Latest headlines from the world of books
July 20, 2009
AN APPRECIATION
Frank McCourt's career rose from 'Ashes'
"An autobiographical fact," the Irish playwright Brian Friel once remarked, "may be a lie and no less true for all of that."
July 6, 2009
AUTHORS
Lena Horne biography tells of a star shaped by rejection, racism
According to James Gavin's new biography, "Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne," the legendary singer-actress was never comfortable being an icon.
June 25, 2009
'Free' plagiarism charge frames Internet content debate
On Tuesday afternoon, Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of the 2006 bestseller "The Long Tail," received an e-mail warning that his new book, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," was to be challenged.
June 1, 2009
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
BookExpo America reveals an industry in transition
The best way to think about this year's BookExpo America -- the book industry's annual trade show and convention that concluded Sunday at the Jacob Javits Center -- is as a mirror: What you see reflects who you are.
May 26, 2009
AUTHORS
John Sayles, novelist, seeks a binding agreement
For 40 minutes last month he held them spellbound, reading about America in 1898. John Sayles didn't just give the crowd a taste of his new novel, "Some Time in the Sun" -- he performed a comedy about tabloid newsboys in New York, playing 26 characters with thick, period accents.
April 24, 2009
AUTHORS
A very hungry caterpillar found a hungry readership
People who Googled anything on the first day of spring this year were met with a particularly charming version of the search engine's logo. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a beloved children's book character created by Eric Carle in 1969, crawled across the page, eating holes in letters brilliantly colored in characteristic collage style. The only other children's literature icon the Internet giant has deemed recognizable enough to grace its opening search page? Dr. Seuss.
AN APPRECIATION
Visionary with a sharp edge
If J.G. Ballard -- the visionary British novelist who died Sunday of prostate cancer at age 78 -- ends up being remembered, it will likely be as a science fiction writer who aspired to use genre as a vehicle for art. That's true enough, in a certain small-bore manner, but it's ultimately reductive, a way of categorizing Ballard that his entire career stood against.
April 11, 2009
Charles Dickens speaks to 21st century's hard times
To the jaded Holden Caulfield in "The Catcher in the Rye," he was the guy responsible for "all that David Copperfield kind of crap." In "The Wire," he's the obsession of a philistine, prize-obsessed editor who can't stop drawing glib parallels between contemporary Baltimore and 19th century London. To Oscar Wilde, the man's most serious tragedy provoked tears . . . of laughter. ¶ Novelist Charles Dickens, who died in 1870 at 58, has taken a beating over the years. But he appears to be having the last laugh -- and not just because he's gone from being the most popular writer of the Victorian age to the era's best-read emissary for contemporary readers. He's become to the boom-and-bust early 21st century what Jane Austen was to the roaring, chick-lit-besotted '90s. ¶ "Masterpiece" (formerly "Masterpiece Theatre") devoted its February to May schedule to no fewer than three new Dickens adaptations ("Oliver Twist," "Little Dorrit" and "The Old Curiosity Shop") alongside a revival of "David Copperfield," the novelist's favorite and most autobiographical book. The authors Dan Simmons and Matthew Pearl have just published takes on Dickens' unfinished last novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." ¶ Newspaper dispatches seem increasingly drawn from his pages, especially from books like "Oliver Twist," which chronicles crushing urban poverty, and "Little Dorrit," which follows the main character's brutal fall in the social order. The phrase "hard times" -- the title of one of Dickens' least characteristic novels but one expressing his abiding concern for children and the poor -- shows up in headlines almost daily.
April 4, 2009
JACKET COPY
'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' by Seth Grahame-Smith
Fiercely independent Elizabeth Bennet is known for her sharp tongue -- and her sharp dagger.
April 8, 2009
AN APPRECIATION
John Fante's great gift to Los Angeles
Cruelty, racism, poverty, lies, perversity and oversexed self-delusion: Could this be the stuff of the most lyrical love letter ever addressed to the City of Angels?
