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• Mmm. Vanity straight up. So I never quite know how to post “me stuff” news when it’s particularly nice. On the one hand I could post the link with the typical “I’m not worthy” statement attached, but that always sounds as if I doth protest too much.  Or, I could go the other route, and just celebrate the link with a whole lotta hooplah and devil take the consequences. I think, in the end, I’d prefer to just preface the link with a long, drawn out, ultimately boring explanation of why these links are problematic in the vague hope that your eyes glazed over and you skipped to the next bullet point.  That accomplished, here is a very nice thing I was featured in recently at Bustle.  I think Anne Carroll Moore probably should have taken my slot, but insofar as I can tell, she is not around to object.

• There comes a time in every girl’s life when she realizes that all the funny stuff on the internet was written by a single person.  That person’s name, it turns out, is Mallory Ortberg.  And if you doubt my words, read her recent Toast piece The Willy Wonka Sequel That Charlie’s Mother Deserves.  It’s applicable to the book as well, though in that case it would be “The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Sequel That Charlie’s Mother and Father Deserve”.

• It was Jarrett Krosoczka who alerted me to the fact that Jeanne Birdsall has a blog.  Jeanne, you sly devil!  Why didn’t you tell us?

• Are discussions of children’s book illustrations given adequate attention when people interview authors about the books that influenced them when they were young?  Mark Dery at The Ecstasist doesn’t think so.  In a recent interview with Jonathan Lethem, the two discuss, amongst other things, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a psychedelic children’s book by popular shrink, Dr. Eric Berne (who wrote Games People Play) called The Happy Valley, The Goops, Rabbit Hill, and the odd thickness (and hidden erotic meanings) behind Ferdinand the Bull’s neck.

• I don’t usually advertise journal’s calls for contributions, but this seemed special.  Bookbird (a journal close to my heart for obvious reasons) is calling for contributions for a special issue exploring Indigenous Children’s Literature from around the world.   So if you’ve a yen . . .

Recently I hosted a Children’s Literary Salon on Jewish children’s literature, its past, present, and future.  It was a really great talk and has inspired, I am happy to note, a blog post from one of the panelists.  Marjorie Ingall of Tablet Magazine recently wrote the piece Enough With the Holocaust Books for Children!: Yes, we need to teach kids about our history. But our history constitutes a lot more than one tragic event.  It quotes me anonymously at one point as well.  See if you can find me!  Hint: I’m the one who’s not Jewish.

• And to switch gears, the cutest children’s librarian craft idea of all time.  A teeny tiny traffic jam.  Alternate Title: Dana Sheridan is a friggin’ genius.

• Not too long ago I helped usher into completeness a brand new children’s book award.  Behold, one that’s all about the math!!  Yes, like you I was an English major who thought she feared the realm of numbers.  Now I see the true problem: there were no good math books for me as a kid (and subsisting entirely on a diet of The Phantom Tollbooth doesn’t really work, folks). Now worry not, interested parties!  The Mathical Award is here and the selections, not to put too fine a point on it, are delightful.

• Out: Dark Matter.  Five Minutes Ago: Gray Matter.  In: White Matter.  At least when it comes to how children learn to read.  The New Yorker explains.  Extra points to author Maria Konnikova for the Horton Hatches the Egg reference buried in the text.

• Full credit to Aaron Zenz for turning me onto the site Sketch Dailies.  Cited as a place “that gives a pop culture topic each week day for artists to interpret” there are plenty of children’s literature references to be found.  Draco Malfoy. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Hedwig (more owl than Angry Inch).  Warning: You will get sucked in, possibly for a very very long time.  Three of the Very Hungry Caterpillar winners recently were here, here, and here.

• Oop!  The end of the voting on the Children’s Choice Book Awards is nigh. Your last chance to “voice your choice” is looming. Voting for @CBCBook’s Children’s Choice Book Awards closes at ccbookawards.com on May 3rd.  And, if I might be so bold, you may notice something a little . . . um . . . interesting about this year’s hosts of the CBC Gala.  *whistles*

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According to Deadline, Edward Norton will star, direct and write the film version of Jonathan Lethem’s MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. Brett Ratner and James Packer’s RatPac Entertainment have stepped in to fully finance the film for a late 2014 production start in New York. While Lethem’s novel is contemporary, Norton has set the story in New York in 1954, a time of great change in the city. He plays Lionel Essrog, a lonely private detective afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome, who tries to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend. Armed only with few clues and an obsessive mind, Lionel slowly unravels closely guarded secrets that have major ramifications. It leads him through Harlem jazz clubs, Brooklyn slums and sets him against thugs and Gotham power brokers to honor his friend and save a woman who might his own salvation.

This will be Norton’s second time behind the camera after he made his debut on Keeping The Faith. He set this up at New Line as the book was published, right after Norton got an Oscar nomination there for his mesmerizing performance in American History X. Norton currently stars in the Wes Anderson-directed The Grand Budapest Hotel, and most recently wrapped the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed comedy Birdman, both for Fox Searchlight. He’s repped by UTA and attorney Robert Offer.

