What Are You Reading in New York City?

Due to some health problems, I am unable to eat foods that I like, so I am limited to reading about them. I just finished Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, an extraordinary book about cooking, eating and surviving. I am in the middle of Floyd Skloot's In the Shadow of Memory, an intricately written memoir about a man whose memory has been decimated by disease. I am reading through La isla en peso, wonderful poems by Virgilio Pinera , one of Cuba's most important writers of the fifties, sixties and seventies, and finally, I am reading William Carlos Williams's two-volume Complete Poems. As far as I'm concerned, he is as great a democrat as Walt Whitman and Jose Marti.--Pablo Medina

Monday Roundup

NBCC finalist Carolyn Burke reviews the notebooks and letters of Roland Penrose, the first biographer of Picasso.

The Rabbit is back, and it has nothing to do with Mr. Updike.

OH Boyd is creating a series of portraits of the men and women who have kept alive the story of John Harrison, the hero at the heart of Dava Sobel's "Longitude."

Newly minted NBCC member and blogger Lizzie Skurnick has a wack at T.C. Boyle's Talk Talk in "The Baltimore Sun."

Need a summer read? The Independent has 50 different suggestions.

The Jewish Quarterly wonders where are the comedy and rage went in Philip Roth's "Everyman."

Ten years ago, Israeli forces killed over 106 civilians when they shelled a U.N. compound in Qana. Yesterday, 60 people were killed when an apartment building was bombed. NBCC finalists Anthony Shadid and Robert Fisk report on the aftermath.

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What Tom Bissell is working on

I'm currently in that low-ebb, dead-time period between having finished a book and waiting to start a new one. The book I recently finished, and the first-pass galleys of which I am currently awaiting, is called The Father of All Things. It's a travelogue of my Vietnam-vet father's and my trip to Vietnam in 2003, though it also becomes an examination of the war's effects on the children of those who fought it. I also try to get to the bottom of several niggling questions about the war, writing essaylets on questions such as, Was Ho Chi Minh a Stalinist? Why was South Vietnam so corrupt? Could the United States have really won the war if it did things differently? I started the book shortly after the war in Iraq began, and had one rule while I was writing: No cheap historical connections between Iraq and Vietnam. But a couple people who've read it have said to me, "I love how you so subtly connected what happened in Vietnam to what's going on in Iraq." I can't decide if I'm happy about that or not. I have decided, though, for better or worse, that my Vietnam war book is very much an Iraq war book, because how could it have not been?

Other than that, I just finished an essay for Harper's about the director Werner Herzog, who might very well be my favorite living artist. Which made it very difficult to write. How do you get a reader to stick with you for over 7000 words that basically find new ways of saying, "Herzog is great"? I did this, I hope, by exploring the ways Herzog bends the line between fact and fiction in his
documentaries and feature films, allowing me to conclude--or almost conclude--that fiction and nonfiction don't really, properly speaking, exist. Finally, I am preparing for a trip to Scotland to write a short and, I hope, amusing piece about my childhood fascination with the Loch Ness Monster, which I'm writing for the Virginia Quarterly Review.

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Your Thoughts

From time to time, we like to check in to hear your thoughts on the blog. We've recently launched what will be a series of Q&As that will hopefully answer some of the questions you posed last time we asked (we've talked with Carole Goldberg, next up we have Q&As with review editors at San Francisco Chronicle and Publishers Weekly, who will talk about how they select the books they review, and more). Now that we've been rolling for a few months, we'd like to hear from you again: What's working? What would you like to see more of? Less of? Are there burning questions or issues you'd like to see us tackle? We'd love to know. So consider this an open thread for your discussion.

Hazy Sunday

NBCC finalist Gaby Wood meets Paul Giamatti.

Bryan Appleyard of the London Times tries to explain why "Terrorist" has been selling.

Jeff Turrentine nearly falls in love with Shelley Jackson's new novel, "Half Life."

Christians and Muslims have been helping each other out during the Israeli bombardment, writes Anthony Shadid, whose "Night Draws Near" is just out in paperback.

Rhonda Shafner of the AP profiles NBCC winner Edmund White.

Russell Seitz of the Wall Street Journal gives you five science books to read.

In the Times, Peter Dizikes says it's about time we learned more about Francis Crick.

Downtown Express interviews former NBCC winner and new Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch.