March 28, 2009
AUTHORS
James Ellroy details his search for love in Playboy
It's the kind of house Hancock Park is famous for: unemphatic but impressive, with a perfect lawn, fresh coat of paint and ivy crawling up the walls. By Los Angeles standards, this is old-school cool. ¶ James Ellroy, all 6 feet 3 of him, is stomping across that manicured lawn, sporting a Hawaiian shirt and golfer's cap and pretending to walk a nonexistent dog. He mimics staring into the window, then simulates masturbating to what he sees inside. ¶ "Just like that," he offers. ¶ This was how the writer, then a gangly teenager living off inhalers and stolen booze and dreaming of literary greatness, spent his youth. Or at least that's the story he's telling today. ¶ Ellroy often behaves as if he's on camera -- offering off-color anecdotes, barking like a dog and generally acting out. But today he actually is: He's walking around this old-money neighborhood (and, the day after, through the city of El Monte) with a video crew from Playboy. ¶ They're shooting a documentary to accompany "The Hilliker Curse," a four-part serial he's writing for the magazine about his relationships with women. The first installment appears in the April issue, which has just hit the stands. The video, meanwhile, will appear at Playboy.com to launch a "Walkabout" series with important writers. ¶ The "L.A. Confidential" author later says he never masturbated on neighbors' lawns -- "That was just hyperbole!" -- but he was a dedicated peeper and self-described "perv" during his teenage years.
March 24, 2009
AUTHORS & IDEAS
Walter Mosley looks east
He's got an elusive black mistress and a bored Swedish wife who doesn't love him. He's raising three kids, only one of whom is his. A low-level mobster wants him to kill someone, and the men he's tracking for a shadowy detective are being murdered one by one. ¶ Leonid McGill, the protagonist of Walter Mosley's new mystery, "The Long Fall," is a harried, middle-aged African American. He's nothing like Easy Rawlins, the Los Angeles private eye who made Mosley one of America's most respected writers. ¶ But it's not just a stage of life that separates the two characters: It's the stage itself. In "The Long Fall," the author has shifted the action from post-World War II Southern California to New York, where he lives. ¶ It's an intriguing change for Mosley, who was born in L.A. and has long been identified with the city's diffuse landscape. ¶ As he sipped a glass of iced tea at Soho House, a private club in New York's meatpacking district, he said the idea for the new novel, the first in a projected series, had more to do with his own restlessness than any sense that the Rawlins saga had run its course.
March 10, 2009
Neil Strauss is ready for any emergency
Neil Strauss hardly seems like a guy who'd kill a goat and gut it with his own hands. A slim intellectual in silver jewelry and designer jeans, he doesn't appear to be the kind of person who would stash food in a forest or plot an escape from his Laurel Canyon home using fire trails and a motorcycle he barely knows how to ride. ¶ Yet that's precisely what Strauss has learned to do over the last three years in an effort to prepare himself should society collapse. It's a journey he not only chronicles in his new book, "Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life," but continues to pursue. ¶ Days before his book's release, Strauss' BlackBerry is brimming with projects. (Get motorcycle license. Take pain-resistance training. Grind grain.) He's looking to strike a few items off his list. ¶ "I'm here to pick up a shotgun," he says, stepping up to the counter at Gun World, a Burbank shop whose anteroom is loaded with ammo and shell cases. The shotgun is a Remington 870 Wingmaster -- the third part of an unholy trinity that also includes a 9-millimeter pistol and a rifle, all of which he keeps in a hidden safe at his house.
March 4, 2009
THE WRITER'S LIFE
For David Foster Wallace's survivors, a paper puzzle
Anybody familiar with the work of David Foster Wallace would not be surprised to hear that the deal for his last -- and posthumous -- book came together in a nontraditional way.
February 3, 2009
AUTHORS
Italian mystery writer Andrea Camilleri keeps Montalbano on the case
Americans have Philip Marlowe and Raymond Chandler. Britons have Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. And Italians have Salvo Montalbano and Andrea Camilleri.
