbean, Derek Walcott, who once wrote a parody of Naipaul called "V.S. Nightfall" which credited his "repulsion towards Negroes." Another Caribbean writer critical of Naipaul is Caryl Phillips, who, in this Guardian essay says Naipaul's "hostility towards the Caribbean has been well documented." But in India, says a BBC News wire story, the newspapers (many cited are not online) are carrying estatic headlines, such as the one from The Asian Age saying, "At long last! Naipaul gets Nobel!" The Indian journal Tehelka, however, reflects a different attitude in its coverage. In addition to a lengthy, wide–ranging interview, the journal includes an overview that elicits opinions from numerous Indian writers, and asks "What do you do with a writer of unflinching integrity and superlative skill whose politics are not only flawed but verge on the offensive?" Reporter Shoma Chaudhury observes, "That question, the dichotomy between the writer and his views, continues to thrum beneath the applause." Frankfurt: subdued in some areas, hustling in others . . . "The Frankfurt Book Fair, as an open platform, stands for the very values that have been attacked in New York and Washington," said Fair director Lorenzo Rudolf in a letter to exhibitors and the press that also noted, "There have even been some who said that before 11 September they had not intended coming to the Fair, but that now they would as an act of solidarity." Still, some brief reports further describe how different things are there this year, especially for those in electronic publishing. In one report from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reporter Dietmar Dath says "the Silent Suffering Award goes to the science and technology publishers who are gathered in Hall 4 and whose dreams of handing down arcane digital and scientific knowledge from the citadels of research to the masses below have been cruelly nipped in the bud" by the distraction of world events. Another FAZ story notes that the Electronic Publishing Work Group press conference had to be cancelled "for technical reasons." It isn't all bad news for e–publishing, however. A Publishing News article notes that the second annual Frankfurt eBook Award ceremony went forth as planned at the Frankfurth Opera House. Winners of the $50,000 grand prizes were, in non–fiction, Steven Levy for "Crypto," and in fiction, Amitav Ghosh for "The Glass Palace." There was also the announcement of a major deal for a first book found in the slush pile — "The Rice Mother," by Rani Manicka, was purchaed at auction by the Hodder publishing company for £300,000 (or over $500,000). Other hot deals included what this Publishing News report called a "substantial" deal between MacMillan and author Ahmed Rashid for paperback rights to his "Taliban Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Asia." And another PN story describes how San Francsico publisher Chronicle Books, star of the 2000 Fair with the "Beatles Anthology" book, was again getting attention for another Beatle book. RIP: Calvin C. Hernton . . . Critic, scholar and poet Calvin C. Hernton, whose book "Sex And Racism in America" was one of the major books of the 1960s, died at his home in Oberlin, Ohio on October 1 after a long battle with cancer. He was 69. As this New York Times obituary notes, Hernton was a "prolific writer whose work spanned a wide variety of genres," including some notable poetry that "played the formal preoccupations of modernists like Hughes and T. S. Eliot off against voices from African–American oral tradition," but most of his work "explored the terrain where American race relations collide with American sexual politics." Publishing overview: "assimilation" complete? . . . An edgy overview of the New York publishing scene written by Alfred Schein — "the pseudonym of a writer working within corporate publishing" — and posted on the New York Foundation of the Arts website says that assimilation of the "guild or cottage industry" of publishing "into something that largely functions within multinational corporations . . . now appears near complete." "Schein" cites as one of several "telling cases" of the "manner in which formerly independent small publishers have been quietly falling," the example of the Ecco Press: "Begun by poet Daniel Halpern as a seeming labor of love in 1971, Ecco published beautiful editions of high–quality, low–selling books" by the likes of Louise Glück and Jorie Graham "before they were huge," and "lesser–known works by beloved Modernist writers, such as Marcel Proust's 'Pleasures and Regrets'." Now, says "Schein," Ecco is "an imprint of HarperCollins, with Halpern at its head . . . Not a single employee from Ecco's Hopewell, NJ, offices was taken along. It raised a few eyebrows in publishing, but . . . Jorie Graham and Louise Glück continue to publish at Ecco, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year as if nothing has happened. And the Proust is out of print." Rumi–mongering, part 2 . . . The idea to translate the works of 13th century Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi came to University of Georgia professor Coleman Barks in a vision, Barks says in this Salon interview with Amy Standen. She reports that on May 2, 1977 "Barks dreamed he was lying in a sleeping bag on the banks of the Tennessee River, near where he grew up," when suddenly a "ball of light rises from Williams Island and comes over to me — revealing a man sitting cross legged with head bowed and eyes closed, a white shawl over the back of his head. He raises his head and opens his eyes. I love you he says. 