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Vendela Vida is a force to be reckoned with. She's written four novels and one book of nonfiction; she's a founding editor of the Believer and a cofounder of 826 Valencia, plus she's done some screenwriting. Her newest novel, The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty, is her strongest work yet. In this moving, darkly funny, beautifully [...]

Actor Ewan McGregor will direct a feature film adaptation of Philip Roth’s bestselling novel American Pastoral.

This will the McGregor’s first time out behind the camera. McGregor will also star in the film along with Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning.

Deadline.com has the scoop:

The story follows Seymour \"Swede\" Levov (McGregor), a legendary high school athlete who grows up to marry a former beauty queen (Connolly) and inherits his father’s business. Swede’s seemingly perfect life shatters when his daughter (Fanning) rebels by becoming a revolutionary and committing a deadly act of political terrorism during the Vietnam War.

61 authors and 14 artists have made annotations to some of their most beloved works for the First Editions/Second Thoughts (FEST) auction. The funds from this venture will benefit the PEN American Center.

The writers added in features to first edition copies of their books such as notes, essays, sketches, photos, and letters to the reader. The artists had a choice of re-making either a monograph or an important art piece.

All of the artwork and annotated books will be put on public display at Christie’s New York starting November 17th. The auction itself will take place on December 2nd.

The New York Times has an exclucisve video starring Robert A. Caro, Paul Auster, and Jane Smiley who talk about the experience of re-reading their own books (embedded above). Click here to watch another video for more details about the auction event.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Several high profile writers have agreed to join in Authors United’s fight against Amazon. The new members include Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, V. S. Naipaul, Milan Kundera, and Ursula Le Guin.

The organization aims to convince the online retail conglomerate to end its dispute with Hachette Book Group USA. Last month, Authors United publicly posted a letter addressed to Amazon’s board members asking them to take a stand on this issue.

When asked about her participation in the group, Le Guin submitted this statement to The New York Times: “We’re talking about censorship: deliberately making a book hard or impossible to get, ‘disappearing’ an author. Governments use censorship for moral and political ends, justifiable or not. Amazon is using censorship to gain total market control so they can dictate to publishers what they can publish, to authors what they can write, to readers what they can buy. This is more than unjustifiable, it is intolerable.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Describe your latest book. My new novel is called Station Eleven. It's about a traveling Shakespearean theatre company in a post-apocalyptic North America. The book moves back and forth in time between the years just before a devastating flu pandemic brings about the collapse of civilization as we know it, and a time 20 years [...]

It's spring! The sun is shining. The flowers are in bloom. The Blazers are winning (fingers crossed). We're in a good mood. So for our latest round of Required Reading, we lined up our 25 favorite funny novels. Whether biting, riotous, savage, or slapstick, each of these books consistently makes us laugh. ÷ ÷ ÷ [...]

This book is sick in more ways than one and for all the right reasons. Roth faced a hailstorm of publicity (both good and bad) after the publication of this sexual novel that still holds up well on the cringe factor. I sometimes feel guilty laughing at this book, but not enough to stop me [...]

French Foreign minister Laurent Fabius presented author Philip Roth with the insignia of Commander of the Legion of Honor, at a formal ceremony at the French Embassy in New York on Friday.

During the ceremony Fabius praised Roth for his contribution to literature and outlined his long relationship with France, including having had his first short story published in The Paris Review.

Fabius praised Roth for his “art of storytelling, your irony and self-depreciation, which is not typically French,” he said. “You have enjoyed immense success in France.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The great novelist Philip Roth turned 80 years old today. To celebrate his birthday, we’ve linked to a long list of free eBooks that inspired his long career as a novelist–follow the links below to download for your Kindle, Nook, iPad or other popular reader.

The New Yorker has more details: “Roth told Les inRocks that when he turned seventy-four he reread his favorite authors—Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Turgenev, Hemingway.”

