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As we reported last year, 21st Century authors love to attack their critics. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a new book that pokes fun at the most unexpected book critics: third graders.
Tyson was one of the scientists who helped the International Astronomical Union decide in August 2006 that Pluto was no longer a planet. In The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, he describes his controversial (at least among grade school kids) role in that de-planet-ification. Today The Takeway interviewed the scientist on the 80th anniversary of Pluto's discovery.
Here's an excerpt: "The Pluto Files was really a catharsis for me, because I was branded as public enemy for having revealed this information about Pluto ... it's kids, third graders, sending me hate mail. A lot of it is entertaining, and it's all in fun, but it revealed something about the power of this particular cosmic object in the hearts and minds of Americans."
Meet the Super Bowl commercial that launched a thousand literary blog posts. During the most watched television show ever, Bud Light unveiled the beer ad embedded above, poking fun at book clubs, male readers, female readers, and book reading in general. The ad shows a couple fun-loving beer drinkers crashing a book club, playing with all sorts of stereotypes about American readers.
Our post on the topic generated a wide range of reader responses. One reader wrote: "If ya' can't laugh at yourself... I'm a writer and reader (and book club member) and don't drink much beer, but it didn't bother me a bit. If we all took ourselves a bit less seriously, we'd save time (and have more fun!)"
Another reader took offense at the offense: "I enjoy drinking bud light because its cheap and I can drink a lot of it while I'm not being an organic chemist, which frankly requires more intelligence and betters society significantly more than being a stuck up literary snob."
Reader Deborah performed a quick literary fact-check: "They were also apparently discussing Little Women but the plot she was giving to him sounded like no version of Little Women I've ever heard before!"
Paul Oliver wrote: "The scariest part of the commercial is the hero. I have noticed a clear trend in commercials making men out as increasingly simple or buffoonish. Ever see the Dominos commercial where a woman is ringing door bells in a home improvement store to try them out? Yeah, the men come running from everywhere in the store in belief that Dominos pizza was just delivered."
Finally, C.J. West contributed some book club intelligence: "The makers of Bud Light are trying to be funny here ... Who cares if they got the background on the book right? They're trying to be funny. I've visited many book clubs to talk about my books and NEVER has there been a man in attendance. The men of the house run when the ladies start coming in. If you are offended by this, I think you're taking yourself a little too seriously."
Can contemporary male authors write a good sex scene? In a NY Times Book Review essay this weekend, cultural critic Katie Roiphe argued that male authors have lost their taste for steamy sex.
Here's a sample: "The current sexual style is more childlike; innocence is more fashionable than virility, the cuddle preferable to sex. Prototypical is a scene in Dave Eggers's road trip novel, 'You Shall Know Our Velocity,' where the hero leaves a disco with a woman and she undresses and climbs on top of him, and they just lie there."
The article comes complete with hot pink charts measuring sex scenes by writers like John Updike (pictured, via) against David Foster Wallace's generation--rating the rusults on a thermometer scale ranging from "Cuddling" to "Sex" to "Outrageous Behavior."
What do you think? A Jewish Daily Forward essay argues the opposite: "We are a different society, not in terms of how we have sex, but in terms of its public presence--it takes eleven mistresses to raise our dander. Writers no longer feel compelled to up the ante; in fact, today's shy literary heroes may be reacting genuinely to our over-saturated culture, a culture that feeds us false ideals of how and when we're supposed to get it on." (Via Ami Greko)
With confusing blend of mix of satire and self-righteousness, he wrote: "If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck."
GalleyCat readers were unsympathetic. Carol Mackintosh Hiller wrote: "That's not curmudgeonly, it's just damn mean, and worse: it foments divisiveness at a time of year Christians traditionally observe as a time of peace and renewal. What's wrong with him, anyway?"
Another reader quipped: "Puhlease... the man's a Lutheran Woody Allen. Never fails to crack me up."
Finally, Saundra Goldman wrote: "This breaks my heart and opens my eyes."
In a curmudgeonly essay, author Garrison Keillor unexpectedly bashed Unitarian and Jewish Christmas song writers.
While ruminating on a Cambridge Unitarian church that rewrote the words to "Silent Night," the host of A Prairie Home Companion and author of "A Christmas Blizzard" criticized a number public figures. His column featured an odd mix of satire and self-righteousness, and generated some angry responses.