'I love you too,' I answer." Now, says Standen, even though Barks does not know Farsi, the language in which Rumi wrote, and "translates" by rephrasing the translations of others, "Barks' translations may be closer to Rumi's ambitions than those produced by scholars of Farsi." For one thing, she says, "Rumi's jokes become funnier with Barks behind the wheel." This, in stark contrast to a Seattle Weekly review by Roger Downey, posted yesterday on MobyLives, that notes the many Rumi products — calendars, date books, meditation audiotapes — marketed by Barks, and disparages his method of translating "merely by spending an hour or so a day with pen, paper, and a few volumes of translations by scholars foolish enough to undergo the drudgery of actually mastering the material he exploits." Rethinking historical fiction, as history is being made . . . A panel discussion on the historical novel scheduled for the Penn Humanities Forum may force two prominent historical novelists, James Welch and William Vollman, to "grapple with larger questions than anticipated," says reporter Justin Bauer in this Philadelphia CityPaper report. Bauer notes that Vollman already noted after the terrorist attacks that, "My current thinking is that literature isnąt enough to bring people together to produce real understanding. Some sort of action is required, but right now I donąt know what that action might be or how it would work." Popular historians draw lessons from WW II . . . Writers of popular history and poly–sci books continue to turn up in the news commenting on their fields of expertise and how it relates to the recent terrorist attacks. In an Associated Press wire story, for example, World War II historian Stephen Ambrose notes that the only thing that might compare to fighting in Afghanistan is our experience fighting in the Pacific in 1945. "We hit those islands with the biggest bombardment ever, we just blasted them so there wasn't a blade of grass standing," he says. "But it had virtually no effect on the Japanese defenders. That is going to be one of the characteristics of whatever combat we're going to get into in Afghanistan." In a New York Daily News column, Kennedy biographer Lawrence Leamer says something similarly bleak — that George W. Bush could learn something by studying John F. Kennedy's reaction to a Japanese kamikaze attack in World War II, as described in Leamer's new book, "The Kennedy Men." And Harvard professor Jessica Stern, author of "The Ultimate Terrorists," reminds people that people "bent on mass destruction are usually not coy about their intentions. Hitler laid out his plans in Mein Kampf, which was published more than seven years before his rise to power." In an interview with USA Today, she says of today's terrorists, "I think it's important to read their manifestos." Terrorist attacks are spawning more and more writers . . . The September 11 terrorist attacks are heightening interest in what was already a rapidly growing phenomenon: memoir–writing by non–wrtiers, notes a Christian Science Monitor story. "The whole concept of what's heroic has changed in the last month," says Alexandra Johnson, a Wellesley College professor who teaches a course in journal writing. "We're seeing these instances, whether it's firefighters or volunteers, where everybody has remarkable stories." She says even e–mail can form "a kind of populist memoir." Pulp fiction: where "queer lit" began? . . . "Before the sexual revolution of the late 1960s," notes this article from the Hartford Advocate, "pulp fiction was the arena where the young men and women of America could explore the margins of sexuality." Covers, however, "could only insinuate that they dealt with something other than strict heterosexuality," notes reporter Alistair Highet. "For instance, the cover of 'The Right Bed' from 1959 shows a young man dejectedly seated on the floor in front of a young woman: 'At the threshold of his decision to take the twilight life, her hands were there to help – to guide him back to the right bed,' reads the blurb on the jacket." Pulped fiction: where other literature ends . . . "More than one million books are being pulped in Britain every month because publishers are commissioning thousands of titles that no one wants to read," says a report in The Times of London. The spokesman for one recycling company told the paper that "it was seeing a huge increase in the pulping of books," estimating that 300,000 books are being shredded every week in Britain alone. Brian Oldfield of the Paper Hub Recycling Company said, "There's a terrific amount of wastage. It's a crying shame." Meanwhile, the newspaper estimated that other European publishers are pulping 300,000 books a week, "and the Americans one million." Author websites on the rise . . . Thanks to the burgeoning number of author websites, readers have a whole new dimension of access to their favorite writers, notes Timothy Davis. In fact, he adds in this Christian Science Monitor report that the sites often 'provide loyal readers content they can't get anywhere else." Michael Chabon, for example, tells Davis, "For me, it's a way mostly of keeping things 'in print' that would otherwise go swiftly out ... magazine articles, short essays, incidental pieces." Ishmael Reed says he uses his site to post writing by African writers. And Judy Blume says although she gets thousands of e–mails through her site, she tries to answer them all. "Occasionally we get rude comments from people who are trying to shock," she says. "Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but I felt the same way about snail mail." Things are different now at the library . . . The