“We all know Edward Norton is one of the most compelling actors of our generation, but I also know he’s an exceptional writer and filmmaker,” said Ratner, who directed Norton in the 2002 adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon. “As soon as I read his script for Motherless Brooklyn I knew this was a project I wanted to get involved with and am thrilled to partner up with Edward and Class 5. Edward’s script has melded elements of Jonathan Lethem’s terrific novel with an original story that at once feels classic and entirely fresh. And with Edward playing Lionel Essrog, the brilliant private detective with Tourette’s Syndrome, this will be a tour de force performance.”

Here is more information about MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN:

From America’s most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.

Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn’s very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways.  Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna’s limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel’s colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim’s widow skips town. Lionel’s world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head.  Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.

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Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar this week.

To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

The next installment of the Franklin Park Reading Series will feature five writers. Hear them on Monday, September 9th at Franklin Park Bar & Beer Garden starting 8 p.m. (Brooklyn, NY)

An upcoming Moth StorySLAM event will focus on stories about “rules.” Check it out on Tuesday, September 10th at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe starting 7 p.m. (New York, NY)

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One of the most prized, and most difficult, tasks a new author undertakes is the quest to find his own voice. It is a desire to be unique and original, to sound like no one else. Because voice has to do with sound, right? Voice is the sound we make out loud. But then, what [...]

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I basically took the summer off from blogging, so feel a little wobbly about it, my palms sweating on the handlebars, not sure I remember how to do this. I don’t know what happened, exactly, just somehow tired of the “James Preller” corporate thing. Ha. Mostly, I wanted to concentrate on other writings, as I’ve been deep in a new series that I’m writing for Feiwel & Friends. It won’t launch until The Fabled Summer of ‘13, but I’ve nearly finished the third book in the series.

NOTE: I just reread this and had a chuckle about that “nearly finished” line. It only signifies that I’m an old pro when it comes to deadlines and editors: a manuscript that has not yet been handed in is always “nearly finished.” Any writer who says otherwise is a fool and a boob.

As for my new series, it feels like I’m that kid behind the snow fort, busily stacking up a supply of snowballs. Can’t wait to fire ‘em out there. More on that topic another time.

I’m usually a one-book-at-a-time guy, but I’m now reading three very different but equally remarkable books concurrently: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem, and Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor.

Normally I don’t do that to myself, the three-books-at-once bafflement, but the mixture of long novel, short nonfiction, and poetry seem to complement each other nicely.

I have a long and sordid relationship with poetry, and I’m especially happy to find this sweet collection by Keillor, based on poems featured on “The Writer’s Almanac.”

Writes Keillor in the introduction:

Oblivion is the writer’s greatest fear, and as with the fear of death, one finds evidence to support it. You fear that your work, that work of your lifetime, on which you labored so unspeakably hard and for which you stood on so many rocky shores and thought, My life has been wasted utterly — your work will have its brief shining moment, the band plays, some confetti is tossed, you are photographed with your family, drinks are served, people squeeze your hand and say that you seem to have lost weight, and then the work languishes in the bookstore and dies and is remaindered and finally entombed on a shelf — nobody ever looks at it again! Nobody! This happens often, actually. Life is intense and the printed page is so faint.

Keillor, as curator, has a point of view. He likes poems that tell a story, poems that are direct and clear, that don’t sound too “written.” Poems that communicate. He quotes Charles Bukowski, “There is nothing wrong with poetry that is entertaining and easy to understand. Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.”

And I put a big star in the margin when Keillor described his former English major self — a tender self I identified with, all those lessons that have taken me so long to unlearn, the bad habits of academic thought, “back when I was busy writing poems that were lacerating, opaque, complexly layered, unreadable.”

I have a file drawer jammed full with opaque and unreadable poems.

Now I see that as my writer’s quest, this effort to write clearly (and yet, even so, to write interestingly, to achieve moments of “lift off”), to overcome my own big stupid fumbling ego, those temptations to craft “look at me!” sentences that dazzle and bore readers. Perhaps that’s the great gift of writing for children of all ages. They don’t go for the bullshit. You can deliver any kind of content — really,  there’s nothing you can’t say in a children’s book — but please don’t overcook it.

One last phrase from Keillor, in praise of Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton and, for that matter, all Good Poems:

“They surprise us with clear pictures of the familiar.”

So that’s how I’ve vowed to begin my days, by reading a few poems each morning. To sit in the chair, coffee at hand, and try on the silence. My favorite from today was Charles Simic’s “Summer Morning.”

You might enjoy it, too.

As a final treat, here’s Tom Waits reading “The Laughing Heart,” a poem by Charles Bukowski. Full text below.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

@Charles Bukowski

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The signers of the letter protesting the New York Public Library's plan include Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Lethem and Art Spiegelman.

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So far, 224 writers have signed a new Writers in Support of the Occupy Movement petition. What do you think?

The petition is composed of a single sentence: “We, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world.” So far, the petition has virtual signatures from Alison Bechdel, Samuel R. Delaney, Jennifer Egan, Barbara Ehrenreich, Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Lethem, Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie and many other authors. You can sign at the bottom of the page.

