Bronte Blasphemy
Casting of Biopic Spurs Outrage in Cannes
Williams as Emily; Wood as Anne; Howard as Charlotte







From the Cannes Film Festival comes the news that British director Charles Sturridge (Brideshead Revisited) plans a biopic of the Bronte sisters, which come to think of it, is long overdue. But Sturridge has stirred up horror in the film community with his casting. Oscar-winner Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) will play Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre and Villette; Bryce Dallas Howard (Lady in the Water, Spiderman 3) will play Emily, author of Wuthering Heights; and Evan Rachel Wood (Running with Scissors) will play Anne, author of The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall. Besides the fact that the actresses are all American, the Brits (and some Yanks too) fear what such lives of genius will become in the hands of three actresses who have yet to play in a period film, never mind speak with the particular Yorkshire accent. Just to keep things interesting, the broodingly intense Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Matchpoint) will play their brother, Branwell Bronte, reports IMDB.
The Daily Telegraph's literary editor Michael Prodger wrote, "There must be lots of talented Yorkshire actresses who could play the three Brontes. It does seem a slightly bizarre choice." The film, already in production will be in theaters in 2009.

The Bronte Sisters (above) in a portrait

by their brother Branwell circa 1834..

L to R : Anne, Emily and Charlotte

First Annual Brooklyn Book Festival to Celebrate Local Talent
Brooklyn's Borough Hall and Plaza will host the first annual Brooklyn Book Festival, a day-long celebration of the city's writers taking place on Saturday, September 16.
The festival will "celebrate Brooklyn's thriving and diverse literary community and its rich history as a home and inspiration for authors. From Williamsburg to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Park Slope and Brighton Beach, Brooklyn is home to many authors, literary magazines and publishers," said Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's Borough President and a sponsor of the event.
Multiple stages will present entertainment for adults and children, spoken word performances including the Secrets of the Street Lit Match, a spoken word competition for teens that will include poetry, rap and prose. Panel discussions, author signings, publishers and literary organizations will also be showcased, and of course, books will be available.
For updates, log on to www.brooklynbookfestival.org

Trouble in Surbubia is Key to Coben's Success
Harlan Coben, writer of such heart-pounding thrillers such as Tell No One, has made a career of exploring the secrets and disasters that can destroy or up end the American Dream. In an interview with Atlantic City.com, Coben discusses his metier in books like his latest, Promise Me: "This is where you're supposed to be in life. You're supposed to have 2.4 kids and a house in the 'burbs and the barbecue in the yard and a two-car garage. Now your life is perfect. You build a fence so everything is protected - and, of course, you're not."
The Jersey born and bred author usually uses the Jersey suburbs as a jumping off point in his books, but thereafter the action can go anywhere. In his latest, he resurrects his detective Myron Bolitar, whom he had retired five books ago, and is anticipating the completion of the first film based on one of his books, currently being shot in France.

The New Revolution in Chinese Literature
The Age of Australia examines the new crop of internationally acclaimed Chinese authors, none of whom is writing in Chinese or live in China. Despite a 5,000-year literary tradition, the most powerful voices in contemporary Chinese literature (according to this piece) are writing in English, including Ha Jin, Li Yiyun and Fan Wu.
The frenetic new capitalism in China has made self-help and get-rich-quick books national bestsellers, while writers of fiction struggle to get noticed.

Musings of a Booker Nominee
The Wood and Vale interviews the Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagen, whose third novel, Be Near Me, has made the long list for Britain's Man Booker Prize.
O'Hagen, a native of Glasgow who lives in London, discusses the controversy surrounding the novel -- about an insufferably snobbish pedophile priest whose victim is equally unlikeable. O'Hagen also comments on the impact of his work on his home turf and the writers who inspired him.

Another Independent Bites the Dust
The Des Moines Register reports on the demise of Big Table Books in Ames, Iowa, a beloved independent bookseller that was community-owned (shareholders included local author Jane Smiley). The store is a casualty of the big chains in the area including Waldenbooks and Borders. Customers at the clearance sale were in tears.