Cedar Rapids Public Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has announced it will be beefing up security in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. According to this report from The Onion, the library "plans to hire a part–time security guard. Marlin Pendergast, 44, of Per–Mar Security, will divide his time between the library and Applegate Mall, where he patrols the food court every weekday afternoon." Among other measures: The overnight book–depository box will be permanently sealed. Library director Glenda Quarles said, "I know this may inconvenience some of our patrons who want to return materials after hours, but we just can't take any chances." Thursday, 11 October 2001 Naipaul wins Nobel Prize . . . British writer V.S. Naipaul has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature — and the $1 million that comes with it — for his "incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories," according to the official announcement from the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Academy head Horace Engdahl says in this London Guardian report that when he notified Naipul "He was very surprised and I don't think he was pretending. He was surprised because he feels that as a writer he doesn't represent anything but himself." Naipaul was chosen from a list of five finalists, a list shrouded in secrecy but rumored to have included Philip Roth, J.M. Coetzee, Amos Oz, and Margaret Atwood. • MORE: A BBC News wire story gives more background on the history of the award, and notes that the Swedish Academy briefly considered suspending the prize "due to the U.S. strikes on Afghanistan" but then decided "to rise above current events." Academy head Engdahl explained, "Literature is the basis of a worldwide community, which is obviously not based on violence or hatred but which paves the way of mutual understanding between cultures and people." The A.P., meanwhile, provides a complete list of previous winners. • MORE: "Naipaul has the reputation of being a tough–minded, misanthropic man," an Associated Press wire story notes. "He does not engage in such literary rituals as publishing parties and scribbling blurbs for the works of peers." As the London Guardian's "Literary Loafer" noted in this week's column, Naipaul generated controversy with some pubic remakrs just last week, but "There are few shocks left in the literary life, and one of them certainly isn't the spectacle of Sir Vidia Naipaul on his high horse." • PREVIOUSLY: Naipaul stirred controversy just last week, as this Guardian report notes, when he said Islam had a "calamitous effect on converted peoples"; he stirred still more controversy in August, as this BBC wire story notes, for saying "Passage to India" author E.M. Forster barely knew India beyond "the garden boys whom he wished to seduce"; and made headlines again in July, as another Guardian story reports, when he called prime minister Tony Blair, "a pirate at the head of a socialist revolution that is 'destroying the idea of civilisation in this country'." NBA nominees announced . . . This year's nominees for the National Book Awards were announced late yesterday in New York and, matching, perhaps, the suddenly subdued atmosphere of the times, there were few surprises: Random House and FSG garnered most of the nominations, a few small houses were acknowledged, there was a tendency to favor "socially conscious" books, and Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" was among them. "I had wondered whether the publicity the book has gotten from Oprah would discourage judges who felt perhaps it had gotten attention enough," Franzen tells Associated Press reporter Hillel Italie in this wire story. But popularity and high sales may have worked against David McCullough, who was not nominated. Among the notable poetry nominees was Pakistani Agha Shadid Ali, who lives in Massachusetts and may be unable to come due to several recent operations for a brain tumor. "I'm hoping I can bring him to New York," the poet's brother told the Italie. "It will take a bit of doing." And in the children's award category, Front Street, a small independent house from Asheville, N.C., recieved two nominations — making it five nominations for the company's brief six years of existence. And in fiction, the nomination of a collection of short stories, "Among the Missing" by Dan Choan, was a mild surprise. The A.P. report includes a full listing of nominees, but the list, by itself, is also available in the official announcement from the National Book Foundation Web site. The awards ceremony will be held in New York on November 14, hosted once again by comedian Steve Martin. Things grim but philosophical at Frankfurt . . . The Frankfurt Book Fair opened Tuesday with "the highest security measures in its history," notes this report from the German publication Handelsblatt.com. "The fair has employed more than twice the number of security guards it had last year, while Hall 8, where US, British and Israeli publishers have their stalls, has been put under still stricter security," it says, and "Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was supposed to have opened the fair, had to cancel his appearance because of a hastily arranged meeting" with George W. Bush in Washington. The report also notes numerous cancellations and that "The presence of electronic media is particularly weak this year," all part of "the global political and economic gloom" that currently "weighs on publishers and retailers." A Pubishing News story gives even more detail on the "abandoned booths and empty tables, not to mention shorter taxi