Earlier today, Occupy Wall Street activists braced for a possible eviction, but the city decided to postpone the scheduled cleaning. (Via Sarah Weinman & Bookforum)

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The Paris Review has unveiled its first digital edition, selling four issues of the literary journal for $30 through Zinio’s digital newsstand.

The summer issue includes stories by Jonathan Lethem, Amie Barrodale, David Gates and Roberto Bolano.

Check it out: “For the first time, readers can buy a digital version of The Paris Review—for easy access anytime, anywhere. TPR digital can be read on your iPad, laptop, or mobile device. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s instant gratification!”

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Denise Oswald has joined the It Books as senior editor.

Oswald (pictured, via) was the former Soft Skull Press editorial director. She also helmed the Faber and Faber list at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for more than ten years.  Her authors included: Anne Carson, Billy Corgan, Neil LaBute, Jonathan Lethem, and Courtney Love.

During her tenure at Soft Skull, we covered Oswald’s Roller Derby book deal and her decision to publish a novel that was first serialized on Twitter.

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More than 80 Harper’s Magazine writers and friends signed an open letter to publisher John “Rick” MacArthur supporting the unionization of the magazine’s staff and urging publisher not to cut two editors. The publisher has since  defended his actions in another letter.

The 84 signatures on the original letter included: Tom Bissell, Heidi Julavits, Naomi Klein, Jonathan Lethem, and Zadie Smith. The letter asked MacArthur seek alternative ways to reshape the magazine’s financial budget, suggesting the publisher to study the models of other not-for-profit magazines.

Here’s a quote from the original letter: “Editorial costs can only be cut so far without damaging the quality of the publication … At a time when there is much chatter about the death of print, publishing a magazine as brave and creative as Harper’s Magazine verges on a sacred trust.” (Via New York Magazine & Sarah Weinman)

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Yesterday Douglas Rushkoff (the author of Program or Be Programmed and one of our eBook Summit speakers) explored Softskull Press’ upcoming Deep Focus series for BoingBoing. The collection matches a great writer with a great cult film, beginning with Jonathan Lethem writing about John Carpenter‘s They Live and Chris Sorrentino writing about Death Wish.

Here’s an excerpt: “These are fun little books – little, meaning a hundred or so pages and in a tiny fits-in-your-back-pocket format suitable for reading anywhere at anytime. And they justify all the nights spent watching reruns of these films, never sure if we were allowed to like them as much as we do – even after we see through to their obvious faults. This book series considers such films “deliberate” B-movies. I read Lethem’s time-coded analysis of They Live on an airplane while I watched the film on my phone, for the perfect DIY mini-Criterion experience. Lethem is one of my favorite writers anyway, but experiencing him wax on about Nada and the ghouls was perhaps the highlight of my summer reading.”

As we noted last week, Counterpoint will shutter its New York offices and cut editorial director Denise Oswald and associate editor Anne Horowitz– causing many to worry about the future of this indie press.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Lauren, Publicity Assistant

If you haven’t already heard, unfriend is the New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year. In honor of this announcement, I surveyed Facebook users across the country about why they would choose to unfriend someone.

1. They’ve turned into a robot.
“People send me Green Patches all the time,” said Jane Kim, a television research assistant in NYC. “It’s annoying. And that’s all I ever get from them. Clearly, they’re not interested in actually being friends.”

That’s because your friends are robots, Jane. Marketing robots. These are the friends you never hear from except when they want you to join a cause, sign a petition, donate money, become a fan of a product, or otherwise promote something. Farmville robots are increasingly becoming problems as well, but are not yet grounds for unfriending.

2. You don’t know who they are.
“A few days ago, Facebook suggested I reconnect with a friend whose name I didn’t recognize,” said Jessica Kay, a lawyer in Kansas City. “She’d recently gotten married, but I hadn’t even known she was engaged. I’ll probably unfriend her later. Along with some random people I met at parties in college.”

“You’re tired of seeing [that mystery name] your newsfeed,” said Jonathan Evans, a contract specialist in Seattle. “You haven’t talked to that person since the random class you took together, and you’ll probably never talk to them again.”

3. They broke your heart.
Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City, shared that his number one reason to unfriend someone is “because they just broke up with you on Facebook.”

So, maybe they didn’t break your heart. But if the only reason you were friends on Facebook is because you two were somehow involved, it might be time to play some Beyoncé, crack open the Haagen-Dazs and click “Remove from Friends”.

4. You don’t like them anymore.
In the early years of Facebook, users would  friend everyone their dorm, everyone from high school, and every person they had ever shared a sandbox with. But now, many people are finding they no longer like a number of their friends, and spend time creating limited profiles, customizing the newsfeed, and avoiding Facebook chat.

Teresa Hynes, a student at St. John’s University, pointed out that it’s silly to be concerned one of these people might find out you’ve unfriended them and get angry. “You are never going to see them again,” she said. “You don’t want to see them ever again. You hated them in high school. Your mass communications group project is over.”

5. Annoying status updates.
“I don’t want to see ‘So-and-so wishes it was over,’” said Andrew Varhol, a marketing manager in NYC. “Or the cheers of bandwagon sports fans—when suddenly someone’s, ‘Go Yankees! Go Jeter!’ Where were you before October?”

