Secret love lives that kind of ick me out

Today was apparently the day of love stories that make me go, "...oh..."

First, we've got the Anne Frank novelization, plus boning. That's just awkward. I understand that she was a teenager, but, I don't know. It's just weird.

Also weird is the Emily Dickinson potential love story. And, hey, I'm not saying she shouldn't have had a man-friend of some sort. I'm saying that the way they describe it is creepers:

Over the next few months, Emily turned to [Otis Phillips Lord, her father's friend] the handsome widower – not as a father but as a suitor of sorts. Later, a granddaughter of Dickinson’s confidante Elizabeth Holland suggested that Lord’s tenderness had “long been latent in his feeling for her.”

I'm sorry, the words "father figure" and "lover" should really not go in the same sentence. That is creepos.

Seriously, what happens at BEA?

BEA is a mystery. What really happens there? Answer: human sacrifice. Spooky!

Spontaneously spouting poetry requires work

Sure, we all want to be able to throw off a line of poetry in conversation to sound as brilliant as we really are, but what to memorize for maximum smarm?

Watch your favorite book instantly

Netflix, how I love thee! I will instantly stream a movie, thank you.

For those of you who need to stream literary shiz, GalleyCat put together a list of instantly streaming literary adaptations. The lesson I learned is that women don't write books that become movies that stream instantly. Womp womp.

Call me Ishmael, one fierce tenor

After the news about the Atonement opera, I thought there was nowhere to go but to the land of less insane. With the rise of the Moby Dick opera, I can safely say: I was so, so wrong.

Moby Dick opera-style at the Dallas Opera now, but, with its inevitable success, I can only hope it will come to NYC and the Met, so I can see how they get a live sperm whale on the stage.* Ben Heppner, who plays Ahab, has this to say:

“I’m still trying to find my sea legs, which I guess I mean as a pun,” Mr. Heppner said after hobbling through his second day of rehearsals on the artificial limb his role requires....“Ahab is beautifully written for my voice,” Mr. Heppner said, “But today that peg leg was rubbing hard on my shinbone. I’d never thought about that, or I might have been less eager. But we’re making progress.”

And artist with the soul of a guy who doesn't like to have to wear things that chafe--we may be in love.

*Yes, I fully believe the Met would and could do this. Because they are bad ass.

Spellings, I haz it?

After the previous news about cooking with "ground black people," the Book Bench put together a list of poor spelling and copyediting through history.

This includes the Bible that encourages, "Thou shalt commit adultery." In other news, this Bible has been sanctioned by the Anglican Church to only be valid on opposite day.

PS I considered writing this whole post as a LolCat, but decided against it. Ur welkomz!

Glenn Beck owns you

Glenn Beck, giant crying man child, made $13 million this year from publishing. This is not counting his other endeavors.

Why yes, I am super jealous and bitter. How did you know?

Plus sized must mean any size on the plus side of zero

We all know that fashion does not realistically depict women, in that most women weigh over 80 pounds. It's a good thing that books do not fall prey to this slimmed down version of reality. Oh, wait, never mind.

I think where Jezebel is particularly on the money is that the covers highlighted (at the link above) are not supposed to represent just any women; they're meant to represent large ladies as protagonists. Like the Bloomsbury cover whitewashing debacle(s), this shows that publishers think that no one will pick up a title with a big girl on the front (even if the title is "Big Boned").

One day soon, reader types, we will not be treated like idiots. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

Mon dieu, racist Gerard Depardieu!

Given our previous Alexandre Dumas news, it should come as no surprise that the man is a drama storm. Gerard Depardieu was cast to play Dumas in a biopic, in which he darkens his skin and changes his hair to play the biracial author, a la Ben Kingsley as Ghandi.

Non-white celebrities, some Dumas experts and black organisations are angry because they say that the producers missed a chance to celebrate ethnic diversity in France and remind the world of the writer’s origins. “There is a mechanism of permanent discrimination by silence,” Jacques Martial, a black actor, said.