Here's the controversial quote, from a Baltimore Sun column: If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't." (Via Sarah Weinman)
Last week, Details deputy editor Chis Raymond unveiled the 25 Greatest Gen X Books of All Time in his magazine, and told GalleyCat: "Just look at the features in men's magazines. They're often much meatier than the fare you find in women's magazines."
In response, More magazine's editor-in-chief Lesley Jane Seymour fired back an email response. "Yawn--another men's magazine editor proclaiming that men's magazines are 'much meatier' than women's. It's such an old-fashioned concept, I'm surprised people feel the need to keep perpetuating it," she explained in an email interview. "The truth is, there are fluffy magazines for men as well as women out there, but lumping women's magazines as a whole into the fluffy category is just plain irresponsible."
She also explained about her magazine's literary content: "More readers are book lovers who tend to favor literary fiction, memoirs and historical non-fiction with a twist. Our coverage is headed up by Editor-at-Large and Author Dawn Raffel, who has been an assistant adjunct professor at the MFA program at Columbia. She oversees a stable of prominent reviewers including Jane Ciabattari, president of the National Book Critics Circle, and Jayne Anne Phillips, a 2009 finalist for the National Book Award for fiction. We do tend to favor books by or about midlife women, who are severely underrepresented in book circles. We do also take into account the lives of the author--does she have an interesting reinvention story or a unique spin on a news story. We consider ourselves the resource for intelligent and thoughtful midlife readers--and our book pages consistently rate high in the pages of the magazine and on More.com."
Three universities have answered the National Federation of the Blind's call to not endorse Amazon.com (AMZN) Kindle DX as a textbook alternative on campus, and a spokesperson revealed that the Federation has contacted more universities to join the boycott.
In an interview, Chris Danielsen, the federation's Director of Public Relations, told GalleyCat: "It is certainly our intention to continue to reach out to more universities to make sure they take a stand ... We are corresponding with people we know at various universities, sending out more general correspondence as well. More will be revealed as we implement it." All year, the organization has defended the Kindle's controversial text-to-speech function.
Danielsen concluded: "We want to make sure that universities encourage a paradigm of accessibility for blind students and for all of their students. Text-to-speech and eBook accessibility are potentially beneficial to a lot of different people. We ultimately believe that anyone should be able to buy an eBook and read it in the form which is best for their needs."
A women's site has declared today "She Writes Day of Action" responding to a literary list that stirred up controversy on the Internets.
When Publishers Weekly released a series of Best Books of 2009 lists this week, the "Top Ten" list did not include any books by women authors. GalleyCat wrote about the ensuing controversy on Wednesday, as the founders of Women In Letters And Literary Arts (WILLA) passionately rejected the list. She Writes is urging upset readers to post on She Writes today; to buy a book by a female author; and to share posts with other readers.
In addition, Publishers Weekly reviews director Louisa Ermelino wrote one blogger to explain the controversial list: "[P]lease note that there are 100 best books, not just these ten. Also, our editorial staff is heavily female, none of us the retiring type. The editors all cover certain catagories but read voraciously across all the catagories. We came to the original meeting with our 'picks' and then over the course of several meeting whittled down the choices. We feel we ended up with books that we loved, that stood out from the pack... for 2009. Kind of a blind taste test."
The Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean has filed a lawsuit against the producers of a new adaptation of a Gabriel García Márquez novel, a legal move that has stalled the film's production.
According to the Guardian, the group hopes to stop a production of the Nobel Prize-winning writer's novel, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" because of concerns about depictions of child prostitution. In the ensuing controversy, some Mexican officials decided to pull out their financial support for the film, dealing what the director called "a fatal blow" to the film.
Here's a quote from Coalition director Teresa Ulloa, from the article: "As a book, it does not have access to the most vulnerable people in society ... Once they make the movie, it will be in movie theatres and later it will surely be on television." (Via Book Bench)
French publisher La Martiniere has joined the French Publishers' Association and a French authors' group in a 15 million euros ($22.09 million) lawsuit against Google for scanning books into the Google Books database.
According to Reuters, the suit alleges that Google Books' French arm has digitized thousands of texts and violated the publisher's copyright. The company also hopes the court will fine Google 100,000 euros for every day that the scanned texts are still available. A French tribunal should rule on the case by mid-December.