Excessive status updates are one example of Facebook abuse. Amy Labagh of powerHouse Books admits she is irritated by frequent updates. “It’s like they want you to think they’re cool,” she said, “but they’re not.”

A professor at NYU, agreed, and said he finds a number of these frequent updates to be “too bourgie.” “It’ll say something like, ‘So-and-so is drinking whatever in the beautiful scenery of some field.’ I mean, really?!”

The style and type of each update is also important. A number of users agree that song lyrics, poetry, and literary quotations can be extremely annoying. Updates with misspellings or lacking punctuation were also noted. “I once unfriended someone because they updated their statuses in all caps,” said Erin Meehan, a marketing associate in NYC.

6. Obnoxious photo uploads.
Everyone has a different idea about what photos are appropriate to post , but a popular complaint from Facebook users in their 20s concerned wedding and baby photos. “It’s just weird,” said a bartender in Manhattan. “I know that older people are joining now, but if you’re at the stage in your life when most the photos are of your kids, I mean, what are you doing on Facebook?”

“I think makeout photos are worse,” said his coworker. “My sister always posts photos of her and her boyfriend kissing. Sometimes I want to unfriend and unfamily her.”

Across the board, a number of users found partially nude photos, or images of someone flexing their muscles as grounds for unfriending. Another reason, as cited specifically by Margitte Kristjansson, graduate student at UC San Diego, could be if “they upload inappropriate pictures of their stab wounds.”

7. Clashing religious or political views.
“I can’t handle it when someone’s updates are always about Jesus,” said Robert Wilder, a writer in New York.

In the same vein, Phil Lee, lead singer of The Muskies, said he’s extremely irritated by “religious proselytizing and over-enthusiastic praise and Bible quoting. Often in all caps.”

An anonymous Brooklynite shared that he purged his Facebook account after the last Presidential election. “It was a big deal to me,” he said. “I found it hard to be friends with people who didn’t vote for Obama.” After which his friend added, “I voted for McKinney.”

8. “I wanted a free Whopper.”
In January, Burger King launched the Whopper Sacrifice application, which promised each Facebook user a free Whopper if they unfriended 10 people. It sounded simple enough, but if you chose to unfriend someone via the application, it sent a notification to that person, announcing they had been sacrificed for the burger. Burger King disabled the application within the month when the Whopper “proved to be stronger than 233,906 friendships.”

Since Facebook has made the home page much more customizable than it used to be, you might wonder, “Why unfriend when I can hide?” More and more, Facebook users are choosing to use limited profiles and editing their newsfeed so undesirable friends disappear from view. “I find lately I’m friending more people, then blocking them,” said Gary Ferrar, a magician in New York. “That way no one gets mad, no one’s feelings get hurt.”

Do you have another reason? Tell us about it!

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The lack of posting around here should not be construed as a lack of activity. This has turned out to be a week with high demands from other aspects of my bookish life: Emerging Leaders, McNally Jackson (we -- by which I mean me -- are on Facebook AND Twitter now), a new blogging project (info TK), and mostly, working on Greenlight Bookstore. I've tidied up that other blog of mine (and Rebecca's) to reflect the evolving reality of our project, and in hopes that we'll be seeing some more traffic soon. We've also got a real estate lead that involves so many unknowns I can't even explain it right now, but it's potentially really exciting. So I've been kinda distracted.

I do, however, have a pile of recently read graphic novels I want to write about, and not one but TWO thrilling not-yet-published books in my bag: the new Kate Christensen, Trouble (out in June) and the new Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City (out so long from now I don't even know the date -- the book is still in manuscript form). So as soon as I'm done frantically tearing through those two I'll be posting frenzied fangirl reports. I'm also meeting one of my contemporary author heroes Jim Lynch, author of The Highest Tide and Border Songs, tomorrow afternoon, so I hope to report on that as well.

So with renewed promises I beg your forgiveness, and hope you can be satisfied with more to come. Happy reading!

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You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem (Random House)
(bonus: perfect for winter doldrums!)

I pitched this book when it came out in paperback this summer as "the perfect intellectual summer read", but it's also great for a dose of L.A. sunshine in the midst of winter. Sexy, topical, thought-provoking, plot-driven, and light enough to read in a weekend, Lethem's story of aspiring musicians in Los Angeles grapples with the ownership of ideas and the fine line between artistic and pretentious -- but you'll gobble it up for the great party scenes, sexual shenanigans, and sun-soaked hipness.

I wrote about the awesome event we did with Lethem and DJ Spooky (and my fan-girl geekout) here -- I bought the book at the event (which is rare), and had the even rarer experience of having the entire book live up to the brief passage the author read. It does engage with some serious issues of creative copyright and authorship, but through the vehicle of some truly self-absorbed and pretentious characters. It helps that Lethem has admitted that the book was based on his own "posturing" phase as a musician in the early '90s -- the characters have that loved but laughable intensity that can only be applied to oneself and one's friends when you were all young and stupid.

