J.D. Salinger

A federal judge has banned U.S. publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, the Swedish book whose publisher and author, Frederik Colting, originally called it a “sequel” to J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye — but then stopped calling it that after Salinger filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against him.

According to an Associated Press wire story by Larry Neumeister, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts said Colting had “taken well more from `Catcher,’ in both substance and style, than is necessary for the alleged transformative purpose of criticizing Salinger and his attitudes and behavior.” She also said that Colting’s claim that the book was meant as parody or a critique was “problematic and lacking in credibility.”

“Quite to the contrary,” she said, “the original jacket of ‘60 Years’ states that it is ‘… a marvelous sequel to one of our most beloved classics’. It is simply not credible for defendant Colting to assert now that this primary purpose was to critique Salinger and his persona.”

Sewall Chan gets Colting’s reaction in a New York Times report: “I am pretty blown away by the judge’s decision Call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books.”

The decision doesn’t necessarily end the case — as Chan reports in the Times, “While the case could still go to trial, Judge Batts’s ruling means that Mr. Colting’s book cannot be published in the United States pending the resolution of the litigation, which could drag on for months or years.”

Meanwhile, neither Salinger nor his attorneys responded to calls for comment on their apparent victory.

Twitter has certainly provided ample exposure lately to the real level of craft, intellect, and — dare I say it? — soul behind some of consumer culture’s leading literary products: Today’s revealing tantrum about being criticized comes from Ayelet Waldman (previously known for writing maybe a little too much about what it’s like to have sex with Michael Chabon).

As Mary Elizabeth Williams reports in a story for Salon (which we first saw on Galleycat), after critic Jill Lepore gave Waldman’s newest book about having sex with Michael Chabon, Bad Mother, a bad review in The New Yorker, Waldman felt compelled to go to her Twitter account and compose a deft retort: “May Jill Lepore rot in hell. That is all.”

But alas — probably, it won’t be.

Home page for the Harvard University Press

Hard times continue to crush presses large and small: It was disclosed yesterday that one of the country’s most prestigious university presses, the Harvard University Press, has “done away with seven positions,” including “three in marketing, one in sales, one in design, and two in editorial,” according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Press director William P. Sisler, says the layoffs are part of a larger purge that’s going on at Harvard, where 275 people were let go late last month. “Even before the economy really began to tank last fall, we were already engaged in planning for the changed and changing publishing environment,” he explains to the Chronicle. “Then the bad stuff hit, the university saw its endowment drop, and our small segment of that obviously dropped as well, sales decreased, etc., etc., and the change process was expedited.”

Meanwhile, he notes, the layoffs “did not affect the composition of the list,” which seems clear enough, judging by the book featured on the press’s home page: Richard Posner’s A Failure of Capitalism.

The new Elonex eBook

In England, where the Kindle has yet to roam, things are starting to happen on the ebook front. According to a post at Electronista (”gadgets for geeks”), “UK-based Elonex International has partnered with the UK division of Borders to release its first 6-inch eBook Reader. Users can download ebooks via Borders’ eBook Download Store.”

This latest entrant in the ebook race is 6 inches long and over a third of an inch thick. Weighting in at 6.5 oz, it claims to have a battery life of 8,000 page turns. Electronista says, “The e-Ink screen is said to be two and a half times sharper than a conventional display and can be read in direct sunlight. Users will have the ability to choose from one of eight font sizes and turn the reader horizontally for a wider viewing area.”

UK Borders is offering 100 free ebooks along with the reader itself for a $313 (USD) price tag. And, we further learn, “The Elonex reader is compatible with Adobe Digital Editions software, which downloads and protects eBook purchases. DRM-protected reflowable PDF and ePub formats are supported, as are other popular eBook formats and images/pictures.”

Sound great. Is it the UK’s answer to the Kindle? We shall see…. But meanwhile, most fetching is the catchy branding the Elonex folks didn’t come up with for their new reader. They’re calling it, simply, the “eBook.”

Bruno Bettleheim in the United States in the 1950's

The University of Vienna has announced that as of June 30th a Memorial Book for victims of National Socialism at the university is available online internationally. According to a press release, “The database comprises approximately 2,200 names and biographies of those predominantly Jewish affiliates of the University of Vienna who were dismissed by the university following the advent of National Socialism in 1938 and who were consequently exiled and/or murdered.”