The publisher's lawyer Yann Colinhad this statement: "It's an anarchic way of brutally stockpiling French heritage ... Digitizing is reproduction ... Once it is digitized, you can't undo it." (Via Bookseller)
In a filing last Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) urged a federal judge to reject the class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc.--pushing for revisions in this Google Books settlement.
Federal judge Denny Chin has handled the complicated case for months, deciding the fate of Google's massive database of scanned book titles. In the filing, the DOJ worried about licensing problems that could arise in the future, complaints from foreign writers and publishers, and the lack of "comparable access" for Google's many competitors. The settlement was also a hot button topic on today's Morning Media Menu.
Here's more from the DOJ filing: "Given the parties' express commitment to ongoing discussions to address concerns already raised and the possibility that such discussions could lead to a settlement agreement that could legally be approved by the Court, the public interest would best be served by direction from the Court encouraging the continuation of those discussions between the parties and, if the Court so chooses, by some direction as to those aspects of the Proposed Settlement that need to be improved. Because a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential for important societal benefits, the United States does not want the opportunity or momentum to be lost."
A federal judge dismissed a literary copyright lawsuit filed against Jerry Seinfeld and his wife, Jessica Seinfeld, ruling that Jessica's book, "Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Getting Your Kids Eating Good Food," did not violate the copyright of another cookbook.
U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain dismissed a copyright suit filed by Missy Chase Lapine, author of "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals." Swain had sued, alleging that Jessica's cookbook copied her guide to cooking for children. According to the LA Times, the judge ruled that a state court should decide Swain's claims of defamation by Seinfeld.
Here's more from the judge's opinion: "The similarities identified by plaintiffs are the result of the similar medium of expression used (cookbooks) or of the similar subject matter that both cookbooks address (hiding healthy foods in kid-friendly books)." (Via Publishers Weekly)
As we noted last week, Amazon, Microsoft (MFST), and Yahoo (YHOO) have banded together with the Open Book Alliance in opposing the Google Books settlement--an agreement reached through an Authors Guild lawsuit in federal court. The Authors Guild responded with an assault on Amazon's values, criticizing the low e-book prices that the online bookseller has set for the Kindle.
Here's more from the statement: "Amazon's hypocrisy is breathtaking. It dominates online bookselling and the fledgling e-book industry. At this moment it's trying to cement its control of the e-book industry by routinely selling e-books at a loss. It won't do that forever, of course. Eventually, when enough readers are locked in to its Kindle, everyone in the industry expects Amazon to squeeze publishers and authors." (Via Publishers Weekly)
Over the weekend, journalist Dan Baum reviewed Rebecca Solnit's new book, "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster" for the Washington Post. At the end of the review, Baum criticized her reporting on "illegal killings" in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. "She is right to raise the issue, but she fails to turn rumor into proof," he wrote.
Solnit replied in a letter that began, "You slander me and my book," disputing Baum's points about the killings. Here's an excerpt from her letter that sparked a nonfiction reporting feud: "The reluctance of the mainstream media to give credence to this story even in the face of substantial evidence has been one of the most shocking things about it. You owe me an apology. You owe a much bigger one to history."
This week a federal judge ruled that Howard K. Stern's defamation lawsuit could not focus on allegations of homosexual activities in a recent book.
According to Reuters, the late Anna Nicole Smith's friend Stern had sued author Rita Cosby (pictured, via) and the Hachette Book Group for 19 allegedly libelous statements in Cosby's book, "Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death." Federal Judge Denny Chin dropped eight claims, and ruled that Hachette should not be involved in the lawsuit since the publisher had "no reason to doubt the truth of the book."
The Morning Media Menu discussed the case today as well. Here's more from the article: "Chin dismissed Stern's claims that statements implying he was homosexual were defamatory ... But he noted Cosby, who is also a television reporter, had to answer to claims that she knew some of her sources were not truthful."
--the Long Island man whose ill-fated affair with Amy Fisher ended when the teenager shot, but did not kill, his ex-wife--will hold a press conference today, explaining his new lawsuit against his ex-wife.
According to the press release, Buttafuoco is suing Mary Jo Buttafuoco defamation in her recent book, "Getting It Through My Thick Skull--Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know." The suit seeks damages and calls for HCI to recall of the book.