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The Critical I: Six Questions for Carole Goldberg

AS PART of an ongoing series, the NBCC will be talking to book editors and critics around the country. We recently caught up with member Carole Goldberg before she left town for the weekend.

Q: How long have you been book editor at the Hartford Courant and which part of the paper did you come from?

A: I've been the books editor at The Courant since January 2002. Before that, I was an assistant city editor, responsible for the Neighborhoods Page, which ran features about city life in Hartford. But I also had been a frequent book reviewer for the paper since the mid-'80s.

Q: What have you reviewed lately that you have enjoyed?

A: There have been several this year that I have really enjoyed. Donald Antrim's The Afterlife is a brilliant memoir: exquisitely written and brave in what he is willing to reveal. I also was far more emotionally moved than I expected to be by The Book Thief, Markus Zusak's YA novel (which seems to me to be an unnecessary pigeonholing of the book) about Germany during World War II. Death...a sarcastic yet oddly gentle Death...is the narrator. And it's been years since I cried while reading a book, but that one got to me. I also just reviewed Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, which I loved for its sassy voice. Kudos to the translator as well as the author.

Q: Where do you do most of your reading?

A: At home, in bed, till all hours of the night. Or at home, on the couch. Or at home, on the deck. Or at my place on Cape Cod, on the porch or at the beach. Never at the office during regular work hours, although if they gave me a couch, maybe I would.

Q: What do you find yourself editing out of reviews most often?

A: I like to leave the writer's voice alone, as much as possible. But some reviews need shortening, and one way to do that is to cut the overuse of adjectives, clauses that repeat what's already been said, author comments that telegraph the meaning of a quote in the process of settingup the quote....and sometimes, the too frequent repetition of the book's full title in the course of the review. If it's a long title, it can really eat up space unnecessarily.

Q: Do you get feedback on your pages?

A: Never as much as I would like, but yes. Often from fellow staffers here and also from readers of the paper. The best, of course, is from authors I have reviewed. Especially when they tell me I "got" the book.

Q: So what are you reading now?

A: I'm in-between books today, which is rare. Just finished Elisa Albert's sharp short story collection, How This Night Is Different, which really nails contemporary Jewish cultural life, and the aforementioned Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow. Will soon be reading Nora Ephron's lament for her neck, Anna Quindlen's new novel and one more book to be picked out this weekend. I'm on the countdown to a vacation, so get out of my way, I have reading to do!

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What Are You Reading on Fire Island?

I'm spending most of my time this summer on Fire Island writing a novel. My reading has been decidedly eclectic lately.Currently, I'm halfway through Anne Tyler's Digging to America, a novel about the friendship that develops between two families who each adopt a baby from Korea. As always with a Tyler novel, I marvel at the way she makes the quotidian fascinating, how every nuance of thought and behavior comes alive on the page whether her characters are preparing for a party, discussing the immigrant experience, or struggling with profound feelings of doubt and envy. Before Tyler, I read Wendy Wasserstein's Elements of Style, a light summer confection about incredibly brittle, shallow, materialistic Upper East Side Manhattanites who made me glad (yet again) that I live on the Upper West Side. Before that, I read The Personhood of God by Yochanan Muffs, a uniquely accessible piece of contemporary theology. Muffs offers a brilliant analysis of the way we imagine and personify the divine and the positive implications that follow from thinking of God in human terms. And before that, I read Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, a kind of Darwinian ghost story that has turned out to be eerily prescient; Freakonomics by Dubner and Leavitt, and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. It was a mistake to read those last two in sequence because they have blurred together. Now I'm not sure which case history came from which book.--Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Friday roundup

Here is the difference between television in the U.S. and in New Zealand: over there, morning presenters discuss the new Philip Roth novel.

Editor and Publisher interviews an exhausted Anthony Shadid, who has been filing one or two stories a day from his sat phone in Tyre.

Charles Taylor would like to interrupt your meal to clear up a few things about Iraq.

Tom Perry, who has done three tours of duty as a reporter in Iraq, says Thomas E. Ricks is right on the money when it comes to why the U.S. has failed in Baghdad.

Siddartha Deb reviews Pankaj Mishra's new collection of essays.

Eye Weekly has had enough of Will Self already.

Malena Watrous reviews Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die, a novel in which comedy is in the mess.

Anthony Bourdain, who was in Beirut filming a show, describes watching the city burn.

Poetry Foundation has give you a poem from Frank O'Hara to print out and put on the fridge.