January 28, 2009
John Updike dies at 76; Pulitzer-winning author
John Updike, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction whose novels and short stories exposed an undercurrent of ambivalence and disappointment in small-town, middle-class America, died Tuesday. He was 76.
January 27, 2009
BOOKS & IDEAS
Book Soup's ending isn't yet written
"When a wise man dies," Rabbi David Wolpe asked at the memorial service for Book Soup owner Glenn Goldman, "how can he be replaced?"
10:45 AM PST, January 26, 2009
NEWBERY WINNERS
The horror! Neil Gaiman's spooky book wins John Newbery Medal
Oh, the horror: Neil Gaiman has received the top prize for children's literature: The John Newbery Medal.
January 8, 2009
AUTHORS & IDEAS
Hollywood rarely did Donald Westlake justice
One of the enigmas in the long and rich career of Donald E. Westlake was that this author of more than 100 novels, many of them popular, accessible and plot-driven works of crime fiction, both grim and comic, received such a spotty handling by Hollywood.
January 3, 2009
AUTHOR APPRECIATION
Under any name, Donald Westlake was a grandmaster
Donald E. Westlake is dead. This simple sentence can't even begin to encapsulate the enormity of this event. Because it also means Richard Stark has passed on too, as has Tucker Coe and Samuel Holt, Timothy J. Culver and J. Morgan Cunningham and a slew of other pen names best left to gather dust. The sum of these pseudonymous parts is a writing career well over 100 novels strong, running the gamut from overt comedy to biting satire, subtle existentialism to social commentary, and downright impossible to emulate in today's publishing climate.
December 29, 2008
HERO COMPLEX
Even for Neil Gaiman, 'The Sandman' is a singular dream
Even in casual conversation, British author Neil Gaiman sometimes sounds as if he's narrating some dark fairy tale -- his sentences slither across old stone floors or flit on gossamer wings. He also happens to live in a rambling Minnesota manse that looks, Gaiman says, as if it were "drawn by Charles Addams on a day he was feeling particularly morbid."
December 20, 2008
BOOKS
'Bible Illuminated': The latest Word
If God made man in his own image, then does God look anything like Arnold Schwarzenegger? That's a question you might mull over when you come across a picture of a much younger topless governator flexing in the pages of a glossy edition of the New Testament called "Bible Illuminated: The Book."
December 15, 2008
BOOKS & IDEAS
The Big Read is a national page-turner
There was no snow at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, but the four sled dogs tethered there seemed acclimated enough. One amiably licked the face of a child in a stroller. The hubbub wasn't much like the Yukon, but the dogs were there to excite interest in Jack London's "The Call of the Wild."
October 29, 2008
AN APPRECIATION
Tony Hillerman knew New Mexico
When I heard that Tony Hillerman had died Sunday at 83, I felt that stone-heaviness of grief, as if he were a beloved great-uncle. I felt regret, like I'd never gotten to say goodbye or even offer a thank you for all that he gave me. Gone was a positive influence in my life, someone who had helped me grow up and become a writer.
October 15, 2008
AUTHORS
Hanif Kureishi weds wit with his middle-aged wisdom
NEW YORK -- "I turned 50 and realized I'd been around for ages." That's Hanif Kureishi, novelist and screenwriter ("My Beautiful Laundrette," "Venus"), talking about the panorama of his latest book, "Something to Tell You."
October 10, 2008
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Le Clezio -- who's he?
If the selection of French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio as the 2008 Nobel literature laureate has anything to tell us, it's that Horace Engdahl means what he says.
October 3, 2008
Mary Shelley at 826LA
"Frankenstein" author Mary Shelley has made a rare Los Angeles appearance. On Sept. 26, some 150-odd years after her demise, she dropped by 826LA's Time Travel Mart in Echo Park -- that Sunset Boulevard purveyor of leg warmers, bottled "robot emotions" and soon a fragrance timeline (a whiff of history from caveman to Studio 54) -- as part of the Dead Authors series to report back from beyond.