"The injury to Mr. Buttafuoco has been compounded by the publicity tour Ms. Buttafuoco has made to promote her book. She has appeared on numerous television programs where she repeats her outrageous statements concerning my client's character. These defamatory statements are beyond the pale and have made Mr. Buttafuoco a pariah in the community, causing him not just public embarrassment but the loss of business."
Around the 4:45 mark, Nolan (pictured, via) commented: "You would hope that the media and journalism would be a little more democratic than that, because having a diverse core of journalists is going to make your journalism better. But it's really not. Especially in New York. It's just as connection driven as fashion, business, and Wall Street. Which is kind of sad."
Click here to listen to the whole show. Nolan tackled the day's biggest headlines: a food-blogger spat, strange allegations against a sportswriter, and the logic of attending journalism school.
An artist has sued Random House Inc. for using a picture of the famous Wall Street bull on the cover of the new book, "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers."
The book--written by Lawrence G. McDonald--uses a photo of the raging bull statue that adorns a busy Manhattan strip near Wall Street. According to the Wall Street Journal, artist Arturo Di Modica claims the cover picture was unauthorized. The article also recounts the strange story of how the 17,000-pound statue ended up there in the first place.
Here's a comment from the publisher: "'Random House has not yet been served and we do not comment on pending litigation,' said David Drake, a Random House spokesman." (Via MobyLives)
Yesterday the publishing reporter filed a declaration as an expert literary witness in the defense of author John David California (a pseudonym for author Fredrik Colting), Windupbird Publishing and SCB Distributors--the parties sued by Salinger to block 60 Years, a "critical analysis" that revisits the author's classic novel, "The Catcher in the Rye." The law firm of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz argue that Salinger's legal team cannot prove "commercial harm" will result from the book, filing expert testimony from Nelson and two literature professors.
Here's an excerpt from Nelson's expert testimony: "Through my experience covering the publishing industry as a reporter and an editor, I understand the myriad variables that contribute to--or detract from--a book's commercial success ... 60 Years will have no detrimental impact on sales of Catcher ... Anticipated sales of 60 Years, a critical analysis by a little-known author, pale in comparison to Catcher's success ... It is more likely that 60 Years, through its critical content and the attendant publicity it will likely generate, will actually contribute to renewed interest in, discussion of, and consequently sales of, Catcher."
A bitter feud dividing the Oxford poetry scene has spawned an anonymous poem, reportedly written by a "very high-profile poet;" it is entitled, "Smear."
Recently Nobel laureate Derek Walcott (pictured) dropped out of the race to become Oxford's next professor of poetry after a spate of anonymous letters raised questions about his past. A few weeks later, Ruth Padel also withdrew her nomination when it was revealed that she contacted a journalist about the Walcott allegations.
Now, an anonymous poet--possibly even a poet in running for the prestigious post--has published a poem about the sordid affair. Here's an excerpt from the poem: "Here we come, the kindlers, the / night-watch. / Lonely as the labour is, its nature / utters outward everywhere: a wick / is treated, flame / is sheltered." (Via BookNinja)
The 32-year-old Swedish publisher Fredrik Colting has admitted to writing a book that revisits the classic protagonist of "The Catcher in the Rye" as an elderly man. Writing with the pseudonym John David California, Colting, his publisher, and his distributor were all recently sued by J.D. Salinger.
The Smoking Gun reports--as GalleyCat discovered earlier--that Colting's Nicotext imprint publishes a variety of odd joke titles like "The Macho Man's (Bad) Joke Book." Salinger seeks to block the publication of "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye" and seeks undisclosed damages. The distributor vowed to fight back in court next Monday.
Here's more from the TSR report: "Colting told TSG that, along with a partner, he has produced a variety of humor or 'quirk' titles, but that '60 Years Later' was his "first published novel" ... A purported photo of "California" appeared last month in England's Daily Telegraph, but the picture was actually of actor Gustav Roth, a friend of Colting. 'It was a bit tricky of us but we did it without any bad intentions,' Colting wrote in an e-mail. 'I mean, the whole point of a pseudonym is it being a secret.'"
Author John David California, Windupbird Publishing and SCB Distributors will fight J.D. Salinger's lawsuit to block publication of "60 Years Later--Coming Through the Rye."