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Belated Happy 150th to GBS

Tomorrow wraps up a week of readings, guided tours and performances celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the July 26 birth of George Bernard Shaw, at 33 Synge Street in Dublin. The Victorian birthplace of Shaw, who won both a Nobel in literature and an Academy Award,is marked by a simple plaque that reads,
'Author of Many Plays.'Listen to a 1937 BBC interview in which he talks about what he had learned by the age of eighty here.The National Gallery of Ireland, which regards Shaw as a generous benefactor, will have a series of celebratory festivities for the remainder of 2006. Several conferences are to be held across the globe and there will be theatre readings of all 52 Shaw plays.

The Institute for the Pathology of Books

*** It looks like Blogger is having a technical glitch that's making it so newer posts appear below as though they were written before this post. So make sure to scroll down to see newer posts until this one is no longer at the top. ***


When I first saw the phrase, "Pathology of Books," I figured it was a reference to a condition many of us suffer from: Book compulsion, whether it's of the collecting and organizing variety, the reading-too-many-at-once variety, or the starting-books-but-never-finishing-them variety.

But no: In fact, the Institute for the Pathology of Books is an actual place in Rome -- a museum of beaten, burned, defaced, and otherwise damaged books. A museum of books destroyed by war and censorship, of drowned books (see photo) and books gutted by insects until, "you open the covers and the heart is gone."

Clearly, the curator of this Institute would severely frown upon my habit (which I share with some other critics) of defacing books with highlighters and pens and exclamations points and stars ...

What Are You Reading in Concarneau?

I have just read a slim volume by Simenon called Les Demoiselles de Concarneau. I bought it because I was in Concarneau in Brittany visiting my daughter, but it turned out to be very good: tense, a model of structure, and a fine psychological portrait of a man with three older and domineering sisters as well as a portrait of the fishing town at a particular moment in time. The jacket blurb says Simenon is a "man with 400 books and 10,000 women," which amused me. Apparently he is now in the Pleiade edition. I highly recommend this if it has been translated into English.--Sheila Kohler

Watch out for the Salty Dogs

On this coming Monday southern-born novelist T.R. Pearson will be reading at the Half King from his latest novel, "Seaworthy," the story of William Wills, a sea adventurer who sets out to cross the Pacific Ocean and manages to do so: only it takes him 10 years. The event starts at 7PM.

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Thursday Links

If you ever wanted to hear what Tom Petty might sound like after reading too much Philip Roth, here is your chance.

Stephen Elliot is not a Happy Baby when it comes to the American political scene. So he started a reading series to raise money for progressive candidates.

NBCC finalist Frances Fitzgerald, who pointed out the rising power of the evangelical right in her 1981 book, "Cities on a Hill," has an interesting piece in "The New Yorker" on the role of religion in the race for Ohio's governor.

GQ's latest issues features travel stories by NBCC finalist Elizabeth Gilbert, and travel reading recommendations by former finalist Geoff Dyer.

Novelist Sayed Kashua applies his own Kafkaesque sensibility to what he'd like to see in reporting on war.

NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid has been practicing "They Killed My Baby!" says this sensitive man, who would like to give Emmies to all those grieving mothers.

A new film professes to tell us all who killed Federico Garcia Lorca.

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What Jonathan Lethem is working on

"I've just finished a short and deliberately foolish novel called You Don't Love Me Yet, set in Los Angeles in the (approximately) early nineties, about discombobulated twenty-somethings in Echo Park who form a band and then accidentally steal the lyrics to their only good song. Which isn't a hit, anyway. Doubleday will publish it in March 2007. I was wondering about what it would be like if Iris Murdoch wrote a novel about indie rock, but the book didn't end up as deep as Iris Murdoch. I only hope it's both funny and sexy, because otherwise it has no excuse for being. Please think of it as a brave foray to retrieve irrelevance for American novel-writing."

To ferne halwes, kowthe, in sondry londes...

NBCC poetry winner Susan Stewart will be talking at Poet's House sponsored tribute to Chaucer this Friday, July 28th. The event will be held off-site at Lowenstein Lounge, Fordham University, Lincoln Center, 113 W. 60th Street. Call 212 431-7920.

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What Are You Reading in North Truro?