You can also explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our 50 Free eBooks To Be Thankful For list, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Edgar Allan Poe books collection, our Downton Abbey poetry reading list, our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and our Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read collection.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Towards the end of his life, witnessing the rise of the graphic novel as a format, Will Eisner commented on the fact that his books formed a subsection of the graphic novels display at a large bookstore by clarifying that his desire was to see his books shelved in the literature section alongside works by Jewish-American novelists of his generation (as expressed in an interview with David Hajdu). It’s enough to make you chuckle that he wasn’t pleased enough with the impact his books had on pushing the graphic novel format forward in American comics, but at the New York Comic and Picture-Story Symposium on the 11^th of March, an Eisner-Week event critiqued the comparison between Eisner and his generation of fellow writers to see if his work stood up to his own claim of similarity. Speakers Jeremy Dauber (Professor in Yiddish Studies at Columbia University) and Danny Fingeroth (educator, author, former Marvel Comics editor and Chair of the Organizing Committee for Will Eisner Week) investigated Eisner’s use of setting, dialogue, and themes, as well as common cultural references he shared with his generation, to place Eisner in context and challenge the divide typically assumed between prose and comics media.

[Dauber and Fingeroth]

Dauber pointed out, in opening, that Will Eisner’s work is not usually considered in comparison to novels. He’s known for his prose, and often narrative-heavy work, but close textual comparisons between his writing style and those of his contemporary prose-writers is sparse, or even non-existent. Born in 1917, and “coming of age” in the 20’s and 30’s, Eisner, Dauber said, “was present a the foundational moment of Modern American Jewish Literature” and surrounded by the same influences and trends of major novelists of the period. Abraham Cahan, for instance, who fled from Czarist Russia to become a longtime editor of Yiddish newspapers in New York, was a “break through writer” in establishing Jewish-American literature. He often described the “urban landscape” as “something that’s alive”, as artist Andrea Tsurumi observed during audience participation. In comparison, Eisner’s CONTRACT WITH GOD gives a strong sense of place, and often speaks in a “high register” of prose, like Cahan’s work.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Another prose writer who became a “household name” during Eisner’s childhood was Anzia Yezierska, the “Cinderella of the tenements”, who often found herself in conflict with her parent’s generation, forged her high school diploma in order to attend college, and found herself exploring the conflict between the old and new world in her prose. Her use of dialogue, contrasting idiomatic Yiddish-English with her own more formal style of English speaks to a tension also visible in Eisner’s dialogue. Dauber presented novelist Henry Roth’s work as a final comparison in the use of dialogue to show differences in cultural background also found in Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue inhabitants. Dauber also pointed out a similar fascination with religious experience as a “transforming” force between Roth and Eisner.

[Danny Fingeroth]

While Dauber explored prose comparisons between Eisner’s work and other Jewish-American novelists, Fingeroth took a more visual approach to putting Eisner in context. He addressed the fact that many of the novels of Eisner’s generation and milieu found their way into film adaptation, like Philip Roth’s GOODBYE COLUMBUS (1969). This forms a visual link to Eisner’s own graphic novels and work as an artist. Like Saul Bellow, Eisner also embraced a strong sense of comedy in his work, whereas authors like Bellow didn’t seem to acknowledge comics as an expression of their generation. In a video clip Fingeroth played for the audience, Eisner described himself as “growing up in an environment of prejudice and exploration of identity”, a theme certainly visible in many of the Jewish-American novels of the period. Eisner’s injected his characteristic humor by adding that writing was “inexpensive long term therapy” for these issues.

[Will Eisner]

Fingeroth described the “Jewish-American assimilation experience” as a common feature of Eisner’s work and his novelist contemporaries. CONTRACT WITH GOD, the “first thing” Eisner created in his long career that “wasn’t an actual assignment” allowed him the freedom to revisit these very personal experiences. Fingeroth also noted that a common cultural reference among these writers was Baseball, as seen in Philip Roth’s THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, and in Eisner’s artwork on “The Adventures of Rube Rooky”. Writing about baseball, Fingeroth explained, was a “leveling process” between cultures that became part of the assimilation process. Visually speaking, Fingeroth said, Eisner was a “master of this craft of depicting urban life” found in celebrated Jewish-American novels.  Particularly in A CONTRACT WITH GOD, Eisner, “given the freedom to do what he wanted to…came up with stories based on the Bronx of his youth”, like other writers of his generation.