But I'm not gonna lie: it also has some pretty hot bedroom (and car and warehouse) scenes. And you can almost taste the tacos of a very late California city brunch. It's good for thinking a bit about creative commons and all that implies, and also good for little bit of sunshine you've been needing. I'll be listening to my Monster Eyes CD while you're reading... Read the rest of this post

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A grand time was had by all at Readercon this year, and it was a great thrill for me to get to see one of my oldest friends in the writing world, James Patrick Kelly, as guest of honor -- honored so well and appropriately.

The two panels I was on seemed to go well, though I arrived at the con only half an hour before I was on the "Triumphing Over Competence" panel and hadn't quite adjusted yet, so my contributions were few. Adam Golaski did a fine job of moderating, but it was a tough topic to focus in on in a way that would lead to real insights. Saturday's "The Career of James Patrick Kelly" panel felt much more successful to me, and one of its strengths was the diversity in the backgrounds of the panelists -- we had all discovered Jim's writings (and Jim himself) at different times and in different ways. Of course, afterward I thought of many things I should have said instead of what I did, in fact say, but I probably talked too much anyway, so it's good I didn't think of them. Mostly, they would have been elaborations on my (nascent) ideas about Jim as a regional writer, particularly with relationship to Burn, a story that nicely meshes two of the primary types of stories Jim writes: tales rooted in a sense of place (with that place often redolent of northern New England) and tales that are set way out in the universe. In some ways, the earlier novel Look Into the Sun brought the universe to New Hampshire, while Burn brings New Hampshire out into the universe.

I didn't attend too many panels, because after seeing a few, I began to get immensely frustrated with people who didn't know when to shut up. Panels are almost always unbalanced, since it's difficult for everybody to speak for equal amounts of time, but it wasn't unbalance that bothered me -- it was hijacking. In one case, it involved an insufferable moderator who thought the entire point of being moderator was to pose questions to himself.

The conversation between Jonathan Lethem and Gordon van Gelder, though, was well worth attending. The goal of the discussion was to explore the similarities and differences between the worlds of (for lack of better terms) genre fiction and literary fiction by using the two men's careers and experiences as lenses, since, as van Gelder pointed out, they began at similar spots and ended up at very different places, with Gordon starting out as a book editor and then becoming editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lethem beginning with stories in Aboriginal SF and Asimov's and F&SF, then becoming, well, Jonathan Lethem. I didn't have a notebook with me, so didn't take notes (Scott Edelman did take a few), but what stuck with me were such moments as Gordon wondering if there are ways to talk about the differences between types of writing without feeling the need to valorize one type over the other and Lethem saying that what has changed in his writing as it has developed is not his interest in questioning and subverting core genre values, which has been there from the beginning, but rather his ability to let his fiction absorb a genre exoskeleton rather than wear it. The genre-as-exoskeleton image was one he played with for a bit, saying that his earlier work wore the exoskeleton and let the body underneath it be something else, while now he feels like he doesn't need to wear it anymore, that there is a more organic or internalized sense of the fantastic (or mysterious) in his work. He said people sometimes see him as moving away from genre fiction and Michael Chabon as moving toward it, while he doesn't feel that way at all -- he still feels like the influences on his work are the same, and the genre writers who interest him remain the ones who complexify and question the traditions they inherit -- he could not, he said, write a sword-and-sorcery novel, as Chabon recently did, and he noted that Chabon has long been a much bigger fanboy than he, Lethem, ever was -- Chabon wrote (unpublished) science fiction novels before he wrote Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Lethem noted. What I liked about these distinctions was that they countered the simple narrative of moving toward or away from the SF field, and instead suggested that a writer's relationship to the texts and social environment of SF can be a complex one, and the results in the writer's work (and life) can be unpredictable.

One of the ideas that could have used a bit more time for exploration and explanation was the idea of the difference between the worlds of genre fiction and literary fiction being substantially one of class, with class anxiety explaining some of the tendency toward belittling different types of writing that Gordon brought up. Lethem also pointed out that people deeply committed to one type or writing rather than another often have tremendous misconceptions about the world of the other type of writing, and this idea, too, deserves a lot more exploration. I sometimes wish we could have the writing equivalent of a take-your-child-to-work day -- we could initiate Take a Litfic Writer to a Science Fiction Convention Day and Take a Science Fiction Writer to Bread Loaf Day (heck, Asimov went to Bread Loaf a couple times).

I refrained from buying too many books in the bookroom, though I did pick up JPK's new collection, The Wreck of the Godspeed and David Schwartz's novella The Sun Inside.

Ultimately, and as always, the best thing about the con was getting to see folks I seldom see, or, in some cases, have only met via email before -- it was great finally to get to meet Christopher Rowe (whose reading from a novel-in-progress is among the best readings I've ever been to), John Kessel, and Brian Slattery, and to at least wave to all sorts of people who I wish lived within easy walking distance of my house. But if they did, I would not need to go to Readercon, and the joy of renewed acquaintances would be lost.

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Ever since I saw my first stack of romance paperbacks at a garage sale as an impressionable Midwestern kid, I've always wanted to know who in the heck made them. Today, Barnes & Noble showed me.

Romance and fantasy illustrator Judy York gives these mass-market paperbacks that extra fantastical twist that makes you want to buy the book. Watching her in action, I thought about how novelist Jonathan Lethem wrote about a science fiction novel illustrator in The Fortress of Solitude, mining pop culture ephemera for literary gold. Thanks to Virginia Heffernan for the link.