In the great used bookstore, Tim's, in Provincetown, I just bought a copy of Donald Antrim's The Afterlife and am reading it in great gulps. I love his long sentences and his enhancement of the trivial. I'd read a few parts in The New Yorker, but it's much better in book form, terribly painful and funny at the same time. I'm also continuing with what seems a lifelong project, reading the second volume of Hilary Spurling's biography of Matisse [Matisse the Master:The Conquest of Colour, 1905-1954, winner of the 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year award], which I love also, partly because for some strange reason I feel a great affinity with Matisse, though I doubt that my early years of being unrecognized will be followed by the sudden recognition that I am an innovator and genius.--Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Wednesday's news

Alt.Muslim has taken a look at John Updike's engagement with the Quran in Terrorist.

Buried in this column there's an interesting statistic about the top reading towns of 2005 -- and they are Seattle, Minneapolis, Washington, Atlanta and San Francisco.

The Washington Post profiles Woody Allen.

NBCC board member Laura Miller says Ken Kalfus' new novel might be the best 9/11 novel yet.

Jonathan Freedland, who has a novel coming this fall from HarperCollins about the ways that religion has replaced politics as the lens through which we see the world, has a comment about how people who are bombed do not embrace democracy.

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Updike Admits Breaking Updike's Rules for Reviewing

Some time ago, Freeman posted John Updike's Rules for Reviewing, which are wise and wonderful, and which we think all critics would do well to follow. Including Updike himself. But it turns out -- not surprisingly -- that even rulemakers sometimes break the rules.

In a recent profile, Updike talked about a review he wrote for the New Yorker where he belittled Tom Wolfe's novel, "A Man in Full," calling it mere "entertainment, not literature, even literature in a modest aspirant form." (This was a widely loved book that even Michiko liked -- well, mostly -- pointing to its "dazzling, funny, wrenching set pieces, all rendered in his exclamatory, adrenaline-laced prose.") Now Updike admits, when he wrote that review, he broke his own rules, including what may just be the cardinal rule: Thou Shalt Not Review the Books of Enemies (or, as Updike put it: "Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike").

Check it out:

"Conceding that he should have read Wolfe's much-better first novel ('Bonfire of the Vanities') before knocking his second ('A Man in Full') in a review, Updike demurely copped to Wolfe's subsequent charge that he, Updike, was a 'navel-gazing' novelist, wrapped up in his own life ... Updike offered an additional admission of his own tangled motives in the case. He had never quite forgiven Wolfe, he said, for a biting parodic 'travesty' Wolfe wrote of the New Yorker and the magazine's former, famously shy editor, William Shawn. (Updike has been a New Yorker contributor for more than half a century.) 'I think some distressed homunculus inside me,' Updike said with a summary, ironic twinkle, 'couldn't be prevented from attacking this, in its way, excellent book ('A Man in Full')."

In response to Updike's review, Wolfe retaliated with characteristic flare, dubbing Updike one of the "three stooges," (the other two were John Irving and Normal Mailer). To this day, 8 years later, it looks like Wolfe is still needling him: the first of many blurbs on Wolfe's webpage for "A Man in Full" comes from Updike's infamous review:

"A book that defies you not to buy it." -- John Updike, The New Yorker

(Thanks for the link tip, Mark!)

Tuesday Links

Natasha Walter says novelist need to step outside their culture -- it's just the research tends to weigh them down.

NBCC board member Peder Zane puts on his Saturday night shirt and parties with the works of Simenon.

Thomas E. Ricks's new book, "Fiasco," is an absolutely devastating portrait of hubris and idiocy that led to the war in Iraq, says Michiko Kakutani.

Feeling a bit agro? There's a nifty exhibit of puzzles in Indiana to calm your nerves.

Carl Rollyson is grateful for this new volume of war correspondent Martha Gellhorn's letters, but wonders what was left out.

NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid follows the trail of refugees within Lebanon.

Fall is not even here yet, but Stephen Elliot, discussed by the NBCC at its BEA panel as a young writer worth watching, already has the best title: "My Girfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up."

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What Are You Reading in Halifax, Virginia?

