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I was unaware Portishead were (was?) this literary. (Nor that ole Tom was so dry and dusty a reader.) Must check with my daughter if she knows about this.

At Critical Mass, author Christopher Beha has been reading all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics, and has a line to draw between self-publishing in the 18th century and today, especially with regard to blogging:

“Self-edited” doesn’t have to mean “un-edited,” and it certainly doesn’t have to mean poorly written. This volume of the Harvard Classics represents the very best of the English essay from the Elizabethan to the Romantic age, and it's worth remembering how much of this lasting work was self-published -- written, edited and printed by the same hand.

Nice one.

This is a well-made example of how to release your own writing on the web and build an audience.
Most of the content on this beautiful looking, audience-friendly site is produced by L.B. Gschwandtner,

'Artist, writer, editor, businessperson, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend …  L B Gschwandtner is all these. Women wear many hats and they all fit well. Why should we be one thing or another when we have so many possibilities, interests, talents and gifts to share? Life, as Auntie Mame said, is a banquet. So let’s eat well while the table is set.'

MTV has appointed John Ashbery its inaugural poet laureate for its broadcasts to college students on MtvU, and US poet Josh Corey is critical (of the media strategy behind the gig, not Ashbery). For those who are not US students but still require a primer in Ashbery's work, a link to Meghan O'Rourke's introduction to Ashbery at Slate is here. (Link via the NBCC blog.)

Corey also has a nice post about the 'Intro to creative writing' class he's teaching, using Thoreau as a touchstone of sorts.

From BoingBoing, something you all needed to know.

And the last pony into the enclosure is this review from issue 47 of Boldtype, which will lead you to other good readings in and on graphic novels.

PN Direct reports that Chicken House is seeking talent. Click here for the full blurb and scroll down.

There is a magnificent post over at Critical Mass by Nicholas Christopher on Lowell's last writing class at Harvard, which Christopher attended in 1969 as a freshman.

And I have pinched this from Maud, because it's an absolute blast. Did anyone know there are virtual fire escapes in SL?? I didn't.

I'm sure this is fairly old news (Brit Summer start, anyhow), but this is an interesting way to promote your list, isn't it.
There is, alas, one title out of stock - Imagist Poetry, edited by Peter Jones, which I picked up secondhand a while back. Perhaps I'll be a tease and send in a review.

...speaking of which, I have published recently at Cordite on the continuing online development of Australia's literary journals, alongside the upcoming issue, no. 26, "Innocence". Get over there and take in all manner of good things, with poetry selected by guest editor M.T.C. Cronin.

David Prater, the general editor of Cordite, will have his first collection of poems, We Will Disappear, launched at the upcoming Melbourne Writers' Festival. He also has had the improbable pleasure of bumping into the reclusive Thomas Pynchon on the New York subway not so long ago, when Against The Day was still in pieces (and apparently Mr. Pynchon was carrying them around.) His account (and review of Against The Day) is here.

For couples with books, John Freeman, a US critic who writes quite often in the Oz Review on the weekends here, has a very nice post here on the whole book merging thing:

I find it hard to totally pretend that the name of an author doesn't have its own alliterative allure, like Laila Lalami -- look good on the page -- like Gautam Malkani, or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- or have the appeal of wonkish particulars, like the double "N" on William T. Vollmann. We live in such a branded society that it's probably somewhat the case that these spine-out fonted squiggles have become something not far off a trademark. But I think it's more than that. "I have given you my soul," says John Proctor in "The Crucible," "leave me my name!" The novelists worth keeping on the shelf give you their soul, I suppose, and in so doing make their name much more than an "I."

Lots of people with names beginning with MMmmm out there, aren't there? I guess the alphabetical merging step was necessary to these  booklovers - me, I might have forgone that and started with categories first, shelving order usually comes a bit later I reckon.

State library web manager and Centre for Youth Literature blogger Lili Wilkinson has not only finished her first novel, Scattered, but has found out how HP7 finishes. (Cory Doctorow also thinks he knows, but isn't telling. Roll on, P-Day.)

And Peter Stothard at the Times Lit Supplement notes that Orlando Bloom's stagecraft is remarkably (surprisingly?) good.

*update - The Age has found out about the Potter leak as well.

Not quite sure how this will blog up - we are Internet free this week, and this news has come to hand from Victoria McClelland-Fletcher from the Australia Council, so I'm posting it in only slightly edited form in at the City Library.

Pioneering Second Life artist to inspire Australian artists

On 12 July, the Australia Council for the Arts, in partnership with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), will host its first ever artist forum in Second Life.
The in-world event, to be moderated by ABC’s Sunday Arts reporter/producer Fenella Kernebone, is for the Australia Council’s inaugural Second Life artist residency.