As long as you're watching videos, Conversational Reading spotted this super-cool documentary about one of my literary heroes, Jorge Luis Borges. 

Finally, Wyatt Mason wrote another thought-provoking post about book reviewing, asking a deceptively simple question about the great Philip Roth:

"I am curious over the methodology of its future reader-evaluators. How much of Roth’s prior work they will feel they should read before passing judgment on his latest effort?"

 

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The latest issue of BOMB magazine includes a conversation between Jonathan Lethem and Lydia Millet -- it's unfortunately not online, but it's so good that it's really worth the price of the magazine to read it. One of the best interviews I've read in a while. Here's a sample:

Jonathan Lethem: I was recently reading an essay by Mary McCarthy, a quite brilliant, free-ranging one that she first gave as a lecture in Europe, called "The Fact in Fiction." At the outset she defines the novel in quite exclusive terms, terms that of course made me very nervous: "...if you find birds and beasts talking in a book you are reading you can be sure it is not a novel." Well, as the author of at least one and arguably two or three novels with talking animals in them, I felt disgruntled. McCarthy is one of those critics whose brilliance dedicates itself often to saying what artists shouldn't do -- like the equally celebrated and brilliant James Wood, with whom I disagree constantly. For me, the novel is by its nature impure, omnivorous, inconsistent, and paradoxical -- it is most itself when it is doing impossible things, straddling modes, gobbling contradiction. But anyway, when I lived with McCarthy's declaration for a while, I found myself replying, "But in the very best novels the animals want to talk, or the humans wish the animals could talk, or both." [...]

Lydia Millet: [...]The animals that want to talk, the people that want them to...exactly. But to the critics -- it's so easy, and so exhilarating, to denounce things. Isn't it? But prohibitions like that -- "It's not a novel if it has talking animals in it," "It's not a novel if it has philosophy in it" -- besides being snobbish and condescending, serve more to elevate the critic than to advance or innovate the form. In fact, I think it's a sign of an art form losing power in culture when its arbiters try to define it by its limitations, what it can't or isn't allowed to do. Shoring up the borders of the form, in other words, to isolate it and make it puny. Novels should do anything and everything they can pull off. The pulling off is the hard part, of course, but my feeling is if you don't walk a line where you're struggling to make things work, struggling with the ideas and shape and tone, you're not doing art. Art is the struggle to get beyond yourself. And if you want to use talking animals to do that, and you can make them beautiful, nothing is verboten. [...] Once you exclude you're calcifying. You're well into middle age and headed for death.

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It's been fun following, Blogging for a Cure 2007 with over 70 bloggers highlighting many of the beautiful snowflakes created by children’s book illustrators as part of Robert’s Snow: for Cancer's Cure. You can still visit the handful of artists featured each day, and get to know each one of them up close and personal. Remember you can bid on your own original art snowflake while helping to fight cancer.

Today I have the privilege of featuring another author and illustrator and snowflake creator Chris Gall! (You can read about the first artist I featured here.) This is a special privilege for me since Chris is one of the illustrators I find my inspiration in. He is one creative guy with a keen eye for detail. Chris Gall is a direct descendant of Katharine Lee Bates author of America the Beautiful, the classic poem and anthem. He has worked with clients all over the world including Time, Newsweek, Money, and National Lampoon, to name just a few. Be sure to visit his website!



First let me congratulate you for being selected in this year's Original Art Show at the New York Society of Illustrators. How many times before have you made it into the show?

I was just in New York for the show. It was great fun! My publisher, Little Brown, threw a party. They don’t usually do that. New York is the place to be if you are in illustration or publishing. All three of my books have been in the show. Although only one illustration is displayed, the jury makes their decision on the book as a whole.

How did you become involved in Robert’s Snow and what was your inspiration for your snowflake, “Dinoflake”?

I got a call from Grace Lin. I knew it was for a good cause but at the time I didn’t know a lot about the project, after some checking I found it was a great conglomeration of illustrators. For my snowflake I wanted to do something different, that’s the way I approach all of my art. So I went with something in contrast to the expected imagery, yet not too random, Santa Dino!

Who had the most influence on your work?

As a kid, no question, Maurice Sendak. My grandmother was friends with him. She owned a small bookstore and he would visit. I would get gifts and signed books from him. As an adult I would have to say my influences come form Chris Van Allsburg and David Wiesner.

What is your all-time favorite picture book?

Where the Wild Things are.

How did the project for your first book, America the Beautiful, come about?

After spending a long time as a commercial illustrator, doing magazine and editorial work it became dry, not so rewarding. I decided I wanted to do children’s books. Even with success as an illustrator elsewhere, it’s hard to break into publishing, so I was looking for a pitch. Something that would interest a publisher. My family kept asking me to illustrate America the Beautiful-I am the great grand-nephew of Katharine Lee Bates—the poem’s author, and after 9-11, I felt the need to do just that. So I put together a proposal and sent it to friends, who sent it to friends, until it ended up in my agents hands. I still have that agent today.

Are the original hand written lyrics on display now?

