By: Roger Sutton,
on 10/16/2009
Kitty has posted 'em. One is still forthcoming and another will not be reviewed as its publisher decided rather late in the game that it was in fact a book for young people.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 2/18/2009
With this hell that is my cold (not just mine; everybody at the Horn Book is taking turns staying home sick, and over on Facebook Elizabeth said she felt like she was three dwarfs at once: Dopey, Sneezy and Grumpy) I'm sorry I haven't been here for a few days. I did have a bright moment on the subway this morning, where a man reading The Fountainhead gave up his seat to a lady. For those of you who never went through an Objectivist stage, this is kind of like spotting Ralph Nader test-driving a Hummer.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 12/2/2008
While I could not get HMH to confirm or deny Jane Yolen's claim that the children's division was not bound by the no-submissions policy announced last week, I see from a Hillel Italie AP story that Joe-the-spokesman is apparently talking to someone. In a report of today's resignation of adult trade publisher Becky Saletan, Italie also wrote:
Blumenfeld has offered conflicting statements, saying the publisher of authors such as Philip Roth and Guenter Grass had "temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts," but later acknowledging the policy didn't apply to education and children's books and a mystery book imprint.I don't know where or when this later acknowledgment was made.
No, no, there must have been an exchange of value. Your altruism-induced blindness just made you miss it.
Told you I had a cold.
Oh, how funny. But it confirms my theory that the people who are attracted to Fountainhead are the ones who are least likely to actually practice Objectivism.
How about Atlas Shrugged? You really have to be somewhat intrigued by the concepts to force your way through all those speeches. I have to say that you seem to be right in my case; I'm not at all an Objectivist, but I do love her books... and take her philosophy with a huge grain of salt.
When Random House editor Bennett Cerf tried to get Rand to cut the "This is John Galt speaking" fifty-page speech from the manuscript of Atlas Shrugged, Rand famously replied, "would you cut the Bible?"
Roger, I'm just glad you didn't tell the story of the time I had a blind date with an Ayn Rand fanatic. (Member of the Rand society, his second favorite author was Victor Hugo.) I went to the bookstore and read 10 pages of the Fountainhead, then called him and said "I don't think this is going to work out."
As another Jew, Isaac Asimov, once said, "Ï have no false modesty... or any other kind, for that matter."