One of the foremost universities in Europe at the time, the University of Vienna faculty included many of the leading lights of the generation. Among the many victims of the University’s dismissal were the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, the writer Stefan Zweig, the psychologist Charlotte Bühler, the composer Egon Wellesz and the jurist and later prime minister Bruno Kreisky.

According to the release, “Following the advent of the National Socialist regime in the year 1938, more than 2,700 mostly Jewish affiliates of the University of Vienna were dismissed and subsequently exiled and/or murdered due to ‘racial’ and/or ‘political’ reasons — lecturers, students and administration employees. Furthermore, over 200 alumni were stripped of their academic titles.“

The book is seen as an open, evolving project, with the online book seen as an opportunity for the University of Vienna to expand their knowledge, and “to deal with the complex dimensions of National Socialism with regard to its own history,” as the press release states.

There is also a actual handwritten version of the memorial book available at the Marpe Lanefesh Memorial, the former Jewish Prayer House of the former General Hospital at the Campus of the University of Vienna.

With Amazon.com dropping still more of its “Amazon affiliates” in states where legislation is pending that would require the company to collect sales taxes (see yeterday’s MobyLives report), Kristen McLean, director of the Association of Booksellers for Children, has posted an “open condolence letter” on the Shelf Awareness newsletter.

“Boy, it sure sucks to be dumped,” it begins. “It’s like the morning after the prom, when in wrinkled dress and wilting corsage you realize they’re just not that into you. At least, not when they may have to collect millions in state sales tax that could help fix bridges, keep schools open and fund libraries at a time when your states are truly suffering. And they seemed so nice.”

She continues: “Well, I want to invite you to the indie party. While the flashy prom has been happening at the country club, we’ve been holding our own get-together in the gym. What we lack in glamour, we make up for in charm. Like you, we love to recommend books. We think it’s cool that you’re recommending books, and with us there’s no such thing as too small. We won’t marginalize you. And we all pay our local taxes.

Best of all we have an affiliate program too! It’s called IndieBound, and we’d love to have you be a part of it. You’ll get a reward for using it, your readers can keep getting their books off your site, and your state will benefit in the end. Everyone wins.”

DJ Jazzy Phil (from Jewlicious.com)

The reviews are in. James Marcus’ dance track featuring the “Jewish shouting” of Philip Roth, which debuted last Thursday on MobyLives, is a hit, not to mention a viral sensation. While the New York Times said it “won’t be hitting the Top 40 chart any time soon,” they added that it’s already “playing in perpetuity at the hippest dance club our college-aged selves could imagine.” MediaBistro predicted that it’s “destined to be the ringtone of choice among hip literary types this summer.” (Though Gawker corrects this post, reminding us that “there are no ‘hip literary types.’ “) While in The Guardian, critic Alison Flood admits that she dreams of “getting New York’s clubbers to shake their stuff to a 76-year-old novelist’s yodelling.”

How does Philip Roth feel about his dance scene debut? In an interview about the track with Flavorwire, Marcus says he’s not heard from Roth: “I have no idea what he would make of the dance mix. Probably he would regard it as a digital frivolity, which sounds about right. In any case, I hope he wouldn’t be offended, since I meant it as an honest homage.”

We’re thrilled to see Marcus’ track launched into the world, and we really do hope it becomes the summer’s “ringtone of choice.” The thing is, it wasn’t actually a ringtone … yet. So we’ve made it into one for you: If you have a fancy phone, you can download the original mp3 here. If you are low-fi cell user, you can download a new shortened version, which can be customized for your particular mobile phone model, by visiting Mobango here.

Another day, another state — or two — feels the wrath of Amazon.com: The internet retail giant has “cut ties with Hawaii and Rhode Island Web sites that refer customers to the online retailer in an effort to avoid collecting sales taxes in those states,” reports Rachel Metz in an Associated Press wire story.

Just yesterday, MobyLives reported on Amazon cutting off marketing associates — sites that encourage visitors to “click through” to Amazon, for which they in turn get a cut of sales — in North Carolina. Today, it’s the same story: “Amazon notified associates in Rhode Island and Hawaii that the company was no longer working with them as of Monday and Tuesday, respectively, because the states have passed laws to collect sales taxes on these transactions.”

And spokeswoman Patty Smith “said the online retailer has sent letters to the governors and legislatures of California and Connecticut, as well as other states that are considering similar legislation.”