The family has one of the hand-written copies of the lyrics.

You are the writer and illustrator for your last two books. For you, which comes first, the pictures or the words?

The manuscript first. Always. The industry is biased toward the story not the art. You have to have a strong story. They buy the manuscript. I will include some sample art along with the manuscript when I send it.

You have such a unique style, tell us a little bit about your illustrative process.

I start with thumbnails, sketches, layouts, tracings, and composition. I spend the most time on composition. Then I do a black and white engraving on clay board, kind of like a woodcut. Then it’s scanned and colored in Illustrator. 75-80% of the color is done on the computer. I might then use Photoshop too to move elements or make any changes.


There’s Nothing to do on Mars is due to be released early next year. This book seems like it will help fill the void in picture books for boys, do you have more like it planned for the future?

Yes! I definitely want to fill that void. Early in my career I walked into a bookstore to research the current state of pictures books, and I couldn’t find much that I (with my 7 year old hat on) wanted to actually read. I was determined to create books that I would like if I were a young boy. Of course, girls are always welcome too!

With such a busy schedule, do you still find time to do stand-up comedy? (You curious readers can see what I’m talking about on his bio.)

Oh, I retired from that four years ago. I toured, I was in an improve group, but it was too exhausting. It’s a serious business! But it did give me public speaking experience. If you’re used to dealing with 300 drunk, rowdy, chain-smoking strangers on a late Friday night—all of whom are convinced they are funnier than you are—then entertaining a few 3rd graders is a piece of cake.


Thank you Chris for letting us get to know more about you! His Grandmother was friends with Maurice Sendak, how cool is that! As a special treat I will be giving away a copy of Dear Fish to one lucky reader of this blog. That's right! Just post a reply on this post and your name will go into a drawing. The winner will be selected on the first day of the auction. (You can find the auction details here.)





All images © 2004 - 2007 Chris Gall.

Be sure to check out the other snowflakes being featured today:

Sunday, November 11

• Tim Coffey at The Silver Lining
• Elizabeth Dulemba at sruble's world
• Amy Schimler at Please Come Flying

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Now through November, Blogging for a Cure 2007 will feature over 70 bloggers who will be highlighting many of the beautiful snowflakes created by children’s book illustrators as part of Robert’s Snow: for Cancer's Cure. Visit the handful of artists featured each day, and get to know each one of them up close and personal. Bid on your own original art snowflake while helping to fight cancer.

Today I have the privilege of featuring author and illustrator and snowflake creator Jennifer Thermes. Jennifer writes books about life in the colonial time period. Her stories are inspired by events that happened in her 280-year-old family home. The old farmhouse was once owned by poet and editor Louis Untermeyer. She is convinced "his spirit still infuses the place with a love of stories and ideas." Be sure to check out her website. Like her books, it's chock-full fine detail and historical information.

How did you become involved in Robert’s Snow and what was your inspiration for your snowflake, The First Snow?

I had heard about Robert’s Snow in previous years, and when the call for interested artists came out, I sent in my name. So many people’s lives have been touched by cancer, and I thought it was a very worthy cause.

As for the inspiration for my snowflake, I still get excited with the first snow of the season, and I’m sure that children in colonial times did, too!

Who had the most influence on your work?

Many people– my first art teacher, my writing group, something I’ve read, other artists’ work. It’s always changing. I try to stay inspired by new things. I have always liked that saying about “thinking like a beginner,” in order to keep learning and growing.

What is your all-time favorite picture book?

Another tough question, because my favorites change all the time! (I will say, my favorite Dr. Seuss story is “What Was I Scared Of?” There’s something about that “pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them” that gets me every time!) But seriously, I love the work of Peter Sís, David Small, Garth Williams, Barbara McClintock, among so many others.

For “Sam Bennett’s New Shoes” what was the time line between when you first found the boot and shoe hidden within in the framework of your 1720's farmhouse house, and when the book actually became published?

I knew right away there was a story in the boot and the shoe, but it was about three years before I put pen to paper. Between putting the story and the pictures together took about a year, and then another year before a publisher picked up the idea. Then, of course, another two years working with the editor, doing the final artwork, and completing the whole production process. It’s probably not a good idea to think too hard about the time it takes to make a book!

Do you have the original boot and shoe on display in your home?

Yes, they make a great conversation starter.

Tell us what it’s like working from your office in a home with such a colorful history!

I probably have the same distractions as anybody who works from home, though with a lot more dust! I think the thing an old house really teaches you is that life isn’t perfect, but it can still work just fine, and even be wonderful. In an old house things break, paint peels, floors creak and nothing is level- but there is a certain charm that is hard to reproduce. Also, I find it oddly comforting to think about all of life’s ups and downs the different people who lived here must have experienced.

Working as an author/illustrator, for you, which comes first, the pictures or the words?

It depends on the project. Sometimes an idea will come to me visually, and sometimes a line of text will come whole, seemingly out of nowhere. I’m convinced it’s a gift from the subconscious when that happens! More likely is that I’ll work on the words first– struggling through a first draft and trying to figure out what the story is about, and then shifting back and forth between the words and pictures to meld it all together. I think with each new project I crawl before I walk, and walk before I run. Once I get into the “groove” of an idea it seems to flow quickly.