France has a pretty terrible record when it comes to not being racist (and religiously tolerant), so I am not surprised that people are mad.

Writing for a living is hard, for all new reasons

At the LA Times, Dani Shapiro writes an article about how it used to be that writing as a career was difficult because of the time commitment involved for success, and now you don't even get that. She writes:

The emphasis is on publishing, not on creating. On being a writer, not on writing itself. The publishing industry -- always the nerdy distant cousin of the rest of media -- has the same blockbuster-or-bust mentality of television networks and movie studios. There now exist only two possibilities: immediate and large-scale success, or none at all.

Bleak? Yes. Truthful? Absolutely. Sure, a major house can support the literary equivalent of Arrested Development, and keep saying, "Everyone loves it! It'll break out!" But eventually, all those jerkwads who looooove the show but don't bother to actually watch it while it's on (or buy the book when it first comes out) snowball and everything goes out of business. And, for realsies, the Arrested Development model almost never happens, in books or on TV.

This brings me to the inevitable question: if you're not doing it for profit or being published, voluntarily or otherwise, are you still a writer? This question is posed in relation to Salinger--he wrote a handful of books and then stopped publishing (but we can now assume kept writing). Can you quit being a writer, or is it like being in the Mob? And is it the act of writing that makes you count, or the recognition of credibility through being published?

Why do we keep reading "The Lottery"?

That story is messed. Up. And the Onion acknowledges it, in an article entitled, "Watching Faces Of Students As They Finish 'The Lottery' Highlight Of English Teacher's Year."

"Oh, my God, the looks on their faces when they realize the villagers are actually going to stone Mrs. Hutchinson to death right then and there!" said Hamlin, who added that she never allows students to read the story as a take-home assignment. "I'm almost too excited to sleep. Oh, it's so great! They're never gonna see it coming!"

My confusion about this article comes from the fact that it is, in fact, in the Onion. Isn't this what being an English teacher, nay, any teacher, is all about? Watching the faces of children as you crush their sense of what is right?

...No?

( Also thank you to the Rejectionist for emailing me yet another faboosh link, for which she has earned one waffle cookie, redeemable at her earliest convenience. Wouldn't you ALL like waffle cookies, reader types? Send links!)

Selena is channeled by someone other than Jennifer Lopez

Fact: Selena was a great pop star. Fact: she is dead. Fact: that has not stopped her from penning a memoir from beyond the grave.

With her publicist, Cristina Castrellón, and the help of medium/psychic Georgette Rivera, Selena has written this memoir in three parts:

The first is Castrellón’s account of her time with Selena when she was alive–Castrellón was a publicist of the artist’s who worked with her from 1993 to 1995. The second part of the book contains [Castrellón's] communications from Selena through Rivera including information about what really happened the night she was murdered....The the third part of the book tells the story of how Castrellón and Rivera met in Mexico at a lecture...

It's clear that Castrellón is dreaming of Selena tonight. Till tomorrow she'll be holding her tight, and there's no where else she'd rather be, than there in her room, dreaming about...er...Selena. In other news, I am not a lyricist, but I am trying.

I wonder if JLo will be available to recreate Selena's message from beyond the grave.

This book blog is rated A

The A is for "Awesome."

Tony Buschbaum writes about how he wants books for children to have ratings. He recently picked up a book with a reading level of 14 and up, which he felt was, in content, vastly inappropriate for his 14 year old.

On the one hand, I don't particularly see the harm in putting an "L" for "Language" or an "S" for "Lots of Boning" on the cover. On the other hand, I agree with the criticisms in the comments that ratings for movies do in some way act as censorship--cutting material and content for a more favorable rating is common, because the lower the rating, the larger the audience, the huger the profit. That said, that is a fiscal choice to be made, not necessarily an artistic one.

Having no tiny Ombreviations running around, I don't have much of an opinion on this. Thoughts?

