Round-up, 21 September 2012: Gay heroes, copyright, small press successes, and hobbitses

So the other week I was passing comment on gay elves. I guess what the world really wants and needs, but some literary agents seem to want to suppress, is a gay hero. Or maybe a just-happens-to-be-gay hero. All credit to Viking Penguin, who just signed up a post-apocalyptic young adult novel with what sounds like a just-happens-to-be-gay protagonist.

(While on the subject, we mustn’t forget that J.K. Rowling’s Dumbledore was apparently a just-happens-to-be-gay wizard.)

Here’s a detailed but useful assessment of how and why academics and teachers should defend their own copyright and the use of their own content: ‘Copyright for Academics in the Digital Age’.

Some good coverage from the BBC and the Guardian on the small presses (and alternative publishing models, e.g., subscription at And Other Stories) who have been brought to wider attention by the shortlist of the Man Booker Prize. Ra ra for the Man Booker judges! This year has a particularly interesting selection of titles, I feel. Am particularly keen to read both Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home and Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse (from the very excellent Salt).

(I keep wondering: do those small presses have to pay for their seats at that flash dinner at the Guildhall. I did note the conditions of entry of the prize, which include the publisher putting up £5,000 as a contribution to publicity if a book makes the shortlist, and another £5,000 if it wins. Hope those small presses have good cash flow – we’d better get buying!)

The Guardian pays tribute to the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit, which includes its first publication in Latin (Hobbitus Ille … ‘in foramine terrae habitabat hobbitus’).

And in case you were hiding away in a hobbit hole yourself this week, here’s the trailer for the forthcoming film of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (which is now the first of a trilogy).

And as I finish typing this, my fall issue of Paris Review arrives with a thud. Gosh, it’s beautifully produced – print that creates a dent in the doormat. I love me some Kindle, but thank heavens for print (I imagine my eyeballs are thankful too). Some excellent content to look forward – I always love their ‘Art of …’ interviews in particular (James Fenton and Roberto Calasso here), and this issue also has poetry from Bernadette Mayer, a whole novella from Sam Savage, and some curious collages. 

Ursula Le Guin: On Adjectives And Adverbs

Adjectives and adverbs are good and rich and fattening. The main thing is not to overindulge … I would recommend to all storytellers a watchful attitude and a thoughtful, careful choice of adjectives and adverbs, because the bakery shop of English is rich beyond belief, and narrative prose, particularly if it’s going a long distance, needs more muscle than fat.

– Ursula Le Guin, Steering the Craft

 

The Beauty Of Food

In the part of the world we are dealing with everybody wants to own everything. Existence feels so uncertain and so fragile that people fight fiercely and with great passion to hold on to things: land, culture, religious symbols, food – everything is in danger of being snatched away or of disappearing. The result is fiery arguments about provenance, about who and what came first.

As we have seen through our investigations, and will become blatantly apparent to anyone reading and cooking from this book, these arguments are futile.

… they are futile because it doesn’t really matter. Looking back in time or far afield into distant lands is simply distracting. The beauty of food and of eating is that they are rooted in the now. Food is a basic, hedonistic pleasure, a sensual instinct we all share and revel in. It is a shame to spoil it.

– Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, in their introduction to Jerusalem (2012)

Crazy Wisdom: The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

A super film called Crazy Wisdom: The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics about my Alma Mater, Naropa University.

It’s lovely, from thousands of miles away, to see Bobbie, Bhanu, Jack, Reed, Steven, the Beat Book Shop, the flags on the Sycamore lawn, hear some of the tales, the myths, the wartiness and all. The energy. It’s a magical place. When I first arrived there it felt like coming home.

Crazy Wisdom: The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics from Kate Linhardt on Vimeo.

(Impressed that this film was created as someone’s final project at Vassar.)

Round-up, 14 September 2012: V****a, gay elves, digital distractions, and the occupational hazards of being an agent

How NOT to treat an agent who rejects your work (aka take care how you use social media, always keep the nutters’ addresses, and get a dog that bites).

Another biography of Jack Kerouac, this time from Joyce Johnson, whose feature in Publishers Weekly includes some valuable observations on life writing, e.g., ‘I feel that writing a biography should be the process of discovering a life rather than trying to prove a thesis’.

Poor Naomi Wolf. Not only has Vagina been described as the ‘Eat Pray Love of private parts’, but it’s been censored in the iTunes store. It’s just a word, folks – and I thought it was one of the acceptable ones. And she’s also under fire from some (some) feminists. But she’s fighting back in the Guardian. (Know how she feels. I remember the week we did feminism in Critical Theory at Naropa, and I got into trouble for asking about working women left to look after the babies. I was essentialist, apparently. I definitely wasn’t going to do a whole semester of Feminist Theory after that; the discussions seemed to get very anecdotal very quickly. The risks of scholarship that involve identity politics.)

Last weekend I was bemoaning the cliché of the gay elf in fantasy fiction. (Okay okay, I am sure their authors’ GBFFs love them. And it’s not that prevalent. But it has cropped up enough in my reading for me to wince a bit.) Anyway, a fresh perspective in fantasy from the Los Angeles Review of Books: Arab-American and Egyptian fantasy novels that make us rethink the ‘casual orientalism’ of the genre. (Still think the Dothraki are pretty fabby, though.)

An announcement in the Bookseller that the editors at Voyager are considering unagented manuscripts for two weeks in October. (Best get brushing up those novels about gay Arab elves: not come across any of them yet.)

Get! Offline!! Now!!! And Get Writing! From the Telegraph: how the digital world can be one great big distraction. (Note to self: you own Freedom.)

Why it often makes sense to ignore the advice of the professsionals: how Breaking Bad made it to the screen.

How some of the mandarins running Wikipedia can get a little carried away with themselves, plus some back story from Philip Roth on the writing of one of his novels.

Cute animal picture of the day is a wise animal picture. Sooey!