Smith Picks Kay / Drunken Shakespeare?

Smith Picks Kay
The seventy-eight-year-old actor Bernard Kay won the New Writing Ventures award for creative non-fiction. Novelist Ali Smith, the chief judge described Kay’s memoir as “a perfectpiece of explication.”

Drunken Shakespeare?
John Sutherland writes the some experts believe that Shakespeare wrote with a hangover. Sutherland quotes Ben Jonson to make his point: “I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as a n honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn’d) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand. Which the Plyaers thought a malevolent speech.”

Let’s Ban a Book / Murakami Gets Another O’Connor / Kid Gets Deal / Bascombe Returns

Let’s Ban Some Books
It’s that time of the year when people afraid of ideas and notions that don’t appeal to their delicate sense of sensible push to ban books from libraries and schools. According to the American Library Association, groups are trying to ban 42 classics, such as the terrible To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, The Lord of the Files, 1984, Beloved, Ulysses, The Color Purple, Of Mice and Men, Catch-22, Brave New World, Sun Also Rises, As I Lay Dying, Song of Solomon, Heart of Darkness, Their Eyes Were Watching God, A Farewell to Arms, Clockwork Orange, Gone with the Wind, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Slaughterhouse Five, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Call of the Wild, All the King’s Men, The Jungle, Invisible Man, Satanic Verses, In Cold Blood, Sons and Lovers, Naked Lunch, Cat’s Cradle, A Separate Peace, Women in Love, The Naked and the Dead, Rabbit, Run, An American Tragedy, Tropic of Cancer, and Native Son. If these books are being banned for sex and violence, then the guardians of our children’s sensibilities missed one: the Old Testament.

Murakami Gets 2nd O’Connor
Novelist Haruki Murakami won his second Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award for Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman collection.

Kid Gets Fantasy Deal
An eleven-year-old sends a fantasy manuscript via email to the States and gets a deal.

Bascombe Returns
The Guardian is running a portion of Richard Ford’s followup to Sportswriter’s Frank Bascombe.

Talking with Ford

Talking with Ford
“I think of the friends he has mentioned, some of them pictured on the walls of his study–Sam Shepard, Cormac McCarthy, Tobias Wolff. Maybe even John Updike. I make myself some toast and go and stand on the lawn overlooking hte bay where gulls are squawking…” That’s from Phil Hogan interview with Richard Ford.

No Blarney in Her Story
I saw Kathy O’Beirne give a presentation about the life of a writer. This was long after her memoir “Don’t Every Tell” details became a best seller in Ireland and England. It’s the story of girls at the Magdalene laundry who were raped and abused by the nuns and priest responsible for their care. Long accused of lying or being dellusional, O’Beirne has fought critics. That could be changing. Read <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1879888,00.html>, an essay by Henry McDonald, Ireland editor for “The Observer.”

Shafak Acquitted
Elif Shafak was finally acquitted of “insulting Turkishness” over remarks made by a fictional character in her novel “The Bastard of Istanbul.” The charges were dropped at the request of the prosecutor. Read <http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1877748,00.html>.

Award for the Agentless / Giller Prize List / Booker List / Interviews

Award for Writers without Agents
The Sobol Literary Agency will award $100,000 to a writer of a complete novel and who is not represented by an agent. It’s a contest, and like most contests today, there’s an entry fee: $85. All entrants agree that the winner will sign Sobol as his/her agent. For more information, <www.sobolaward.com>.

Giller Prize Longlist
Fifteen Canadian authors have been listed as finalists in the annual Giller Prize: David Adams Richards for The Friends of Meager Fortune, Caroline Adderson for Pleased to Meet You, Todd Babiak for The Garneau Block, Randy Boyagoda for Governor of the Northern Province, Douglas Coupland for jPod, Alan Cumyn for The Famished Lover, Rawi Huge for De Niro’s Game, Kenneth J. Harvey for Inside, Wayne Johnston for The Custodian of Paradise, Vincent Lam for Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, Annette Lapointe for Stolen, Pascale Quiviger for The Perfect Circle, Gaetan Soucy for The Immaculate Conception, Russell Wangersky for The Hour of Bad Decisions, and Carol Windley for Home Schooling.

Booker Shortlist
The Booker Shortlist has been announced: Sarah Walters for The Night Watch, Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss, Kate Grenville for The Secret River, M.J. Hyland for Carry Me Down, Hisham Matar for In the Country of Men, and Edward St. Aubyn for Mother’s Milk.

Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Gary Shteyngart
The Book Critics Circle has a wonderful interview with Chimamanda Adichie, whose first novel—Purple Hibiscus—earned her critical fame and a literary award. Her second, Half of a Yellow Sun, has been released. “Right now, I’m on page twenty-five of my new novel. This is a time of great terror and glee…” That’s what Gary Shteyngart has to say in his interview.

Remnick Talks / 9/11 Rehashed / The Dream State

Talking with the New Yorker’s Editor
David Remnick, the fifth editor of the 81-year-oold publication New Yorker, rescued it from its own demise. In a Guardian essay, Gaby Wood describes him as eccentric.

9/11 Rehashed
I’ve never understood humanity’s need to celebrate or to remember events on a five-year cycle, especially an event such as the destruction inflicted on innocents on 9/11/01. A while ago, the famed British author wrote “The Last Days of Muhammad Atta,” a leader of the 9/11 attacks. If memory serves, it appeared in the New Yorker. The Observer republished it last week. This week, its parent publication has followed with an essay, “The Age of Herrorism,” in which Amis analyses the rise of Isalmic extremism and the West’s weak-ass response to it.