The publishing team has hired the law firm of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz to fight the lawsuit in federal court on Monday. According to Courthouse News, the author seeks to have "publication enjoined, all copies of the book destroyed, damages and costs" in the "scathing" lawsuit against a book that catches up with the hero of "The Catcher in the Rye" in his golden years.
Here's a statement from Aaron Silverman at SCB Distributors: "Salinger's ham-fisted attempt to squash this thoughtful book must fail ... But a review of "60 Years Later" shows it to be an independent work worthy of Copyright and First Amendment protection. Readers will find 60 Years Later to be an imaginative commentary not only on Salinger and his relationship to the character that defined him--but also on their joint status as cultural icons."
Author Sherman Alexie played a public role at BEA 2009--contemplating readership, Amazon's Kindle, and class during heady panel discussions.
The author of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" earned NY Times coverage for his disparaging remarks about the "elitist" nature of the Kindle. As the literary blogosphere debated his speech, blogger Edward Championinterviewed the author about his Amazon opinions.
Here's one juicy excerpt from the Alexie interview: "I am taking a very tiny stand against many large corporations. I am asking what I think are serious, tough questions and all sorts of people are vilifying me for it. When it comes to this, many people are taking the side of massive corporations over one writer trying to get answers. They're treating me like I'm Goliath. It reminds me of the way people think of professional athletes and their salaries. All sorts of middle-class folks agree with the billionaire owners of sports teams that the millionaire players make too much money."
Yesterday reclusive author J.D. Salinger sued John David California in federal court to stop the publication of his unauthorized sequel to Salinger's classic novel, "The Catcher in the Rye." According to the AP, the suit includes unspecified damages.
"60 Years Later Coming Through the Rye" was publicized as a sequel to the novel, generating hundreds of Twitter posts. As GalleyCat reported, Amazon lists a few titles co-written by the book's publisher, including "The Macho Man's (Bad) Joke Book." Possibly, the company could mount a parody defense for the distinctively odd book.
As the Publishing Law Center explains, parody has been one defense against copyright infringement ever since an infamous hip-hop group went to the country's highest court for sampling a Roy Orbison song in 1993: "The Supreme Court accepted 2 Live Crew's song as a parody because the rap song mimicked the original to achieve its message and because it 'reasonably could be perceived as commenting on the original [Oh, Pretty Woman] or criticizing it, to some degree.'"
Poet Ruth Padel (pictured) turned down an Oxford poetry professor spot yesterday after admitting she sent journalists emails reminding them about sexual harassment charges in Derek Walcott's past.
The race for what the Guardian called "the most influential in poetry in the UK behind that of the laureateship" has been fierce, and Walcott dropped out after 100 academics mailed organizers missives an 1982 allegation of sexual harassment leveled against the poet. The university will still replace the departing poetry professor Christopher Ricks, but it might not be able to complete the search before classes start in October.
Here's an excerpt from the article: "But passing on the concerns, [Padel] said today, was 'naive and silly of me--a bad error of judgement. I can of course see that people can misconstrue these two isolated emails of mine as part of a larger campaign I had nothing to do with,' she added."
As we reported last year, 21st Century authors love to attack their critics. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a new book that pokes fun at the most unexpected book critics: third graders.
Can contemporary male authors write a good sex scene? In a 
In a a 
Last week, Details deputy editor Chis Raymond unveiled the 
Three universities have answered the National Federation of the Blind's call 
A women's site has declared today "
The Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean has filed a lawsuit against the producers of a new adaptation of a 
French publisher La Martiniere has joined the French Publishers' Association and a French authors' group in a 15 million euros ($22.09 million) lawsuit against Google for scanning books into the Google Books database.
In a filing last Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) urged a federal judge to reject the class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc.--pushing for revisions in this Google Books settlement.
A federal judge dismissed a literary copyright lawsuit filed against 
On the eve of the 
Over the weekend, journalist 
This week a federal judge ruled that 
For months, GalleyCat readers have 
An artist has sued Random House Inc. for using a picture of the famous Wall Street bull on the cover of the new book, "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers." 
Former Publishers Weekly editor 
A bitter feud dividing the Oxford poetry scene has spawned an anonymous poem, reportedly written by a "
Author 
Poet