The Lonely VoiceFrank O' Connor
Penguin LostAndrey Kurkov
MobyLives is off for the holidays — Christmas, Hanukah, whatever you got, we embrace it, we celebrate it, we … oh all right, we ignore it and simply use the time off to read. We’ll be back on Monday, 5 January, 2009. Happy whatever to…
In our final installment of the Melville House Live Book project before the holiday break — the series will resume on January 5 — Kari Lydersen talks to a labor historian to help contextualize the takeover of Republic Windows & Doors …. Chicago, December 22,…
Those who decry the waning influence of literature upon public discourse should take heart from the way Curtis Sittenfeld‘s novel about Laura Bush, American Wife, seems to have prompted — and really, what else could it have been? — a reassessment by the American intelligencia…
A French court has declared that Victor Hugo — dead since 1885 — has no “moral right” sufficient to block publication of sequels to his books concocted by modern day writers. According to a Reuters wire story, descendents led by Pierre Hugo had brought suit…
In this installment of the Melville House Live Book project, Kari Lydersen supplies some relevant labor history behind the takeover of Republic Windows & Doors … Chicago, December 19, 2008 — As the Republic Windows & Doors story moves forward, I will post a series…
One of the most famous anonymous characters in the history of American political literature, Deep Throat, has died. W. Mark Felt, who as associate director of the FBI secretly tipped of Bob Woodward to “follow the money” behind President Richard Nixon‘s attempts to tamp down…
For the first time since the last inaguration of Bill Clinton — meaning twelve years and a lifetime ago — a poet will be featured at the swearing in ceremony of an American president. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced yesterday that Barack…
Scientists have conclusively proven that Oliver Twist was a greedy little bugger who certainly was not in need of the “more” he asked for in his famous line, “Please, sir, I want some more.” According to a Reuters wire story, “The picture painted by Charles…
A Guardian column by Esther Addley analyzes the Christmas card photo of Tony and Cherie Blair — wherein, out of office, they pose not in the governmental majesty of 10 Downing Street, but against a book case full of books. So, beyond the fact that…
“His love might have been like a red red rose, but it turns out that Robert Burns may also have been suffering from a rather nasty STD, according to a collection of explicit writing apparently by Scotland’s national bard, due to go on sale in…
Two, count ‘em, two books about the Bernard Madoff scandal were announced by two different New York conglomerates yesterday. According to a very brief report on the AP wires, HarperCollins and Random House each announced deals yesterday, with press releases that suggested an urgency that…
Rumor has it that a long, thoughtful posting at the popular TomDispatch website run by former conglomerate publisher Tom Englehart (an editor at Pantheon, then Metropolitan) — a piece that looks critically at the firings of “Black Wednesday” and their aftermath — was inspired by…
After its restructuring announcement two weeks ago (see the earlier MobyLives report), rumors have been flying throughout the New York book scene that Random House would follow-up with layoffs after the holidays. It didn’t take that long: Michael Cader at Publisher’s Lunch (not available as…
There has been considerable comment about the Republic Windows and Doors takeover being unprecedented in the US since the 1930s. In fact, as Kari Lydersen observes in her ongoing reports from Chicago on the takeover, there have been other, strikingly similar occupations. This is the…
An employee at the Amazon.com warehouse in England cited for Dickensian working conditions in a report on yesterday’s MobyLives has written in to say: it’s worse than you thought. “Alan” at the Amazon warehouse in Bedfordshire, England writes in to MobyLives to say: “I work…
It’s the mantra of the few people left who support George W. Bush: “I’m confident that people will come to change their mind about the president and some of the decisions he made. You need time to get past the current news cycle and the…
People across the US recoiled in shock earlier this week when an actual, real-live American politician stood at a rostrum flanked by an American president and quoted, gulp — a novelist! American mainstream media is apparently in too deep a state of shock to have…
At PW news editor Rachel Deahl is reporting that the most important writer on the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt list, Philip Roth, is not leaving the company — yet. Deahl says Roth’s agent, Andrew Wylie, “confirmed that Roth’s next book, due out in fall 2009, is…
In the newest installment in the Melville House “Live Book” project, Kari Lydersen examines how labor and immigrant movements converged at the Republic Doors and Windows factory …. Wednesday, December 17, 2008 — On May 1, 2008 immigrant workers from Republic Windows and Doors were…
More details have emerged about what was going on at Macmillan‘s various imprints (FSG, St. Martin’s, and Picador) yesterday, a day after the announcement that 64 positions would be “eliminated” — i.e., that 64 people were being fired. MobyLives hears (from a St. Martin’s editor…
“No other writer inspires as much anger and mountains of hate mail” as Arundhati Roy, observes Saba Naqvi Bhaumik in the Hindustan Times (in an article called “Why we love to hate Ms Roy,” which is unavailable on the Times’ own website but is posted…
The tip-off, says Amy Griffis, manager at Half-Price Books in Crystal, MInnesota, is when someone calls a used bookstore to see if it has a certain title in stock and asks, “Is it in pristine condition?” Griffis says that usually means they plan to give…
News just in — a writer takes advantage of the financial crisis to further his career. Sebastian Faulks told Pandora for her column at The Independent that he will be the first to write The Bonfire of the Vanities for the noughties. Of course he…
It’s become a truism of the book business: anthologies don’t sell. But somehow Brooklyn indie Akashic has managed to make a hit out of not just one but a whole series of anthologies. Akashic’s Noir series — collections of stories all centered on one locale…
In a story that echoes the ongoing fight between the Ukraine and Russia over who is responsible for the upkeep of Anton Chekhov‘s house in Yalta where he wrote some of his greatest work — as a Guardian story explains, the house was in Ukraine,…
This is the latest installment in the ongoing Melville House “Live Book” project, Revolt on Goose Island, by Kari Lydersen …. Chicago, December 16, 2008 — “In the religious community we say Satan is alive and well and takes many forms,” declared Kim Bobo, a…
A Times of London reporter who went undercover as an employee of Amazon.co.uk has come back with a startling report. As Claire Newell and Daniel Foggo report, their undercover reporter at Amazon’s enormous warehouse in Bedfordshire found that workers were: Warned that the company refuses…
Hip hip, Hurray! Scrabble is sixty years old today. Alfred Butts invented the fiendishly addictive word game in 1938, after spending days poring over The New York Times to establish the best possible point system. Originally called Criss Crosswords, the game took some time to…
When Michael Wolff first set out to write his recently-released book about Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, he tried to contact Judith Regan to see if she would discuss her well-known suit against Murdoch over her firing from HarperCollins, which is owned…
There was a time, dare I say it, when the British claimed superiority over the Yanks, especially when it came to education. My mother, a fiercely competitive history teacher, reveled in examples of American ignorance, mainly to do with the works of Thomas Hardy. Beloved…