Fairytale Success Follows a Harsh Life

You will hear much about Baby Halder in the coming months, but not from her. During the day, Halder works as a maid in New Delhi, catering to the needs of the upper class. After a grueling day, she tends to her three children and after they're asleep, she sits down to write. Her first book, A Life Less Oridinary, is a sensation across India and has just been translated into English.
The unassuming Ms. Halder, profiled in today's New York Times, was encouraged to write by one of her bosses, a retired anthropology professer who caught her browsing his library when she should have been dusting it.
When the professor, Prabodh Kumar, read some of what she had written, a gut-wrenching, horrifying tale of poverty, abuse, misogyny and servitude, he encouraged her to write more and started editing. Abandoned by her mother, beaten and neglected by her father, Halder was sold into marriage at the age of 12 and had her first child at 13. To escape the cycle of poverty and abuse (her husband almost strangled her), Halder took her children and ran away to Delhi, where she found work, and a better future for her kids.
A Life Less Ordinary has opened a dialogue in India about subjects that are usually taboo, poverty and the treatment of women, especially the lack of support for women who flee abusive marriages.

HarperCollins in Production Deal with Fox TV
In the first deal of its kind, HarperCollins publishers has agreed to provide current and back listed books to Fox for TV programming, reports the Book Standard. The agreement covers mystery and romance titles initially, but could expand to other genres.
Fox, which produces the series Bones, based on the forensic detective series by Kathy Reichs, has a dearth of successful fiction programming of late.
The first novels to be adapted into a series will be Lisa Scottoline's legal thrillers set in Philadelphia.

Watercooler Booksignings Have Booksellers Protesting
In an effort to reach book buyers who wouldn't attend a 7 p.m. reading at their local bookstore, and those who rarely go to bookstores at all, publishers have come up with a new marketing strategy: The Corporate Book signing. Authors are being booked to read and sign their new books in corporate conference rooms, lounges and auditoriums across the country. Starbucks headquarters, Google in New York and many other companies bring in authors who read, and their books.
Sounds great all-around except for one thing: bookstores don't like the competition.

Books That Triggered Writers' Wanderlust - New York Times
A great idea -- well-known writers share the books that made them want to visit far-flung or completely invented destinations.

Can Books Succeed Where Diplomacy has Failed? One Writer Hopes So
Azar Nafisi wrote Reading Lolita Teheran about her experiences leading a secret reading group for women in her native Iran. Nafisi wants to start a global reading group to encourage understanding and awareness about the importance of human rights, reports the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Nafisi hopes to fight the oppression she fled from by using literature to start a dialogue. "That is the one thing I have always dreamt of, to create this republic of imagination," she tells the Globe and Mail. She hopes that discussing works of literature from all over the world will spark recognition of similarities instead of igniting old differences.
The reading group will meet online, of course and the site will debut early in 2006. Despite the focus on literature, Nafisi makes clear this is a political move. "People think of activism in terms of going to the White House or becoming political every four years, but I think activism is also very actively and consciously supporting a culture of thought and imagination," she said.
Nafisi is a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Reading Lolita in Teheran, an international bestseller, is banned in Iran.

Amy Tan, Unplugged
Tan achieved prominence with her first book, The Joy Luck Club in 1989. Now 53, famous and several trips up bestseller lists around the world, she talks to the Guardian about writing, mothers, daughters, loss and her peculiar brand of luck as her latest novel Saving Fish from Drowning, hits the shelves.

Pinter to Miss Nobel Ceremony
Harold Pinter, the British playwright who was awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, will be unable to attend the December 7 award ceremony due to poor health, reports the BBC.
Pinter, who is 75, has been treated for cancer and doctors have forbidden him to travel, the Nobel Committee announced.
Mr. Pinter has recorded a speech which will be played at the ceremony and publisher Stephen Page will accept the prize on his behalf.

The Literature of National Tragedy
Forty-two years ago this month, the President of the United States was shot to death in broad daylight, in front of dozens of witnesses while motion picture and still photographers recorded the event. The assasination of John F. Kennedy remains unsolved, and a national disgrace.
The Warren Commission Report, the first and best known book regarding the assassination, was the result of a Congressional investigation into the events of November 1963 and served more to insult Americans than inform them. Very few believed the "lone gunman" and "magic bullet" theories proposed in the report.

Those who say there is no proof of a conspiracy are correct, and those who say the preponderance of evidence indicates that Oswald did not act alone also have a strong case. Those who want a decisive answer to the question of who killed John F. Kennedy 42 years ago will have to await new books -- and live with the disturbing thought that we still don't know. -- Jefferson Morley

Forty years after the fact, with the government still refusing to disclose crucial documents, books regarding the assasination are a never-ending industry. The Washington Post's Jefferson Morley surveys the JFK assasination scholarship to date and reviews the latest authors to enter the fray. Also read the transcript of his webchat with Post readers about the assassination and various theories and those who have written about it.