In an open forum at 7pm (EST) on ABC Island, Paris-based artist and architect Brad Kligerman - one of the first artists in Second Life to complete an in-world residency - will present his work, discuss ideas and answer participants’ questions.

Brad, an architect and teacher, completed his 11-week residency with US-based Ars Virtua , a new media centre and gallery in Second Life, where he questioned the idea of materiality in the rendered environment and the nature of image.

Australia Council chief executive officer Kathy Keele said the partnership with the ABC was a great fit with the Australia Council’s Second Life initiative. ‘The ABC was the first Australian media organisation to establish a presence in Second Life and we are excited about working with them on this project. We hope that Australian artists gain valuable insight from Brad Kligerman’s successful art interventions in Second Life and that they will be inspired to create innovative works in-world that will place them at the forefront of this groundbreaking practice.’

The Australia Council has also set up an artist’s forum in Second Life for artists looking for other artists with whom to collaborate. The moderated artists forum can be found at ABC Island and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) Island, Esperance.

Places for the 12 July Second Life event are limited. To register email [email protected] with your Second Life Avatar name. The event will be streamed live at http://slcn.tv . A vodcast* of the event will also be available on the ABC Sunday Arts website.

* video podcast

Just sharing an invitation I received yesterday which has general application if you're interested in good writing and are in Melbourne tomorrow:

Overland invites you to the launch of Issue 187: Gatekeepers, Wednesday 27 June. Come along to hear Dr Clare Wright (award-winning historian, commentator and TV regular) speak,  to be in the running for spot prizes, to test your skills at literary trivia, enjoy comic relief, eat food, swill drinks, and celebrate the publication of the latest issue.

Wednesday June 27, 6:30pm onwards, Dante’s, 150–155 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. All welcome.

As Judith Lucy might say, I have been a regular Google Reader slut the last few weeks. I weaned myself off checking email, but now I check feeds at least twice a day. Now I'm trying to find a new obsession - reading books is looking pretty good.

It may not be to everyone's taste, but I found this article by Peter Carey (picked up by Maud) excellent. (I think I must be one of those people who subconsciously believes the stories and novels of the world are a constant quantity, and that if too many people are writing they will somehow dry up.)

As Bud Parr notes, the Complete Review just added a complete new feature - Review Overviews, here. Congratulations to Michael Orthofer for making this wonderful online resource even better.

Hmm, my son is doing Sudoku and the nine letter word quiz daily in his gap year - he might enjoy this test. ( He is damn good at the nine letter word quiz. One of those people the word leaps out to from the page.)Link via Ed Champion.

I have a new blog to add to my US list, Chasing Ray. Colleen Mondor writes for the ALA's Booklist (pub of book reviews for librarians) and Bookslut.
Colleen has me feeling guilty about not writing enough reviews - see why, here.

Continuing with reviewing issues, which continue to be hot in the US following the protests  over the sacking of a books editor in Atlanta a month ago,  there's news of a reviewers' database  opened recently at Publisher's Marketplace. (Link via Critical Mass, the US book critics' weblog.)

And Dan Green thinks that books will survive without book reviews in newspapers, but not without literary criticism.

Carrie Frye of Tingle Alley recommends Dwight Garner's new book blog at the New York Times Book Review, Paper Cuts, and applauds Mark Sarvas' new initiative "Second Look" where there will be more attention given to books he might have missed first time around. She sees this as an extension of online writing about books against the tide of gossip and towards more independent discussion, free of the inevitable buzz surrounding publication.

There's a really neat roundup here of online collaborative writing applications, from Josh Catone at ReadWriteWeb.

Finally, this is quite old news now - but BoingBoing reporter Xeni Jardin thinks she has uncovered the origins of the LOLcats way back in the early 20th century. What, no intertubes? She has received supporting documentation from Ape Lad, whose grandpa apparently drew them for a newspaper (before cheeseburgers were invented, according to one commenter.) If anyone out there has confirmation that this is a furphy, please advise this ignorant blogger.

This keynote address from Professor Sasha Grishin of ANU, at a State Library of Victoria seminar held to open the ANU Book Studio's Dantesque exhibition of prints and artists' books, How I entered there, I cannot truly say, is available as a download (what! no transcript, guys?) along with several forums and discussions held around the opening of the exhibition in March.

(Needless to say there is no download available of the grogblog held in Russell Street around that time to celebrate the trip south of one of the exhibitors, who is a wellknown Oz book blogger - however some pictures of her associates with a certain pollie of ill repute are, here.)