[Saul Bellow]

Fingeroth reminded the audience that exploring Eisner’s prose shouldn’t take away from Eisner’s own assertion that he “wrote with pictures”, though. According to Dauber and Fingeroth’s research, Eisner wrote “as well as anyone” else prominent in his generation. To understand Eisner’s legacy, we have to keep in mind that he “thought of himself as someone who wouldn’t be complete without pictures”, Fingeroth said. So, after this careful textual and cultural comparison between Eisner and the Jewish-American novelists of his day, what was the verdict? Could Eisner’s works be placed in the “literature” section of a bookstore next to the novels he felt expressed the same messages? “Will made it”, Fingeroth confirmed, “He belongs there, too”.

During the question and answer period, discussion turned toward Eisner’s overwhelming drive to raise awareness of comics as a medium. Fingeroth described Eisner as being on a “mission to explain his own life and to legitimize comics”. It’s a puzzling thing that Eisner apparently wanted graphic novels to be seen as “mainstream” literature rather than as a separate format, but the answer may lie in his sense that graphic novels were still being segregated from literature and therefore not treated as equal creative achievements. The double presentation of Eisner’s work in context from Dauber and Fingeroth made a strong argument for Eisner’s status alongside novelists of his day, especially in terms of subject matter and prose style. Dauber and Fingeroth presented reasonable evidence that Eisner’s work could be reshelved in the literature section at any bookstore, but it might cause quite a tug of war with those who see his work of “legitimizing” comics as most at home in a separate graphic novels section of books. “Ideally, all sorts of books could be shelved in more than one section of a bookstore or library,” Fingeroth added in a follow-up comment, “but a variety of practical reasons make that unlikely for the time being. Online venues seem to be able to do it, though, so hopefully some version of that will come to brick-and-mortar outlets, too.” So, why not place Eisner’s books in both locations? It might remind readers, for one thing, to view Eisner as a cultural peer of many of the novelists he revered.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

Hachette Book Group, Penguin and Simon & Schuster have launched Bookish, nearly two years after the site was first announced in May 2011.

The site will recommend books and let readers shop for books. It also shares book excerpts and features essays from its editors and authors (we’ve included some excerpts below).

According to Digital Book World sources, the publishers have invested “about $16 million” in the new venture. Bookish also counted the participation of 16 other major publishers, including Random House, Inc., Scholastic, HarperCollins Publishers and Perseus Books Group.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Salon translated a French article about novelist Philip Roth, uncovering a blunt revelation about his writing career: “Nemesis will be my last book.”

Published in 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Nemesis told the story of a 1944 polio epidemic in New Jersey.  HMH’s director of publicity Lori Glazer confirmed the news with Salon. Check it out:

In an interview with a French publication called Les inRocks last month — which does not appear to have been reported in the United States — Roth, 78, said he has not written anything new in the last three years, and that he will not write another novel. “To tell you the truth, I’m done,” Roth told the magazine, in the most definitive statement he has ever made about his future plans. “‘Nemesis’ will be my last book.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Philip Roth’s tale of a polio epidemic has been shortlisted for the £25,000 Wellcome Trust Book Prize, with a six-strong shortlist that sees four novels in the running.

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Philip Roth was honoured as the winner of The Man Booker International Prize 2011 in London last night, but controversy over his win continued.

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Philip Roth has won the £60,000 Man Booker International Prize. It was the fourth time the bi-annual prize has been awarded–previous winners included Ismail Kadare, Chinua Achebe, and Alice Munro.

Roth (pictured via Nancy Crampton) had this comment: “One of the particular pleasures I’ve had as a writer is to have my work read internationally despite all the heartaches of translation that that entails. I hope the prize will bring me to the attention of readers around the world who are not familiar with my work. This is a great honour and I’m delighted to receive it.”