Last month I read Lance Olsen's new novel Nietzsche's Kisses and was amazed by it--it is witty, lyrical, and praeternaturally persuasive psychologically. I've just finished reading two wonderful collections of poetry, Makes You Stop and Think by Daniel Hoffman and Woman in the Painting by Andrea Hollander Budy, and I am currently well along in The Din in the Head, Cynthia Ozick's new collection of smart essays and Lee K. Abbott's splendid collection of new and selected short stories, All Things, All at Once. I am also sixty pages into The View from the Center of the Universe, a clearly written accounting of modern cosmology and its potential as a source of creative symbolism, by Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams. My husband and I are sharing it and he's got it right now.--Kelly Cherry

The Middle East: a Novelistic Primer

For those who would rather have dental work than read poetry, there is a long, high shelf of novels set in Israel and Lebanon that would add a much needed human component to the ongoing story in the news. Here are a few which might be of interest:

Elias Khory, "Gate of the Sun" and "Little Mountain"
David Grossman, "Be My Knife." and "If Her Body Knows."
Hanan al-Shayhk, "Beirut Blues."
Amos Oz, "The Panter in the Basement."
Philip Roth, "Operation Shylock."
Venus Khoury-Ghata, "A House at the Edge of Tears."

This is, of course, selective, so if anyone else has some suggestions, we'd love to hear them.

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-- John Freeman

What Are You Reading on Penobscot Bay?

What I am reading on Seven Hundred Acre Island in Penobscot Bay in Maine could not be more different or further away in setting or atmosphere than the quiet, peaceful summer days I am enjoying on this beautiful island (however, a storm did knock out the power and phone for two days)--Distant Star, by Roberto Bolano, the Chilean writer who died in 2003. Actually, I am rereading it. The book is a surprising and beautiful meditation on evil which also, at times, is darkly funny. Bolano is one of my "new" favorite writers. He reminds me a bit of W.G. Sebald--the sort of off-kilter way he tells a story so that one is never quite sure whether the events are real or imagined. In this case, I would bet that they are real. Before that I read Donald Antrim's very moving memoir about his mother, The Afterlife, and before that The Accidental by Ali Smith, which I found clever and playful and which I liked a lot. (And before that--a house present--I began Wonderful, Wonderful Times, by Elfriede Jelinek, but I am not sure I will finish it--too relentlessly dark.) As you may no doubt be able to tell, I have plenty of time to read here.--Lily Tuck

Don't Know Much about Counterinsurgency

Anyone wishing wider perspective on the sad and frustrating daily news from Iraq, where the casualty rate has recently averaged 100 deaths a day, will find observations from Thomas E. Ricks's book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" (Penguin) illuminating. Ricks argues that "there were early indications that U.S. officials would obstinately refuse to learn from the past as they sought to run Iraq." The Washington Post has printed two excerpts, the first of which cites a classic work on counterinsurgency by French officer David Galula, whose experience in Vietnam and elsewhere led to startling conclusions. (Galula's "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice" was Amazon's 135th best-selling book on the morning of July 24, no doubt in reaction to the Post excerpts of Ricks's book.) Galula concluded that "the population...becomes the objective for the counterinsurgent as it was for his enemy," which calls for a different approach to dealing with civilians in the midst of a guerrilla war, in which it "is imperative" that hardships for them and rash actions by the military "be kept to a minimum." For extensive discussion of Galula's, plus those of another Frenchman, Roger Trinquier, from his involvement in Algeria, see Robert Tomes's piece "Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare" at this U.S. Army site.

Tomes argues against misplaced analogies to Vietnam and relies on Trinquier's "Modern Warfare: A French View of the Counterinsurgency" as a crucial book in understanding what has become known as "asymmetric warfare." He also discusses Frank Kitson's "Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping" (Faber & Faber) and observes that Trinquier, Galula and Kitson "are among the best sources of insight" from those who have fought modern wars, in which the psychology of the populace is the real terrain. Kitson notes, intriguingly, that counterinsurgency and peacekeeping share "a surprising similarity in the outward forms of many of the techniques involved." Tomes's look into this topic is an excellent snapshot of the intersection of intelligence, propaganda, political aims, motivations, shifting insurgency aims, and military thinking. He cites as well related works that bear relevance -- Mark Bowden's "Black Hawk Down," (Atlantic) and John Lewis Gaddis's "The United States and the End of the Cold War" (Oxford). He quotes Gaddis on the value of studying the past, for humility and a wider view, which often "suggests the continuity of the problems we confront, and the unoriginality of most of our solutions for them."

-- Art Winslow

Back to the Salt Mines Round Up

NBCC board member Carlin Romano reviews Efraim Karsh's "Islamic Imperialism," which examines the religion's history of militarism.

If Jane Smiley were traveling across America in the Sullivan family Chevy Impala, she would have given Robert Sullivan a noogie before they got out of Oregon.