I revisited it briefly two days ago, having had a very pleasant couple of hours there back in March, and was impressed this time around by how easy it was to be less imposed upon by the contributions of the head curator, Diane Fogwell. Last time her work seemed to be everywhere, whereas this time I went back remembering what I wanted to see and held most clearly in my memory, notably the work of Helen Geier, Katherine Nix and Caren Florance. I also enjoyed the older collaborative works between Bruno Leti and Chris Wallace Crabbe, and the Counihan print on show.

This is a beautiful exhibition and if you haven't seen it yet, then get a scurry on as it closes on Saturday. It goes to Horsham gallery to finish its tour very soon, after which it returns to ANU as part of the ANU art collection at ANU Drill Hall Gallery.
(More about the exhibition here, at the Book Studio blog.)

This article (link from Miriam Burstein, the Little Professor) points to a range of difficulties emerging with the Google Books project, including poor cataloguing.

Found while researching my recent piece for Cordite, this great review by Theresa Lauf of Jane Smiley and her 13 ways of looking at you-know-what (which I don't really like). From TEXT Review.

Will Self is a fan of Nick Cave's lyrics, using this to briefly unpack an argument he had with a rock writer on the comparative strengths of Dylan and Smokey Robinson:

As I recall, the argument eventually came down to a single couplet from Dylan's song "Visions of Johanna": "On the back of the fish truck that loads / While my conscience explodes". Barney contended that this, in and of itself, meant absolutely nothing at all. Therefore, it could only be viewed either as a self-indulgent verbal riff, or as filler, marking time until the beat cranked up again.

Being forced to analyse the meaning of this trope was, initially, unwelcome. I had no desire either to descend into the nerdish, psycho-biographical slough of the Dylanologists or to ascend to the arid heights of those academics, who have hung on to their tenure by maintaining the view that some songwriters may be considered quite as much "poets" as their unaccompanied counterparts. So far as I'm concerned this approach has always prompted the question: if lyricists are poets, then what are poets? Presumably one-man bands without a band?...

Nowadays, if we picture the poetic muse at all, it's as a superannuated folkie, sitting in the corner of the literary lounge bar, holding his ear and yodelling some old bollocks or other. Whatever need we have for the esemplastic unities of sound, meaning and rhythm that were traditionally supplied by spoken verse, we now find it supplied in sung lyrics.

Bombastic nonsense, really, but it's nicely expressed bombastic nonsense. (I'm obviously easily impressed.)

Not a new lit site, but one I aim to examine more closely  - Western Australian Writing, an Online Anthology.

There's a good review of Ondaatje's newie here at Boldtype, with links to interviews on Salon and CBC.

Also Sara Paretsky speaks to the National Book Critics Circle blog, Critical Mass, about their campaign to keep reviews in newspapers and the gender imbalance in crime reviewing.

Hay-On-Wye has been running over the past two weeks and is blogged at the Guardian's Comment Is Free blog, here. Around the blogs there have been some concerns aired that it's becoming a bit of a bun-fight - too many political sessions, not enough about books, and tiny toilets to boot. (When I remember where I read that, I'll come back and post it.)

Hmm, we don't have headlines like this, do we? I wonder why. (Nor do we also hear that the Irish are the least complaining workers in all of Europe, and the French whinge the most. My expensive new French dictionary offers as an example for the expression 'raleur': C'est une raleuse, mais elle a bon coeur.)

Travel all over the countryside, ask the Bronte Sisters. Kerryn  Goldsworthy has a brand new, clever, clever blog.

A great comics roundup for Free Comic Book Day at 3 A.M. Magazine, here. Also, The Marvellous Lethem is reviving Omega - link via Maud Newton.

The Library of Congress' Inaugural Gershwin prize has gone to Paul Simon. I think we can guess exactly how old the LOC blogger is in the opening paragraph of this post - not exactly someone who has had to listen to "I Am A Rock" in RE class, is he.

Simon Sellars has posted a review of the inaugural J.G. Ballard conference at the University of East Anglia over at Ballardian ( he gave a paper there, on micronationalism and other matters.) Sounds like he had a ball -

I always get a bit melancholy when these temporary autonomous zones collapse and everyone returns to virtual communication. Especially when said TAZ was so inspiring. I already knew the quality of discourse would be outstanding – one look at the conference abstracts could tell you that – but after meeting and greeting, listening and absorbing, I was left overwhelmed with happiness centred around the feeling that Ballard might, finally, be receiving the level of critical attention his work so blatantly deserves.

And finally, Stephanie Gunn has posted a very favourable review of Ticonderoga Publications' first anthology, Fantastic Wonder Stories, over at HorrorScope, the blog of the Australian Horror Writers' Association.