Over at the Philip Roth Society, a blog post listed the gambling odds for different contenders for the prize. Roth was the 7/2 favorite.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

33-year-old J.D. Salinger tried to run away with a married woman at a Harper’s Magazine party in 1952, one writer explained in a new essay. According to a Paris Review essay by Blair Fuller, Salinger privately proposed to her sister, Jill Fox, asking her to leave everything behind and start a new life New Hampshire.

Fox refused, but confessed after the party: “I was smitten with Jerry [Salinger] that evening, but I wondered what he and I would be saying to one another around Hartford.” Hartford is the halfway point between Cornish and New York City.

Jill’s husband Joe Fox would become a Random House editor, working with authors like Truman Capote and Philip Roth. If given the chance, what author would you run away with?

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Adam Levin discusses some novels that influenced him. The Roth and Wallace are no surprise, but it was a revelation to find Kosinski’s (riveting, controversial) The Painted Bird on the list.

The community writing site Figment counted 4,000 registered users during its official launch yesterday, building a new site for young adult readers. Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Jacob Lewis, the co-founder and CEO of Figment.

Lewis offered advice for publishers looking to build community and advised readers on how to add their work to Figment. Already more than 3,000 works have been posted on the site.

Press play below to listen. Here’s an excerpt: “When I was a teenager, I wrote a letter to Philip Roth and I never got a response. That’s always sort of bugged me and haunted me. I feel like kids these days don’t stand for that. They expect and demand a response from the authors they love. A lot of young adult writers realize that, and they are looking for a place that can facilitate that. And I think we can be that place.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

From Hawthorne to Twain to White to Roth: if American fiction and personal essays “are at times nearly impossible to distinguish,” it’s “because they share a common ancestor.” (Thanks, NYRB.)

On this day in history, March 19th, the American literary icon Philip Roth was born. I wanted to learn a little more about the man whose books have filled so many of my reading hours, so I used Oxford Reference Online which led me to the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. The following excerpt, by William H. Pritchard, is just a small portion of the fascinating biography you can find in the Oxford Encylopedia of American Literature. Happy Birthday Mr. Roth!

Philip Roth’s literary career is extra-ordinary in a number of ways other than its continued production of surprising, vital, imaginative works. It began when his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a novella and five stories, won the National Book Award for 1959; it reached a peak of notoriety ten years later when Portnoy’s Complaint became not only a best-seller but also a portent of the decay of American youth. (Students now came to college, declared Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, with pot and Portnoy secreted in their suitcases.) The career’s most recent stage, beginning in 1993, shows a writer in his seventh decade who brought out no less than six novels, all of them distinctive, three of them possible examples of masterwork. At his seventieth birthday in March 2003, he stood as a writer who has exhibited astonishing staying power, but also one who has deepened, extended, and invariably transformed himself.

It is not easy to name the qualities that most distinguish Roth’s work as a novelist. He has from first to latest shown a strong intelligence, fearsomely articulate in its ability to formulate positions, then argue with them by way of moving on to new ones just as temporary as the one abandoned. Everyone testifies to, even if they disagree about its ultimate value, his comic wit, often darkly sardonic but always incorrigibly playful. He has said that “Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends,” and it may be said of him (as Robert Frost liked to say about himself) that he is never more serious than when joking. Roth’s brand of serious play has been notably engaged in exploring, often in increasingly transgressive ways, the erotic life of American men and women in heterosexual relations that are usually combative, to say the least. One must speak also of what to some readers may seem nebulous: the auditory satisfactions of Roth’s narrative voices, whose lucidity and rhythmic movement are unsurpassed. Finally, and extending this remark about movement to the career as a whole, one notes with pleasure the way in which any book of his has succeeded its predecessor in a manner always surprising, yet somehow, upon thinking about it, inevitable. To describe the dynamic of that succession over the course of forty-four years is the burden of this account.

Early Life and Education
Roth was born 19 March 1933, the second son of Herman and Bess Finkel Roth; his older brother, Alexander, would become a commercial artist. His father was assistant district manager in the Essex, New Jersey, office of Metropolitan Life Insurance; his mother, as we might assume from Roth’s characterization of her in his autobiographical

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?"