What makes a book a classic? A Miami reader asked Action Line, the Miami Herald's Hal 2000 like question page -- here's its answer.

One time NBCC finalist Jane Brox explains the necessity of solitude.

Stuart Kelly checks in on the bold new science of psychogeography.

The book pages of Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo and Haaretz in Tel Aviv look for guidance in books about Lebanon.

NBCC board member Laura Miller says in Peck Wilson, T.C. Boyle has created "a character both frightening and pathetic, funny and infuriating, a masterly depiction of the kind of man who does very bad things with an impervious, resentful righteousness."

Bill Marx, former NBCC board member, and three-time Nona Balakian finalist, bids adieu to Arts Scene, the online version of WBUR's arts coverage, which has been cut back in spite of some obvious successes.

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The scorn of Martha Gelhorn

A critic is not in the business of being liked, but every now and then, a passage like this one, from Martha Gellhorn's letters, edited by NBCC finalist Caroline Moorehead, gives pause to anyone who has ever written a profile:

"I love books and I have a passionate respect for writing, and I think it is absolutely horrible that cheap, small people, who could never work through the hardship of writing, can destroy the goodness and the effort of writing, by reporting the personal problems of the author. I do not know anything about the personal lives of those who discovered ether, the circulation of the blood, the spirochetes: the work of a writer is a thing as apart from himself as the work of a man in science: I think it is barbarous, and the mark of microscopic minds, to confuse the man and his work."

This wisdom seems to have developed some loopholes over the years, though, for a decade later she wrote the following to her friend William Walton, with regards to the latest novel by her ex husband, Ernest Hemingway.

"I know I am biased and unjunst; but I find ["Across the River and into the Trees"] revolting. I also realise he will never have to write his autobiography because he has been doing it, from the first novel, chapter by chapter, each book keeping pace with his calendar years, building up his dream vision of himself. Now he is a fifty year old Colonel of Infantry with high blood pressure, a great education, and a passion for duck shooting. The women get younger and younger, so that now the woman is an olive haired Italian (perhaps Princess, by the next installment) of nineteen. And I feel quite sick...I watch him adoring his image, with such care and such tolerance and such accuracy in detail,' He walked with the exaggerated confidence,' and such abject bottom-licking narcissism."

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Rejection Management and New Self Publishing

There's some interesting recent coverage of one man's response to having his stories rejected repeatedly (like, more than 15 times) by the New Yorker: He found others like him and launced an online magazine called Silenceofthecity.com, which is composed entirely of rejected and killed New Yorker stories. This made me think several things:

First, this guy isn't alone. Others have actually turned rejected writing into business: David Wallis, founder of Featurewell.com, has an online service where rejected writers can successfully sell their killed stories for publication; he also published a fascinating book, "Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot To Print" (the title tells all). This is all clearly similar to what launched the growing industry of self-published books. Writers sick of rejection from the Big Dogs finally saying, screw them, I'll do it myself. So perhaps this is just be the beginning -- perhaps we'll see more and more collections of rejected writing (self-published or otherwise) in book form.

Second: I wonder if silenceofthecity.com is entirely legal -- I mean, look at the design and the logo and such ... it seems like, if someone at the New Yorker really wanted to cause trouble, they could.

And third, reading through the silenceofthecity.com stories, I can't deny I had a few moments of completely understanding why the New Yorker rejected some of them ...

Sunday round up

"Terrorist" is a profoundly curious novel for John Updike to have written, says Tim Adams, the first of British reviewers to weigh in on Updike's summer blockbuster.

Aidan Smith tries to figure out whether AL Kennedy is taking the piss.

NBCC board member Margo Hammond rounds-up road books for the summer.

Meet Michael Webster, the evil genius behind Bookscan.

George Saunders takes you on a whirlwind tour of Great Britain, while Daniel Alarcon swings you through his Peru.

NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid continues his reporting from Southern Lebanon,and on her book blog, Moorish Girl, author Laila Lalami logs the protests which begun.

Keith Nickson reviews "De Niro's Game," a debut thriller set in bombed out Beirut -- of 1992.

Paul Gray wonders if Jane Gardam's latest will break the spell of indifference towards her work in the U.S.

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The responsibility of intellectuals

From "American Power and the New Mandarins," by Noam Chomsky.

"Intellectuals are in a position to expose lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest through which the events of current history are presented to us. The responsibility of intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what [Dwight] Macdonald calls the "responsibility of peoples," given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy.