Great Literature Amid Illiteracy
An extraordinary piece by AP writer Emily Wagster Pettus exposes the south's dirty little secret: illiteracy.
The piece focuses on Mississippi, which has the nation's lowest literacy rate, yet an astonshing literary history. Quoting Mississipi authors past and present, Pettus tries to make sense of an entrenched malaise for which underfunding and racism are only partly responsible.
"This clash of literature and illiteracy is one of the great contradictions in a region filled with them. And it's particularly stark in Mississippi, where studies have found that 30 percent of adults can't read well enough to fill out a job application, the dropout rate is 40 percent and public schools rank near the bottom in nearly every category."
To try and combat the problem Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale has pledged $100 million to the Barksdale Reading Institute, to get children reading as early as preschool. Meanwhile, the housekeeper at the State Capitol, at age 59, still struggles to read fluently.

Library of Congress, Harvard Library Going Digital with Help from Google
The Library of Congress is launching an ambitious project called World Digital Library, "an online collection of rare books, manuscripts, maps, posters, stamps and other materials from its holdings and those of other national libraries that would be freely accessible for viewing by anyone, anywhere with Internet access," reports The Washington Post. Material in national libraries on five continents are to be included in the project, said James H. Billington, head of the Library of Congress. Google has pledged $3 million to the project. "To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Meanwhile, in Cambridge, Harvard University's libraries are going digital in partnership with Google's Book Search project, The New York Times reported yesterday. Harvard has more than 90 libraries, the digitizing of even the first 40,000 volumes seems daunting, but Google may have developed a new scanning technology that will enable them to meet their proposed deadline of six years.

Literary Review of Canada Lists Top 100

The editors of the Review listed not the 100 best books, but the 100 books that most impacted Canadian culture or most effectively reflected it, reports the Ottowa Citizen. Thus the list contains classics such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Howie Meeker's Hockey Basics (the sport is like a religion in Canada) alongside several governmental commission reports. The books are listed chronologically and span the 20th and 21st centuries.
Like many lists and rankings, glaring omissions are sometimes difficult to avoid. Michael Ondaatje, one of Canada's most respected authors, was accidentally left off the list, admitted Bronwyn Drainie, editor of the Review. "We ended up arguing quite passionately about whether it should be The English Patient or In The Skin of a Lion," she said. "We argued it back and forth so much that somehow, inadvertently, we argued him off the list!"
Get the list and give feedback here.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Composer?
Nineteenth-century Scottish writer and traveler Robert Louis Stevenson is remembered as the author of such classics as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island and the The Master of Ballantrae. Instead of living in Edinburgh, London, Paris or New York, Stevenson gave up 19th-century "civilization" to live in Samoa with his wife Fanny until he died. In addition to books, Stevenson wrote numerous short stories and travel and literary articles. Now, a recent discovery uncovered a talent previously unknown to present-day students fans and aficionados of the author, reports the Edinburgh Evening News
Members of the Stevenson Society were presented with a recording of the author's only known musical composition, a piece called Aberlady Links. Members of the society were more impressed with the novelty of the gift than the quality of the music. "if he had tried to be a composer, he would have starved to death," said one member.
Take a look at the Stevenson online exhibition here, which includes, pictures, manuscripts and personal articles. Check out the Stevenson Society of America. Get free online Stevenson e-texts here.

The Stiletto Lit Wars
You've seen them -- you've probably even bought one. Those nice trade paperbacks with a playful pink or or pastel cover, and a stylish girl or pair of stilettos somewhere in the cover art. The story is usually about a woman juggling career drama and and dating/love drama while running around between crises in stilettos shopping for designer clothes she can't really afford. It's Chick-Lit and it's a phenomenon.
Just as quickly as chick-lit has become a phenomeon, it has also become a lightning rod for criticism and derision from the literary establishment, feminists and men.
In The Australian, chick-lit author Melanie La'Brooy writes a detailed defense of the genre that is earning millions world-wide.
La'Brooy's spririted and well-argued defense of the genre doesn't quite address the severest (and most accurate) criticisms: that the genre is basically re-packaged romance novels for the Sex and the City set and that in view of the strides feminism has made in the past 40 years, the success of these novels is kind of disturbing.
Another point La'Brooy missed is that there is a metamorphosis occuring within the genre. Simon and Shuster's Downtown Press, which publishes nothing but Chick-lit, is publishing some startlingly new-fangled Chick-Lit which is combining thriller and crime elements into the genre.