September 29, 2008
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Banned Books Week a thorny issue
I'm ambivalent about Banned Books Week, which runs through Saturday. On the one hand, we clearly still need such a public affirmation, as the recent tumult over Sarah Palin and her "rhetorical" inquiries to the Wasilla, Alaska, public library show.
October 6, 2008
AUTHORS
David Foster Wallace mourned at Pomona College
"Tell me a story about how things will get better," David Foster Wallace asked his friend Jonathan Franzen last summer. It was a particularly dark summer for Wallace, mired in a depression that ended, on Sept. 12, in suicide.
BOOK NEWS
The winning presidential ticket: Obama-Palin in 2008!
If book sales are any indication, it's going to be an Obama/Palin administration. This revelation comes courtesy of Amazon.com, which launched its Election 2008 store last week. Among many cool features, the store tracks the sales of books written by the presidential candidates, the vice presidential nominees and the multitude of books focusing on the hot topic du jour.
September 18, 2008
BOOKS
Reprints are king in parts of book world
People whose lives are tied up with books, as writers, critics, booksellers or readers, are always -- always -- looking for something new. But in the last few years, they've been turning to something old.
September 15, 2008
Neal Stephenson takes the long view
SEATTLE -- For all of Neal Stephenson's achievements, his most impressive may be his ability to attract a following equal parts hacker and literati. His popularity is all the more anomalous because his books are always long and often difficult. His last project, "The Baroque Cycle," was a fictional trilogy about the birth of capitalism and the history of science, set partly in 17th century London, stretching almost 2,700 pages and written with a fountain pen.
September 10, 2008
BOOKS & COMMENTARY
Author Herman Wouk's spellbinding ways
The Library of Congress will present its first Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Writing of Fiction to Herman Wouk on Wednesday night.
September 8, 2008
Reporter David Carr investigates his past
Since everyone nowadays seems to save the worst for first, it's likely you've already heard the gory bits about New York Times media columnist David Carr's former life.
June 12, 2008
BOOK IT
Universal options 'Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory'
The deal
May 25, 2008
Books & Authors
Writer Aleksandar Hemon resists labels
Aleksandar Hemon looked like a man calmly bemused by inconvenience. He had been invited by PEN to celebrate the publication of his third book, "The Lazarus Project," out this month from Riverhead, but the flight from his hometown of Chicago was grounded for several hours, so the author, his wife and 7-month-old daughter showed up for the party in his honor exactly one minute before it ended.
BOOK NEWS
James Frey rises from the ashes
JAMES FREY was back in his old neighborhood, strolling happily along the Venice boardwalk, enjoying a sunny day in a T-shirt and aviator shades as he passed tattoo shops and a man who was selling what he claimed to be "philosophy." It doesn't get any better than this, Frey's body language seemed to say.
April 13, 2008
The Writing Life
A force to be reckoned with
Bill McKibben's writing -- part art, part essay, part journalism with more than a smidgen of harangue -- has framed the thinking on environmental issues for more than a generation. Two new books out this spring, "The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces From an Active Life" (Henry Holt: 446 pp., $18 paper) and "American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau" (Library of America: 1,050 pp., $40), will impress on the reader how calmly, if not always quietly, he has illuminated paths to the future, thinking alongside us about what might be possible, even as information hurtles toward us, technology blinds us and being human seems to mean something entirely different than what any of us would consciously want.
Books & Authors
A look at L.A.'s independent bookstore scene
When my first book was published, in 1990 by Milkweed Editions, I didn't actually feel like a writer until I read at Dutton's Bookstore in Brentwood. Opening the box of books, holding a copy up for my baby daughter to see while my then husband made fun of my author photo, I knew the whole time I wanted to go to Dutton's.
March 5, 2008
Tim Rutten: The lure of made-up memoirs
Tuesday's revelation that a critically acclaimed memoir of gang life in South Los Angeles was an elaborate hoax raises troubling questions about the economics of American publishing, about our collective deference to victims and about the paucity of real literature based on our most urgent urban experiences.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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