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Opening the morning paper or browsing the web, routine actions for us all, rarely if ever shake our fundamental beliefs about the world. If we assume a naïve, reflective state of mind, however, reading newspapers and surfing the web offer us quite a different experience: they provide us with a glimpse into the kaleidoscopic nature of the modern era that can be quite irritating.

The post The quest for order in modern society appeared first on OUPblog.

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J. Robert Lennon's first book, The Light of Falling Stars, got a glowing review from the New Yorker: "Lennon's impressive first novel — psychologically nuanced, richly detailed, unexpectedly comic — offers us an unsentimental examination of the ways in which we find and lose those we love, both before and after death." His novels and [...]

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Last night, at the close of the Philadelphia screening of the soon-to-be-released feature film, WIN WIN, writer/director Tom McCarthy and 17-year-old wrestler/terrific actor Alex Shaffer took questions from an audience that had clearly fallen in love with their film (I was right there with them: in love).  Alex plays a wayward kid who finds himself in the home (and on the wrestling team) of a good man who has done a bad thing.  Can I leave it at that?  Should I also add that the good but ethically compromised man is played (phenomenally) by Paul Giamatti, that Amy Ryan adds great emotional depth, that there are little girls in this film who will blow you away, and that a nerdy wrestler had us screaming for him when he finally took on Darth Vader at a match?

McCarthy, who wrote THE STATION AGENT, THE VISITOR, and UP, doesn't go for easy in his plots.  He has a surprising range of unexpected story lines (who puts croquet and wrestling in the same film?), an ability to dig out from moral tangles (why are we rooting so hard for Giamatti's character, when he has done such an unscrupulous thing?), an impeccable ear for real but original dialogue (there's a great bit here that arises from a certain JBJ tattoo (see the film, find out for yourself)), a dancer's rhythm (we need to laugh just when McCarthy gives us cause to laugh) and an outstanding eye for talent (seriously, this is some cast).  I have had the pleasure of meeting McCarthy's partner on this and other films, Mary Jane Skalski of Next Wednesday productions, and I felt her talent and presence as well—her ear, her eye, her maternal heart. 

Alex Shaffer had never, he told us last evening, acted beyond a stint in a middle school play before he responded to a call for theater-tempted New Jersey high school wrestlers.  Man, can this kid act—slaying the audience as much by what he won't say as by what he finally does.  Apparently Shaffer is also quite the wrestler, having won the state championship shortly after this film wrapped.  It was fun to watch him share this film last night with his four best friends and his cousin.    

Find out more about the film here, and go see it when it appears nationally in theaters in mid March.

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Closing the books now, turning off email.  Off to see this long-awaited film, at a special Philadelphia screening.  Those of you who had the pleasure of seeing either "The Station Agent" or "The Visitor" (or the movie "Up") will have some sense for just how special this movie will likely be, for some of the same great minds and hearts (Tom McCarthy and Mary Jane Skalski) are the magic behind this one.  Check out the trailer.

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Author Howard Jacobson (pictured)  has won the Man Booker Prize, taking a prize worth nearly $80,000. Here’s more about his prize winning novel, The Finkler Question: “a scorching story of friendship and loss, exclusion and belonging, and of the wisdom and humanity of maturity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.”

We posted about Emma Donoghue‘s Room yesterday, exploring the strange list of titles on the bookshelf inside the cell where a mother and her 5-year-old son live. We also posted about how Tom McCarthy‘s C broke the bank in Booker Prize betting–earning £15,000 of bets in a single day.

Sir Andrew Motion chaired the panel of judges for the Booker Prize. The judges included: Rosie Blau, Deborah Bull, Tom Sutcliffe, and Frances Wilson.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Last week the UK gambling site Ladbrokes stopped taking bets on the Man Booker Prize (to be announced Oct. 12) when shortlisted novelist Tom McCarthy‘s C suddenly earned £15,000 of bets in a single day–as if the gambling world knew something the literary world didn’t

According to the Guardian, Ladbrokes spokesperson David Williams was befuddled by this rush of bets McCarthy’s novel. The book tells the story of a troubled young genius during the early years of the 20th Century. While gamblers furiously chased odds last week for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa defied the odds to win.