Zombies will eat your brains and then your heart

I find this whole premise a little nauseating, and I can't really think of anything cute to say except: zombie love story novel. Gross.

And a book trailer (I friggin hate book trailers):

That's right. He is a feeling, hipster, loving zombie. Gag.

Up is down, black is white: Self-publishing house makes bank in traditional publishing mode

The apocalypse is upon us, reader types: PublishingWorks left self-publishing for traditional publishing and is making money. You heard right. The end is nigh!

But seriously, kudos to them. Continue to make that mythical "profit."

No, I do not want a "reader's guide"

Imogen at the Guardian book blog has hit upon one of my biggest pet peeves in literature: the stupid shit that publishers put in at the end of a book.

"Was there any symbolism in the symbolic symbol in chapter 4?"
"Does it change your reading experience to know that The Wizard of Oz was a thinly veiled response to William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold speech?"
"Does Ishmael really want to be called Ishmael, or is that just shenanigans?"

She writes:

No back matter should contain essay topics or anything resembling them. I don't think even school texts should come with the literary equivalent of an answers page, posing patronising questions with embedded solutions – "Do you notice anything about the treatment of love/weather/eating in this chapter?" (rib-nudge). Any English teacher worth their salt should be able to come up with their own spider-diagram stimuli without having recourse to these dull and generic lists.

Amen sister.

Post-post Q&A:
How do you think Laura feels about this topic?

Great writing is predicated on no technology

At the Guardian, Tim Adams writes about how e-books are going to be the downfall of good writing. The article is a diatribe against technology in general, and how the internet is bad for our brains. He drives this home by comparing Don DeLillo writing on a typewriter to reading classics on the DS.

I'm sorry. Maybe it's my internet addled brain but: what? I think the intended point is that reading on a screen is different than reading on a paper page, that the physicality of typing on a typewriter is somehow holy, and that if you read too much internet you become incaple of literary creation. But then, how is this the fault of the e-reader? Well:

For the time being the Kindles and the rest are standalone devices, but it will surely not be long before they and the thousands of books they contain are bundled up with all the other must-have applications into a single computer which will mediate our lives: more undifferentiated text to match our own mood.

Oh. So...it's not the fault of the e-reader at all. But it could be their fault in the future.

Can someone please explain this to me?

How can we reach these kids? Slang!

I know everyone wants to know how we can reach these kids. And we do it by bastardizing the language of classics to make them more approachable. But don't worry, it's not slang that's the problem, it's that modern slang is lame, and ye olde slang is hip:

[T]here is a difference between idiom and modern slang in literature. Shakespeare's use of slang opened up the world of the theatre to all of the audience, displaying the mental agonies of the Prince of Denmark to the most boisterous groundling and bringing the horseplay of Dogberry and co to the attention of the most cerebral courtier. Modern slang is different, being cut through with dark knowing humour and packing a linguistic punch, as the Guardian's recent compilation of 1950s slang bears witness.

When Shakespeare used slang he was opening up language to the masses, but when you do it you're insulting art. I tried to come up with some good slang for comic effect, but it didn't really take. Feel free to contribute your own slang take on classics in the comments.

Goat castle

Seriously. Check it out.

Nerd insults with line from first century poet, gets sued

Mark Lowe, a London financier, texted a vulgar Catallus line to an employee, and is getting sued for discrimination:

The line in question (misquoted by the BBC website, and perhaps, for all I know, by Lowe himself) is this: "pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo". The BBC declines to translate it, merely saying that it "threatens a violent sexual act", but I am not so coy. It means "I will bugger you and stuff your gobs." (The Wikipedia entry on the poem contains the full text and a reasonable translation.)

The article goes on to talk about how the media has been shy about translating. But I have to say, what kind of weirdo is going around texting Latin? Who has either memorized enough Catallus or looked it up to text? Doesn't that bespeak a lot (a lot) of effort?

People need hobbies.