queues" making "the extent of absenteeism was palpable." On a slightly more upbeat note, however, journalist Christian Geyer notes that German publishers are announcing a string of books sufficient to make him ask "As far as newly published nonfiction is concerned, is it a mistake to think we are in the midst of a philosophical springtime even though it is now October?" In this Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung overview, Geyer previews the previews of the many philosophy books being promoted at the fair. For the Mitchell estate, the wind done really gone out of their sails . . . A Federal appeals court in Atlanta yesterday handed another legal defeat to the trustees of the Margaret Mitchell estate in their attempts to suppress Alice Randall's "The Wind Done Gone." Affirming its earlier preliminary ruling in a more detailed written decision, the 11th Ciricuit Court of Appeals ruled that the book was "unequivocally parody" and that Judge Charles Pannell had been wrong to issue an earlier injunction against the book. According to this Atlanta Journal–Constitution report, judges said the Mitchell estate had "fallen well short of establishing a likelihood of success of its copyright infringement claim." The judgment simply blocks Judge Pannell's injunction, however; the case now returns to Pannell to decide whether the Mitchel trust can seek monetary damages. Southern Festival of Books goes on, but . . . While the Web site for the 13th annual Southern Festival of Books notes the popular and influential gathering goes on, starting tomorrow as planned, but it also includes a notice that authors including Rick Bragg and Frederick Barthleme have cancelled appearances. Still, as this commentary points out, that "still leaves more than 200 authors, poets, songwriters, and book illustrators to constitute one of the largest guest lists in the festival's history." "At the same time," says Scene writer Marc K. Stengel, "it will be difficult this year for the reflective festival-goer not to call into question some of the assumptions underlying the present state of our literary preoccupations." A look inside at Amazon . . . Saying it was "the next logical step" for shoppers making purchase decisions, Amazon.com yesterday added a feature it's calling a "Look Inside the Book" — a cyberspace simulation of being able to physically examine a book. As this Reuters wire story reports, the feature will allow customers to examine "images of covers, flaps and actual pages for some 25,000 book titles." An Amazon v.p. notes that "It's something that customers have been telling us they'd like to do," but the report also notes "the move also comes as it grapples with slowing sales growth in its core books, music and video division." Joyce "adapter" says, "My version makes sense"; Joyce estate says, "Pprrpffrrppfff" . . . Lawyers for the estate of James Joyce have gone to court seeking an injunction against the publishers of a 1997 "reader friendly" version of "Ulysses" that altered some of the original spelling and punctuation. Copyrights for the 1922 classic expired 50 years after Joyce's death in 1941, But some of the alterations were made to previously unused manuscript material that was published in 1977, explains this London Guardian report. The Joyce lawyers said Danis Rose's version of the stream–of–consciousness novel was being "passed off as something which it is not." Rose, meanwhile, said in 1997 when he first published the book that "it was the first version to make sense to the reader." Daisy Buchnan's house off the market . . . The auction of the real–life mansion upon which F. Scott Fitzgerald based Daisy Buchnan's "East Egg" home in "The Great Gatsby" has been called off for now. A New York Post report says socialite Virginia Kraft Payson, owner of the Long Island mansion, which is called "Land's End," said, "I feel that there is something unseemly about auctioning a luxury property of this magnitude when we are still reeling from a tragedy that has left so much pain for so many." She inherited the mansion from her mother, Joan Whitney Payson, founder and first owner of the New York Mets. Fitzgerald was a frequen visitor of the mansion, which was designed by Stanford White, when it was owned by publisher Herbert Bayard Swope. And the Beat goes on . . . "In 1953, when poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti started City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco," notes journalist George Tysh, "the literary landscape was dominated by an establishment that ignored William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky, and shut out D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller in favor of better–behaved novelists. Three years later, when Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg's Howl, all hell broke loose." In this Detroit MetroTimes review, Tysh looks at a spate of new books about the era, and concludes some are good enough to inspire some dissident questions, including "some of the same ones the Beats asked in the '50s." Usually, I snitch them from old Celia Brayfield novels . . . Using a CD Rom called "NewNovelist," old novelist Celia Brayfield stumbled when "A drop–down tutorial told me that before entering my 12–step story plan I should know that if my Hero had a complete spiritual transformation my novel would be in the Internal Transformation category but if he didn't quite make it, it'd be the Coming of Age type. I had five Heroes and they'd all pay money to avoid any degree of Internal Transformation." In this Times of London commentary, she says the whole thing reminds her