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As the world turns

Israel has told Lebanese civilians to leave, says NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid, but many of them can't get out.

NBCC finalist Robert Fisk's articles are now available on a syndicate wire.

Lucas Conley looks at some up-and-coming great explainers, judging them on the Gladwell/Friedman/Suroweicki matrix.

Training for a marathon? New York Times science writer Gina Kolata has answered some of your burning questions.

Elizabeth Kiem enjoys Ken Kalfus' new novel, "A Disorder Peculiar to the Country."

Matt Thorne says the best stories Haruki Murakami recently published are those he wrote for "The New Yorker."

Troy Patterson looks into whether Thomas Pynchon posted on his amazon.com page.

NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari reviews Marshall N. Klimasewski's debut novel -- which sounds like it has some similarities with "The Shining."

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What Are You Reading in Indian Wells, CA?

For review work I'm reading Righteous Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement by by Lauren Sandler, who's scaring me about all that apathy I thought was part of today's youth--could it be they're planning to take over the world through prayer? Also, Helen Barolini’s A Circular Journey, collection of personal essays that speak to her full life in letters, and Christopher Castellani’s new novel, The Saint of Lost Things, a fresh look at the old immigration story. For relaxation I'm reading a couple of collections of the meditations of Thich Nhat Hahn that help me adjust the pressure valves of my life.--Fred Gardaphe

Round Up

NPR's "This I Believe" segment, which has featured essays by everyone from John Updike to Gloria Steinem, has won an award.

More on the new Pynchon novel.

Reporting from Tyre, NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid meets families navigating bomb craters to get out of the country. He meets a few of the unlucky.

In this interview, NBCC finalist Robert Fisk describes going to a crash site with 3 Lebanese soldiers. The next day all of them were dead.

Tim Adams checks in on the American dream, with Thomas McGuane and T.C. Boyle.

Cathi Hanauer discusses chick lit on the Huffington Post.

The closing of Jewish delis in Newark has made it really feel like Philip Roth's world is of the past.

John Updike has put Poughkeepsie on the map.

"These later day confessions, with their Augustinian cast," writes James Torrens of NBCC winner Jack Gilbert's "Refusing Heaven," "do not shy away from the concept of sin."

**

Ander Monson Bids Telegram Adieu STOP

Ander Monson writes elegy to Western Union telegram in second issue of A Public Space, Brigid Hughes's new quarterly, calls novel "old technology," reads Richard Powers on laptop: "My laptop has wireless, of course--ingenious thing that it is, so freeing, and I almost didn't get this technology installed when I purchased it, thinking it almost useless--and I have spent most of the four hours of our [train] ride caught between finishing Richard Powers' technological novel Galatea 2.2 and watching occasional wireless bursts occur when our train slips through these signal nets cast out by networks of PCs with their base antennae or something else entirely. It comes in washes, like the radii of streetlights' illumination of the falling snow. It's like a pulse. Just a glimpse of a connection to the bigger thing around us."

Tonight: a conversation about Grief

Tonight at Housing Works Used Book Cafe, New York Times editor Bill Goldstein will interview the novelist who goes by the name of Andrew Holleran. The topic will be Holleran's latest novella, "Grief," which has been roundly praised as his finest work yet. The book describes a year an unnamed narrator spends in Washington, D.C., mourning the death of his mother, reading the letter of Mary Todd Lincoln, and meditating on the possibility of moving on. Holleran's other work, like the story collection, "In September, the Light Changes," has been praised for its mournful eloquence. This is a rare opportunity to hear him talk in person about his influences, writing about AIDS, and the unlikely muse of Mary Todd Lincoln. The event begins at 7Pm and the store is located at 126 Crosby Street in New York, between Houston and Prince Streets.

**

What Are You Reading in Oshkosh?

What I'm reading, here on the lake in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I'm reading Stephen Kuusisto's Planet of the Blind. It's sad and glorious. His observations are liquid and theoretical, awash with glimpsed things mixed in with guesses, impressions, ideas. I found the book in my son's closet, started reading it because of the photo of the guard dog on the cover. The final part of the memoir, when he finally resolves to train with a guard dog, and meets her for the very first time, is one of the most romantic things I've seen on paper. He writes: "It's good, the dog and man making sounds together, and the exhausted parts fall away." --Abby Frucht

All Bombs Come with Return Addresses

One of the most fascinating chapters in "The Great War for Civilisation," Robert Fisk's NBCC finalist of last year, involved tracing a missile back to its manufacturer. The missile had been fired from an Israeli helicopter and it blew up a Lebanese ambulance carrying civilians. When Fisk traced the missile all the way up its chain of command all the way to a corporate weapons marketer, the man behind the desk did not appear to lose any sleep over his job.