Williams had this statement: “This year there wasn’t really a standout name among the six shortlisted candidates, no Rushdie or Banville, so you’d expect to see a good spread of business, with a few people having a £10 bet on him or her … [then] every single bet started striking on one man. It wouldn’t be so surprising if there were a Rushdie in the race, but with respect, in this case it was borderline inexplicable and we decided to pull the plug.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Via Sponge! (the new name for our friend Lee Rourke's Scarecrow blog) I note that Tom McCarthy has been writing in the LRB about Jean-Philippe Toussaint:

For any serious French writer who has come of age during the last 30 years, one question imposes itself above all others: what do you do after the nouveau roman? Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon et compagnie redrew the map of what fiction might offer and aspire to, what its ground rules should be – so much so that some have found their legacy stifling. Michel Houellebecq’s response has been one of adolescent rejection, or, to use the type of psychological language that the nouveaux romanciers so splendidly shun, denial: writing in Artforum in 2008, he claimed never to have finished a Robbe-Grillet novel, since they ‘reminded me of soil cutting’. Other legatees, such as Jean Echenoz, Christian Oster and Olivier Rolin, have come up with more considered answers, ones that, at the very least, acknowledge an indebtedness – enough for their collective corpus to be occasionally tagged with the label ‘nouveau nouveau roman’. Foremost among this group, and bearing that quintessentially French distinction of being Belgian, is Jean-Philippe Toussaint (more...)

More on this over at 3:AM too.

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Our friend the author Tom McCarthy is on the road:

First, Tom is in conversation with with Jonathan Lethem about his new novel Chronic City at the LRB Bookshop on 7th Jan. Details at the LRB site.

Second, Tom is discussing how European fiction has influenced his writing and "English" fiction in general in a three-header with AS Byatt and Aleksander Hemon at the South Bank on 18th Jan. Details on the South Bank Centre site.

Third is an appearance at the Grand Palais in Paris, with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Jacques Roubaud, on 29th Jan. Details at monumenta.com.

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On this early Easter morning, I am thinking many things—gratitude for my son's few perfect days home, gratitude for family and friends, gratitude for the sun rising, gratitude for the pink blending yellow ripping through white that is this early spring.

I am thinking, too, about the two movies I watched this weekend—"The Visitor" and "The Station Agent." Both produced by Mary Jane Skalski, both written and directed by Tom McCarthy. Both entirely human and intensified by the space between words that are thought but never said.

"The Visitor" is the story of a professor living in the acute aftermath of his wife's passing—a man going through the motions until he discovers two illegal immigrants living in the Manhattan apartment he rarely frequents. He allows his life to be changed by them—allows his heart to be broken newly as he enters into their music, faith, and sudden terror. There are so many ways to snap a life in two. Here, in the detention center of illegal immigrants, in the world of deportation, in the dare of trying once again to live, we witness new fault lines; we, like the characters, are heartbroken.

"The Station Agent," a movie I'd seen before, at my mother's insistence, focuses on Fin, a four-foot-five man who takes up residence at an abandoned train depot and wants nothing more than his own company. Such quietude, though, is denied him—by the loquacious Cuban who parks his food truck by the empty depot; by the beautiful divorcee down the road, who grieves the loss of her son; by the librarian (early Michelle Williams) who slides into Fin's life, then out again; and by the young girl who insists that Fin come to her school for a talk about trains, something Fin knows down to the most excruciating detail. There is a lot of walking on tracks in "The Station Agent"�intoxicatingly filmed. A lot of outright beauty between people. It is one of the most distilled films you will ever see, and one you must see, if you haven't.

I have clipped the daffodils from the back yard (uncountable numbers now). I have placed them on the table. One more meal before we drive our son back to school. And then the aftermath of goodness.

Happy Easter.

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Guess who is in the Tournament of Books final? Yup: Tom McCarthy ... and he could well be pitching up against Roberto Bolaño. Interesting!

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Below Evan Schnittman shares his personal opinions on royalties and advances. This isn’t Oxford University Press’s official stance - but represents just one of the many opinions floating around our office on this very tricky subject. We hope that by sharing his views an open dialog can be initiated.

In his blog post Royalties Macmillan CEO Richard Charkin, posits that trade publishers and authors/agents would be well served if the standard for paying authors switched from a percentage of retail price to a percentage of gross earnings. He writes, “How about agreeing new equitable royalty rates based on real money not a notional recommended retail price?

Charkin also points out that, “The percentage is linked to a price which applies in only a minority of cases. It doesn’t apply to all sales overseas; it doesn’t apply to nearly all sales made in supermarkets, Internet bookshops and many bookshop chains.” In other words, paying on the percentage of a price that isn’t applicable to the majority of income isn’t logical or easy – which may lead to wildly confusing royalty statements.

As expected, within hours a series of rebuttals hit the comments field by individuals and groups rejecting Charkin’s notion as folly; stating the view that the retail price is the only thing that is transparent on publishers’ royalty statements, which are notoriously mysterious and murky at best.

While the debate will continue, it misses a far more important problem. (more…)

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