The Dream State
During the past several months, I have become convinced that writers, or any individual for that matter, gets the most from her/his creativity when they are closest to a dream state, as I first heard from Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize novelists as well as author of From Where You Dream, published by Grove Press, which I would recommend to any writer. Recently Michael Frayn came out with The Human Touch by Faber and Faber, and an essay from that book appears in the Guardian.

Palmer Wins Poetry Award

Palmer Wins Wallace Stevens Award
The Academy of American Poets has award Michael Palmer the $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award for his proven mastery of poetry. The 63-year-old poet will receive the award on November 8 at the Lang Auditorium at the New School, 55 W. 13^th St., New York City. The event is free and open to the public.

Manfouz & Smilansky / Power of First Sentences / Where’s the Novel?

Mahfouz and Smilansky Dead
At the age of 94, Naguib Mahfouz died recently. He was the first Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature. The Associated Press noted: “Mahfouz’s novels depicted modern life in his beloved neighborhood of Islamic Cairo, a teeming district of millennium-old mosques and winding alleyways. He brought to life his city’s traditional families as they faced the 20^th Century’s upheavals, including the change role of women.” The Guardian also writes of the great novelist.

“Variously described as a voice of conscience or national traitor, florid stylist or literary genius, the Israeli writer Yizhar Smilansky, known by his penname of S Yizhar, always evoked strong emotions in his native land,” writes Lawrence Joffe of the novelist, who recently died at the age of 89.

The Power of First Sentences
“Consider next another famous first sentence: ‘Call me Ishmael.’…Far from putting the reader on the track, however, Melville’s first line sets us on a very bumpy course. The hero narrator’s name is, it appears, not Ishmael (but you can call me that). As the notes of the student editions inform us, the nom de plume is freighted with allegorical significance – but who, under his biblical name of convenience, is this Ishmael?” That’s just one of the point’s John Sutherland makes about first lines of a novel.

Where’s the Novel?
“This summer, Harper’s magazine has been serializing a novel…John Robert Lennon’s Happyland lends itself to publication in installments. But why it’s appearing in Harper’s, and not in book form, is one fo the more intriguing publishing stories of the season,” writes Rachel Donadio.

Devil in Harry / Free Books / Nye on Poetry / Gilbert & Slate Finalists / Writers at a Glimpse

The Devil Is in the Potter
According to the Vatican’s chief exorcist, the devil is in the Harry Porter, and so the vigilant Father Gabriele Amorth condemned J.K. Rowling’s wizard as evil. (Several years ago, I was coaching basketball teams for a Catholic grammar school. The kids came up with a name and logo for their teams—the Wizards. It was nixed by the principal.) The Sidney Morning Herald also reminds us that great thinker Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—now Pope—described the impish Potter as a “potentially corrupting influence.” Lynne Hume and Kathleen McPhillip edited a several of academic essays, stating that Medieval myths, comics, and fantasy superseded religious text in the popular mind set.

Google’s Free Books
Soon you will be able to download classic novels—those in the public domain—from Googles Book Search service, even though the service remains in BETA, meaning being tested. The plan calls for individuals to download the book as a PDF file (Acrobat).

Nye Talks with Hirschfield at WRMEA
“Why are we so monumentally slow / Soldiers stalk a pharmacy: / big guns, little pills. / If you tilt your head just slightly / It’s ridiculous.” As Robert Hirschfield reminds us in this essay from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Then I heard: And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon England’s mountains green? / And was the holy Lamb of God / On England’s pleasant pastures seen? I wonder what Blake would have asked Nye, who was born in St. Louis more than half a century ago.

Gilbert and Slate Finalists for LM Poetry Prize
The Academy of American Poets has selected Jack Gilbert and Ron Slate as finalists for its $25,000 Lenore Marshall Prize. Past recipients include Philip Levine, Sterling A. Brown, Adrienne Rich, Thom Gunn, W.S. Merwin, Marilyn Hacker, and Charles Wright. The academy accepts submissions between April 1^st and June 15^th. Slate is featured on a podcast at the Houghton Mifflin Web site.

A Glimpse at Writers
Jane Ciabattari talks with Lily Brett at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, NY. Meanwhile William Hamilton talks with Edward P. Jones (author of the Pulitzer-wining The Known World) and his territory, called Washington DC. And Laura Miller talks about the eminence of style in regards to Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

Perkins Award / Meek Gets Another / Writers’ Camps

Mawell Perkins Award Winner
Ther Mercantile Library announced that it will give its Maxwell Perkins Award to Gary Fisketjon of Knopf Publishing. Fisketjon has worked with Bret Easton Ellis, Raymond Carver, Patricia Highsmith, Jay McInerney, and Cormac McCarthy. Last year the library presented the award for the first time to Nan Talese. The award will be presented in early November along with the yet announced Clifton Fadiman Award for Excellence in Fiction and the Annual John Sargent Sr. Award.

Meek Gets Scottish Arts Council Award
James Meek, author of The People’s Act of Love, won his second prize for the novel from the Scottish Arts Council. The novel also won the Ondaatje Prize and was on the Booker long list.

Writers’ Camp
In a New York Times essay, entitled “What I Did at Summer Writers’ Camp,” Rachel Donadio explores the reactions of writers attending such famous colonies as MacDowell in Peterborough, NH, and Yaddo in Saratoga, NY.