Forbes lists Literary Tastemakers
Who knew that the chronicle of capitalism even knew there was such a thing as culture?
In a fit of um...madness(?) Forbes Magazine, that bastion of business journalism, has elected 10 contemporary writers as "Tastemakers," meaning, according to the introduction, that the writers not only display hefty sales but have taken the contemporary novel to new unexpected heights (or depths). Well, knock me over with a 100-dollar bill.
But wait! Lest you think the pinstriped pundits at Forbes have gone completely bohemian, they explain this literary lark by observing that books are big business in the U.S. "In fact, in 2004, Americans spent an estimated $8.8 billion on adult trade books, $3.1 billion on juvenile trade books, and $2.9 billion on mass-market paperbacks," they rejoice. And, they go one breathlessly, "U.S. consumers will spend nearly 5% more on books in 2005 than they did in 2004."
The list, which includes, Zadie Smith, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King and Joan Didion, also crassly (and pointlessly) lists their sales figures for 2005 to date. Apparently the editors at Forbes need some kinds of numbers to pick their night-table reading by.

Cops and Robbers, Pimps and Liars

Tequila Blue by Rolo Diez ($13.95 Trade paper Bitter Lemon Press) Translated by Nick Caistor

Political and moral corruption never had it so good.

To paraphrase the subtitle, it's hard being a cop. Betwen the graft, the fencing of stolen goods, and the pimping, there's collecting payoffs, intimidating witnesses and indiscriminate sex. Then there are the wives, mistresses and children to factor in. Detective Carlos Fernandez of the Mexico City Police is only one man, but he tries to get everything done.

This stylish and funny hard-boiled yarn is a rollicking satire that moves at whiplash speed, with characters as vivid as blood spatter at a crime scene.

Fernandez's whole life is about the next peso -- and keeping his boss happy. Then an American with connections to a porn ring turns up dead in a hotel room and things get really interesting. Making money and getting to the bottom of the porn killings use up almost all of Fernandez' talents for lying, corruption, murder and sex, but just when you think he's up against it, he sinks lower and slithers out of another tight spot. But somehow, you can't hate him. And as you catch your breath at the end of this one, you'll shake your head and wonder what he will do next. But you cringe and laugh just thinking about it.

Filmmaker Uncovers the Truth about Rings vs. Narnia
They were Oxford professors, literary scholars and wrote multi-volume fantasy series that became legendary. C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, were also friends and bitter rivals, reports the Scotsman.
In researching an upcoming bio-documentary about C.S. Lewis, author of the seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia, Scottish director Norman Stone uncovered the famed friendship between the two authors was marked by bitter disagreements about everything from their books to their spouses. The documentary will debut in December just before the film version of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe hits theaters in the UK and the US Find out more about Lewis here.

Honey West Novels to be Reissued
Created in 1957 by husband and wife writing team Gloria and Forest Fickling, Honey West became the first hard-boiled dame detective in print. This Girl for Hire introduced this smart, long-legged investgator based in L.A. with a knack for catching bad guys and losing her clothes. Honey's career spanned eleven books and almost fifteen years, and included a short lived television series. Except for one or two of the titles, the books have been out of print for decades, until now. The Overlook Press will reissue the entire series, reports the Palm Beach Post.

Authors Guild Sues Google

When Google announced plans to put the contents of major libraries online, they neglected to ask for permission to put entire works online which are protected by U.S. copyright laws. CNN.com reports on the ensuing lawsuit.
Google Print the hot new search service, doesn't actually offer up the entire text of novels, but does search the text. If you're looking for a quote or a reference, within a book, Google Print will offer up the quote on the scanned page of the book, and offers a peak at a sample chapter, but if it's the whole book you're looking for, there are links to publishers and Amazon.com leading you to purchase the book. It's hard to see how authors are loosing money here, but maybe I'm missing something.
After months of negotiations with the Authors' Guild, Google agreed to allow writers to "opt-out" of having their works appear on the service. The solution sounded about as sound as an Enron balance sheet to the Authors' Guild, which filed suit against Google yesterday in New York, seeking an injunction against further printing of books online. Let's hope a judge can negotiate the survival of a great idea without bilking thousands of hard working writers of their hard earned money.