of "the most irritatingly ignorant question a writer gets asked," which is, "Where do you get your ideas from?" Rumi monger . . . In addition to his three collections of work by Jalal Al-Din Rumi, the 13th century Sufi poet, Coleman Barks is also "the happy copyright holder of various less expensive repackagings of the same material," notes Roger Downey in this Seattle Weekly report. There's "an annual Rumi calendar, a Rumi date book/diary, a pocket–sized Rumi for convenient spiritual refreshment, and a set of Rumi audiotapes for automotive meditation." Most amazing of all: Barks "has achieved all this without the inconvenience of learning medieval Farsi, the language in which Rumi wrote most of his poems. By his own testimony, Barks has established his veritable franchise merely by spending an hour or so a day with pen, paper, and a few volumes of translations by scholars foolish enough to undergo the drudgery of actually mastering the material he exploits." Wednesday, 10 October 2001 Crisis reading on Downing Street . . . A book detailing "the bewildering complexity of Afghan politics, its deadly overspill into bordering countries and the malign influence of Osama bin Laden" is currently being read by nearly everyone in Tony Blair's administration, according to this report from the London Guardian's chief political correspondent, Patrick Wintour. Wintour says the book, "Taliban, Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia," by Ahmed Rashid, has so "heavily influenced" Blair that he sent aides to confer with the author in Islamabad last week. The Guardian's Foden, meanwhile, in this review, says the book makes parallels to "earlier adventurism" in the region by the British government — "They offered cash subsidies, manipulated tribal chiefs, and tried to turn Afghanistan into a client state" — in trying to create a "buffer state between Russia and India." It says modern–day "tribal fractures" still make it difficult to establish a stable government there. And in this list, Foden suggests other readings related to "the crisis in Afghanistan." The scenery around Frankfurt . . . As the world's biggest publishing industry trade show, the Frankfurt Book Fair, gets underway, a story in the local newspaper might alarm visitors from British and American mega–publishers about the setting of the conference itself: "Midsize publishers of  both fiction and non–fiction books in Germany are thumbing their noses at the big corporations; not without difficulties, but with success," says a profile of the German book industry from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Unlike the United States, where 80 percent of the publishing industry is dominated by just five companies, more than 90 percent of the roughly 2,000 German book publishers remain independent," and giants Holtzbrinck and Bertelsmann control "only about 15 percent of the market." "The soothsayers who said that only the big companies will survive turned out to be wrong," says a spokesman for the Association of the German Book Trades. And the winner is . . . The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced tomorrow, and David Kipen, in his San Francisco Chronicle column, says readers should be prepared: "For an organization whose motto is 'Snille och Smak' — talent and taste — sometimes the Swedish Academy wouldn't know smak if it smacked them." For example, while there have been worthies such as William Butler Yeats, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Czslaw Milosz, "we're still left with enough air balls to raise even one of Milosz's two–pound eyebrows. Sully Prudhomme? He was chosen in the first year (1901) as a snub to his countryman Zola, whom Alfred Nobel had despised. Mikhail Sholokhov (1965)? He might actually be a good choice if he hadn't plagiarized some of his best work. And that's not to mention Pearl Buck (1938), the Marisa Tomei of Nobel laureates." • MORE: A London Guardian profile of the prize's founder, Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, notes that he wrote poetry, wanted the prize to preserve his "profoundly middlebrow" tastes, and only wrote the literature prize into his will at the last minute. RIP: George Brockway, creator of the Norton Anthologies . . . The man who, as president of W.W. Norton & Company, said the company had "never been for sale and is not likely to be" — still true thirty years after the pronouncement — died at age 85 after a long illness. According to this New York Times obituary, George P. Brockway "invented Norton's independence" and the ownership structure that allowed it to remain independent (it's owned by employees) "long after all the other famous book–publishing houses have been merged into larger corporate entities," said Norton's current president, W. Drake McFeely. Brockway also invented the famous Norton Anthologies, and published numerous major titles, such as Betty Friedan's "Feminine Mystique," and the account of the Cuban missile crisis by Robert F. Kennedy, "Thirteen Days." What Americans are reading: Bibles, Korans, and "Chicken Soup" . . . U.S. booksellers report that "Bibles, Korans, and all manner of religion–themed self–help books are seeing unprecedented sales over the last month," says this Reuters wire story. Among the top sellers: "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," by Rabbi Harold Kushner, the Dalai Lama's "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life," and ever–popular "Chicken Soup" series. Angry Penguins strike again . . . The publication of a biography on the late Australian painter Albert Tucker, "one of Australia's most acclaimed 20th