Meanwhile, the company isn’t releasing the one bit of news that would let you know if this means anything or not — that is, how many associates it has … but, says the AP report, “Smith said there are ‘thousands’ of them.”

Alain de Botton

Another author upset about a negative review of his book has left an unfortunately revealing sample of their unedited prose out there for all the world to see on the internet: Alain de Botton, after getting a bad review for his newest, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, from Caleb Crain in the New York Times Book Review, decided to go to Crain’s blog and tell him a thing or two in the comments section.

“I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make,” writes de Botton. Also, “You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review.”

Oprah Winfrey hosts Toni Morrison when Song of Solomon was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in November, 1996

Is there an editor anywhere (or an editor’s assistant, or a dutiful reader of slush) who has not been assured by at least one correspondent that the submission under consideration is perfect for Oprah?

Since her first book pick, Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean, in September 1996, Oprah Winfrey’s bestseller-making choices –- Viking printed an estimated 3 million copies of Mitchard’s book –- have inspired the fever dreams of publishers and writers.

But independent publishers have had little reason to hope that their books would be among the anointed. By the time a choice-fatigued Oprah suspended her book club in 2002, Random House had been the publisher of 21 of the 46 titles chosen, accounting for an estimated $100 million in sales over the six-year period.

In the last thirteen years, only one of Oprah’s Book Club picks has been published by an independent house, W.W. Norton’s House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III, in 2000. (Elie Wiesel’s Night, Oprah’s only pick of 2006, was acquired by Arthur Wang in 1959, before Hill & Wang was adjoined to FSG [1971] – and before FSG became part of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck [1993]. In 2005, PW Daily reported that Random House imprint Vintage shipped an initial 500,000 copies and ordered a further 100,000 of a $29.95 boxed set by William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August, all originally published by the prescient and independent Harrison Smith, first in association with Jonathan Cape, and then Robert Haas, between 1929 and 1932.)

On Friday the 19th, subscribers to Oprah’s Book Club were urged (via OprahNewsletter@oprah.com) to “Start Reading a New Book Today” and were introduced to The Oprah Magazine Books of Summer. A few independent publishers must be “joyful and glad of heart” (1 Kings 8:66). Of the “25 Books You Can’t Put Down,” seven are published by indies.

Oprah’s big house choices, dominated by non-fiction, include Dave Cullen’s Columbine (Twelve), subject of a shot, shelved, and never-to-be-seen Oprah episode from this April; The Food of a Younger Land (Riverhead), edited by Mark Kurlansky, a rediscovery of the Federal Writer’s Project’s Depression-era compendium of ”American cookery and the part it has played in national life;” and James Gavin’s 608-page, reaching-for-definitive biography of Lena Horne, Stormy Weather (Atria). The big houses also supply two re-issues: Ernest Hemingway’s re-mixed, unfinished memoir, A Moveable Feast, originally published by then-independent Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1964, and Madeleine L’Engle’s novel, Camilla, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) first published by the as-yet-unbought Thomas Y. Crowell in 1951.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with new novels by Jill Ciment (Pantheon) and Colum McCann (Random House) are some books that we didn’t expect to see on Oprah’s bedside table. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, published by David Borgenicht’s Philadelphia-based Quirk Books, is credited to Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (also author of The Big Book of Porn).

The next independently published title on Oprah’s list is The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (City Lights Books), by Hal Niedzviecki. Mr. Niedzviecki is coincidentally the author of a profile of the aforementioned Quirk Books that appeared in Toronto’s Globe & Mail, “Publishers feel smart about selling people stupid books.” That was in 2005. They’re feeling even smarter now.

Oprah’s Reader’s Guide notes, “The Peep Diaries reflects the aspirations and confusions of the growing number of people willing to trade the details of their private lives for catharsis, attention, and notoriety.”
Now that’s a book that’s perfect for Oprah.

Here’s the rest of the list of Oprah’s independently published picks for summer reading:

Poems from the Women’s Movement
Edited by Honor Moore
Library of America

One D.O.A., One on the Way
By Mary Robison
Counterpoint, 2009

The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards:
Stories
By Robert Boswell
Graywolf

A Meaningful Life
By L. J. Davis
Introduction by Jonathan Lethem
NYRB Classics

Essential Pleasures:
A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud
Edited by Robert Pinsky
W.W. Norton