Tell us a little bit about your illustrative process.

I do a lot of scribbly-sketches before a picture’s composition takes hold, and then refine the drawing from there. It’s helpful to keep a thumbnail layout of a book project in front of me as I work so that I can keep in mind how the pictures and story will flow from page to page. Once I start the finished art I have to remind myself to take frequent breaks– otherwise I get too nit-picky with the color and, actually, everything! I’m never completely satisfied with the finish, but I suspect many artists would say the same about their work.


Your stories are such a part of the life you have lived, or inspired by the lives of those who lived before you, what do you have planned next?

Right now I have several stories out for consideration, one is a picture-book biography and all with historical themes. Since my “day job” is creating illustrated maps, I’ve been working on an idea that incorporates them into a story. It’s still in the early stages.

What were you thinking with that 1980's hairstyle? Just kidding! (All you curious readers can see what I’m talking about on Jennifer’s website bio.)

Oh, come on, I was SO COOL!! (But really quite shy, believe it or not!)


Thank you Jennifer for letting us get to know more about you! And a special thank you for donating a signed book to be given away to one lucky reader of this blog. That's right! Just post a reply on this blog telling me if Jennifer is in auction 1, 2, or 3, and your name will go into a drawing. The winner will be selected on the first day of her auction. (You can find the auction details here.)

Be sure to check out the other snowflakes being featured today:

Brooke Dyer at Bookshelves of Doom
D.B. Johnson at Lessons from the Tortoise
Erin Eitter Kono at Sam Riddleburger
Sherry Rogers at A Life in Books

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Blogging for a Cure, has begun! Starting today, more than 65 bloggers will be highlighting snowflakes and the illustrators who created them. Thank you Jules and Eisha, at Seven Impossible Things, for organizing such a huge event. Here are today's features:

Monday, October 15
Randy Cecil at ChatRabbit
Kevin Hawkes at Cynthia Lord's Journal
Barbara Lehman at The Excelsior File
Grace Lin at In the Pages

This year Robert's Snow has rounded up, more than 200 well-known children’s book illustrators from around the world to create a unique, original art snowflake. And you can own one! The 2007 online auctions for bidding on these hand-painted snowflakes will take place in three separate auctions, from November 19 to 23, November 26-30, and December 3-7. You can read all about it here .

The artists I will be featuring are:
Jennifer Thermes: Thursday, October 18
Chris Gall: Sunday, November 11

Special thanks to Elaine at Wild Rose Reader for not only sharing more photos of the gallery exhibit featuring the snowflakes, but for having a contest with the very special price of a a limited edition Robert’s Snow giclee print created by Grace Lin! This is going to be fun! In fact, many of the feature blogs are running contests with prizes, so be sure to check each one, each day.

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Elaine updated her photos from the gallery show!

Robert’s Snow Exhibit
October 3-22
Child at Heart Gallery

Somehow I missed posting the link to photographer Pennington Geis's
slide show.

Don't forget you can also see them at Robert's Snow: Cancer's Cure, where you will also find information on how to bid and win your very own original art snowflake!

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Be sure to check out the Wild Rose Reader Blog for the latest in the exhibit of Robert's Snow snowflakes! Elaine has posted links to the original art exhibit along with some great photographs from the open house that took place this past Saturday at The Child at Heart Gallery in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Great photos Elaine! Thank you. I would love to get to go the gallery. But since I can't, here's the next best thing:



Robert's Snow: Artist Open House & Exhibit

A Smile to Warm Your Heart!

Scenes from Robert's Snow Artist Open House


Artwork will be on display at the following locations.

Behind the Snowflakes
Below is an update to my original post. More artists links have been added to this list!

The Woman Behind the Snowflakes
The Robert's Snow project, was founded by author/illustrator Grace Lin in honor of her husband Robert's life. Grace gathered artists from all over the children's book illustrating community to create original art snowflakes to be auctioned off. Since 2004, this online auction has raised over $200,000 for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Sadly, in August 2007 Robert lost his battle against cancer at age 35. This year's snowflakes will be auctioned in November and December.

The Artists Behind the Snowflakes
You can see how some of the artists created their snowflakes for this years auction on the following blogs. If anyone I missed would like to be added to this post just let me know.

Anna Alter
Elizabeth O. Dulemba
Holli Conger
Karen Lee
Roz Fulcher
Don Tate
Sherry Rogers
John Nez
Sarah Dillard
Connie McLennan
Paige Keiser
Kelly Murphy
Dan Santat
Stephanie Roth
Sharon Vargo
Susan Mitchell
Ellen Beirer
Liza Woodruff
Sally Vitsky
Jane Dippold
Cecily Lang
Mary Haverfield
Consie Powell
Marion Eldridge
Adam Rex
Jarrett J. Krosoczka
Eric Brooks
Alissa Imre Geis
Amy Schimler
Meghan McCarthy
Matt Tavares (look here too!)
Julie Fromme Fortenberry
Aaron Zenz
Ashley Bryan

Update: Since this was originally posted I have added eleven more preview blogs. I will keep adding more as I come across them, so keep checking in!

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