century artists" and a member of the collective of writers and painters known as the Angry Penguins, has been delayed due to last–minute threats of legal action by the artist's widow, Barbara Tucker. In this Melbourne Age report, biographer Janine Burke says, "It all came as a nasty surprise." She says she worked on the book for over four years, and consulted closely with Tucker himself before his death two years ago and had his approval. "I thought there was real trust between Barbara and me, especially after I helped her choose the headstone for Bert's grave," Burke says. Meanwhile, neither Barbara Tucker nor her husband's dealers are commenting, and they've refused permission to use his pictures and letters. How about points for trying? . . . While he was recently successful in his bid to become head of England's Conservative Party, Ian Duncan Smith hasn't been so successful in his bid to get a novel published. According to this Times of London report, Smith's unpublished novel, "Ithaca," "has become a running joke in the publishing world in the past year." The newspaper quotes one rejection forwarded to it as containing criticisms "that some of the new Tory leader's opponents will feel could also apply to his brand of right–wing politics." The letter says, "I feel you have chosen too superficial a style, and in a way too undemanding a story, to stimulate a wide readership . . . " Remembering Louis Awad . . . The late Egyptian author Louis Awad, his friend Ahmed Abbas Saleh writes in this appreciation from Al–Ahram Weekly, "was in a hurry to effect the split between Egyptian society and its old connections." To achieve an Egyptian "renaissance," he studied Dante's use of the coloquial in his poetry and for a while did the same in his writing. He also emphasized "the importance of moving from theocratic to humanist thinking, which implied a liberation of the mind from preconceptions imposed by men of religion as sacred and admitting of no human debate." However, this led to his being accused of "religious extremism" in which "he was dismissed from the university and placed in prison." Nonetheless, says Saleh, "Like many such characters it was impossible to dissuade him of his opinions or persuade him of others." The second, shadowy Mrs. Ted Hughes . . . His first wife, Sylvia Plath, famously killed herself, but in a lesser known tragedy, Assia Wevill, the second wife of Ted Hughes also killed herself, after murdering their six–year–old daughter, Shura Hughes. In this extract from a Hughes biography by Elaine Feinstein, the Sunday Times of London offers a rare glimpse of the second Mrs. Hughes. Elizabethan shocker: Shakespeare preferred building with roof . . . For years, English professor Ralph Cohen travelled with students to the re–created Globe Theater in London, but "lamented that Shakespeare's other theater," the Blackfriars Playhouse, reputedly the Bard's favored venue, "where he staged all of his plays — remained an unformed ghost from dusty Elizabethan archives." Then, Cohen convinced town leaders in Staunton, Virginia to rebuild it. This Washington Post story calls the results a "$4 million, brick–perfect reproduction of Shakespeare's very own home stage." It's not just WHAT we're reading, but HOW . . . St. Petersburg Times columnist Bill Maxwell says he's "thrilled that Americans are now reading about the Mideast and the Muslim and Jewish worlds." Still, he says in his column, "The big question is whether our reading will teach us anything of value . . . if we use our reading simply to affirm our prejudices, we gain nothing by poring over unfamiliar ideas." "Positive concomitants of reading are reflection and action," he says. The battle for the soul of children's lit . . . Although the "Chronicles of Narnia" series by C.S. Lewis were the biggest–selling kids books before Harry Potter came along, they are now "endangered," says fan Greg Easterbrook in this Atlantic Monthly commentary. "On one front they face the dubious honor of corporate marketing" in a new campaign by publisher HarperCollins. "On another, literary voices have begun to denounce them." English novelist — and Booker Prize judge — Philip Hensher, for example, "censured the Chronicles as 'poisonous' and 'ghastly, priggish, half-witted' books." "Never mind that one of Hensher's own books, Kitchen Venom (1996), all but glorifies pederasty." The world of children's books has changed greatly lately, says Easterbrook, and "What's in progress is a struggle of sorts for the soul of children's fantasy literature." That's nothing — have you checked the atlas lately? . . . A new photography book depicting historic sites in every Canadian province left one out — New Brunswick. According to this CBC wire story, the book "contains photographs of historic places in every province and territory, except New Brunswick." A New Brunswick historian says, "We have a desperate time with image here. This is just one more example of it I think." But other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln? . . . Although "Last Breath," by Peter Stark, "purports to reveal what it's like to die 11 different ways, all of them adventure–related," a review in the Boston Globe says, "what 'Last Breath' really does is perpetrate a fraud upon the book–buying public." Critic Steve Greenlee says that "Problem No. 1" is that, although "the publisher's letter to book reviewers calls it nonfiction," the book is not nonficiton — Stark "employs what he calls 'invented characters' to act out 'invented situations'." Then there's "Problem No. 2: 'Last Breath' — and this is an understatement — is horribly written."

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WHALE SIGHTINGS

This week's fiction:

"All Things, All at Once"
by LEE K. ABBOTT
(from The Atlantic Monthly)

"The Water Laws"
by PIA Z. ERHARDT
(from The Mississippi Review)

This week's poetry:

"Cornbread"
by DEBORAH BACHARACH
(from Bovine Free Wyoming)

"Diving Into the Dead Sea"
by LUKE POWERS
(from The Melic Review)

"After Ghalib"
by ALFRED CORN
(from Drunken Boat)

This week's audio:

(requires RealPlayer)

ROBERT LOWELL
reads his poem, "For the Union Dead"

ANN BEATTIE
reads her short story, "Perfect Recall"

HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Three excerpts from a recent interview with George Plimpton

Special edition:

POEMS FOR THE TIME
Alicia Ostriker's anthology of the poets she's been turning to of late — Stephen Dunn, C.P. Cavafy, Marianne Moore, and others, plus a never–before–seen poem of her own.



RECENTLY
UNDER–APPRECIATED

GIVEN GROUND
by Ann Pancake
(Middlebury College Press, $24.95)

Winner of the 2000 Bakeless Nason Fiction Prize, this short story collection explores the haunted landscape and marginalized characters of the writer's native Appalachia. Both gritty and lyrically passionate, these stories move effortlessly from the regional to the universal.


DARLING
by Honor Moore
(Grove, $13)

This new collection considers desire and the limits of desire. These direct and emotionally daring poems trace where the erotic overlaps with love and loss.


THE MANY–HEADED HYDRA: SAILORS, SLAVES, COMMONERS, AND THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ATLANTIC
by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker
(Beacon, $18)

Just out in paperback, this fascinating account of the building of the seventeenth and eighteenth century trans–Atlantic economy, tracks the rebellions of the often brutally repressed workers whose actions fueled later visionary movements for freedom and equality, sparking the age of revolutions.



ALL THE REVIEWS THAT FIT

OFFICIAL TALLY:

Since March 21, 2001 (the MobyLives.com launch date), the New York Times has given 107 plugs in 207 days to books written by staffers or former staffers.

Average frequency with which the New York Times plugs books by staffers or former staffers: every 1.93 days

CHECK OUT THE COMPLETE LIST OF PLUGS

Most recently:

•Plug 78
The daily New York Times on Thursday, September 6 included a rave review for the "wildly clever" and "lovely" book about a "brilliant" character based on Freud, "In the Floyd Archives" by Times reporter Sarah Boxer. It's the paper's fourth plug of the book. The review was written by Jenny Lyn Bader, a frequent contributor to the Times' Week in Review section, where Boxer used to be an editor. Bader has also recently reviewed books by other Times colleagues, including Catherine Texier, Ann Powers, and, most recently, Ruth Reichl (see plug #22).

• Plug 79
The daily New York Times for Friday, September 7 featured a rave reivew by Michiko Kakutani of "Emergence," the "stimulating" new book by Steven Johnson. Johnson, a co–founder of the Internet magazine Feed, is a frequent contributor to the Times op–ed page. As editor–in–chief of Feed, he also collaborated with the New York Times on the Web "to create topical, interactive content," as the press release put it, for the "@times" area of AOL. He also hosted a forum — "Mediasphere" — on the New York Times on the Web website. The review does not mention any of these affiliations.

•Plug 80, 81, 82 & 83
The Sunday New York Times Book Review for September 9 included a front page lead–in to a rave review for the "elegantly" "illuminating" "Marlon Brando," by the "superb biographer" Patricia Bosworth, who, the review fails to point out, is a long–time regular contributor to the paper, where she in fact began her career as a biographer by writing profiles for the arts section. There was also an admiring plug for "Life Script: How the Human Genome Discoveries Will Transform Medicine and Enhance Your Health," by Nicholas Wade, who was the Times' lead reporter on the genome story, and is now a Times science editor. In addition, there is another rave review of "Emergence," by Steven Johnson. This one does not mention his connections to the Times, either. And finally, for the fourth week in a row in the Sunday Book Review, there's recommendation for "The Hunters," by Clare Messud, who once again goes unidentified as a Times contributor. It's her fifth review from the paper overall.

•Plug 84
The New York Times daily edition for Monday, September 10 featured a rave review to a book that "succeeds as art," "Ava's Man," by the paper's national correspondent Rick Bragg, whose writing gives off "the illusion of effortless craft."

•Plug 85, 86 & 87
The September 16 Sunday New York Times Book Review included a rave review in the "Books in Brief" section for the "fascinating" "Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity," by Jennifer Ackerman, who is a contributing writer and editor at the Times, although the review does not mention this. Similarly, there's an "And Bear In Mind" plug for "Marlon Brando," by the "superb biographer" Patricia Bosworth, who still goes unidentified as a Times contributor. The section also gives a recommendation to "Life Script: How the Human Genome Discoveries Will Transform Medicine and Enhance Your Health," by Nicholas Wade, a Times science editor. It's the second successive week of plugs for both Bosworth and Wade.

•Plug 88
The daily New York Times for Monday, September 17 featured a somewhat mixed review of the nonetheless "unusually candid" and "lyrical" "Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds," by Times reporter Stephen Kinzer.

•Plug 89
The Tuesday, September 18 edition of the New York Times included a rave review for "The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair," a "poignant" book that includes "a wonderful job of research," by Times editor Sam Roberts.

•Plug 90, 91, 92 & 93
The Sunday New York Times Book Review for September 23 featured, for the third week in a row, a plug for "Life Script," by Times editor Nocholas Wade, this time in the "And Bear In Mind" section. The same section also included another rave recommendation, also for the third week in a row, for Patricia Bosworth's "Marlon Brando." Once again, Bosworth's status as a long–time Times contributor went unremarked. Likewise, an "And Bear In Mind" citation for Steven Johnson's "Emergence" does not include mention of his affiliation with the Times. The issue also include a review for the "truly moving" novel "Look at Me," by Jennifer Egan, whom the review does not mention is a reporter for the Times Sunday Magazine.

•Plug 94, 95, 96 & 97
The cover of the September 30 Sunday New York Times Book Review featured a full–page illustration for a review of a book by one of the Times' most famous former reporters, David Halberstam. Inside, the book, "War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals," is given a full–page review by the Times chief diplomatic correspondent, Jane Perlez, who calls it "a sprawling tapestry of exquisite bottom–up reporting and powerful vignettes." She does not mention his status as a Pulitzer–winning Times reporter. The issue also contains a "New & Noteworthy Paperbacks" recommendation for "Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran," by Elaine Sciolino, a senior correspondent for the Times, and a "Books in Brief" citation for "To the Edge: A Man, Death Valley, and the Mystery of Endurance," by Kirk Johnson, A Times reporter. And in the "And Bear In Mind" section, there's another plug for "Marlon Brando," by Patricia Bosworth. It's the fourth week in a row the Book Review has plugged Bosworth's book, and the fourth week in a row it's failed to mention that she's a contributor to the paper.

•Plug 98
The front page of the arts section in the daily New York Times for Tuesday, October 2 contained a rave reivew by Michiko Kakutani for the "engrossing," "provocative and illuminating" book, "Richard Nixon: Alone in the White House," by Richard Reeves, a former long–time reporter for the Times, although the review doesn't mention that.

•Plug 99, 100, 101 & 102
The October 7 Sunday New York Times Book Review included a plug for the "well–written biography, "Mary Shelley," by Miranda Seymour, a frequent contributor to the Times book review desk, most recently of a book by another frequent Times reviewer, Claire Messud. The "New & Noteworthy Paperbacks" section, meanwhile, gives a plug to "The Kinder Gentler Military: How Political Correctness Affects Our Ability to Win Wars," by Stephanie Gutmann, a frequent contributor to the newspaper. The section also features a recommendation for "The Missionary and the Libertine," by Ian Buruma, a frequent contributor to the Times Magazine, Book Review, and editorial pages, and a citation for "False Papers," by Andre Aciman, who also contributes frequently to the Times. None of these associations are mentioned in any of the reviews.

•Plug 103
The daily New York Times for Wednesday, October 10 features another rave review for the "brilliantly reported" book by former Times reporter David Halberstam, "War in a Time of Peace." Calling it a "definitive" work, Times critic Richard Bernstein does not mention the author's connection to the newspaper.

•Plug 104
The daily New York Times for Thursday, October 11 features a fervent rave review of "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War," by a "researched and written by a strong interdisciplinary team of writers for The New York Times," Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad. Reviewer John G. Gannon, a former deputy director of the CIA, says it "this excellent book . . . will ease the panic" currently facing the nation about germ warfare in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

•Plug 105, 106, & 107
The cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review for October 14 focuses on the review for "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War," by a trio of writers for The New York Times, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad. It praises their "clear and accessible" book for "the care with which they have assembled their case." There's also a lavish plug for "Richard Nixon: Alone in the White House," by Richard Reeves, who goes unidentified as a former long–time reporter for the Times. The review says, "it's hard to think of a better introduction to the man and his presidency." And the "And Bear In Mind" section includes another recommendation for "Mary Shelley," by Miranda Seymour, who again goes unnoted as a frequent contributor to the Times Sunday Book Review.

Should the Times — or any publication — review books by its own staffers?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?



RELEVANT READING:

Relevant Reading I
John Leonard, former editor of the NYTSBR, tells what it’s like behind the scenes.

Relevant Reading II
Retiring New York Times book reviewer Christopher Lehmann–Haupt talks about the time editors ordered him to give a book a bad review.

Relevant Reading III
The books of Renata Adler, Joe Conason, Gene Lyons, and others get reviewed in the New York Times by people mentioned critically in the book.





Links

Poetry Daily

The Stories of Anton Chekhov

Zembla: The Official Site of the Vladimir Nabokov Society

The New England Review

Ploughshares

The Georgia Review

Visual Thesaurus

Herman Melville's Arrowhead

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