Fisk is not the only munitions gumshoe out there -- the British philosopher A.C. Grayling published a book this spring which studied the ethics of the Allied bombing campaigns in Germany. These questions are arising now, too. As Fisk pointed out in an interview recently, "most of the missiles which are landing [in Beirut] are made in Seattle and in Miami, Florida, by Lockheed Martin or Boeing." This is not lost on the Lebanese. In the Beirut Daily Star, there is a column calling the U.S. to charge for what it feels is hypocrisy.

"Yet even now, as Israel is laying waste to our country with guns and missiles paid for with US tax dollars, and as American-made bombs are raining down on our cities, we are still clinging to the same values and ideals that the Bush administration has promoted: We want life, liberty and happiness; we want democracy, sovereignty, freedom and independence."

**

What Tony D'Souza is working on

Several NBCC members have been impressed by D'Souza's first novel, Whiteman, published earlier this year. Here's what he's up to next.

I'm focused on the end game of The Konkans, my new novel. Basically, this is a novel narrated in present time by the son of a white women and a Konkan man, thirty years removed, telling stories of immigration to the U.S., the history of the Konkans. The vehicle driving the book is the years-long affair of the narrator's mother and uncle. The Konkans are the Catholic Indians of Goa that Portuguese colonization left behind. They collaborated with the British during the Raj, and the narrator explores the wrongs of his grandfather, who was a police commissioner for the British, and who tortured and killed Hindus to enrich himself. It's about inherited guilt, race, immigration to America, and as always with me, sex. Half is set in Chicago, and half in India. As with Whiteman, readers will assume that I am the narrator. Fine with me. If it reads true, people think it must be. That's a compliment. But just as with Whiteman, the vast majority of the book is imagined. I do draw heavily on my knowledge of what's it's like to be the son of a Konkan man and a white American woman, as that is in fact who I am. The book has all the energy of Whiteman, but is a very different book. It's a little darker. I wrote most of it before I went on tour, and am finishing it now. I wrote articles for The New Yorker, Salon, Esquire, and a slew of other places in airport and hotel bars while on tour, by the way. I've discovered a lot about myself this year. One is that I can write on the road.

What Are You Reading in Sharon, CT?

My summer reading is governed by serendipity. I pick up books in tag sales, trade others at the Sharon Transfer Station (aka town dump), pluck old ones from my own shelves on a whim, and have favorites pressed on me by friends. This is what I've read in the past two weeks: Graham Greene's Brighton Rock (tag sale), an early book that shows his immense promise but has many attenuated, conventional and awkward scenes. Elegy for Iris (from a friend), by John Bayley, a poignant, daffy and uplifting story of Bayley and Iris Murdoch's marriage. Charming Billy (tag sale), by Alice McDermott. I was surprised by this one. I didn't think I would like it as much as I did. It's written in limpid, original prose, and is wonderfully constructed. David Malouf's Fly Away Peter (tag sale), an exquisite, powerful short novel set half in Australia and half in the trenches of World War I. The battle segment can hold its own with All Quiet on the Western Front. I'm just finishing re-reading Willa Cather's Death Comes to the Archbishop (my bookshelf). It's as good as ever. The next in my pile is Loving (Sharon Transfer Station), by Henry Green.--Marnie Mueller

Round Up

A New Hampshire man has earned the sobriquet, "Flasher in the Rye," for his beachgoing atire, or lack thereof.

In the realm of science journalism, it helps if your editors are in the dark, says science writer K.C. Cole.

On her lit blog, Moorish Girl, Laila Lalami, author of "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits," registers her outrage about events of the last week -- and offers a few coping skills.

NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid continues his reports from Beirut, chronicling the ominous exodus of foreigners. Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, tried to get him on the phone yesterday.

James Rosen has been compiling some classic Tom Wolfe clippings from Washington Post files, and emerges with a few zingers.

Caine Prize winner Mary Watson recommends her ten favorite books.

Stephen Burt has published a book of poems and essays for the WNBA. And yes he plans to dunk with that ball.

**

The Middle East -- a poetical primer

Wallace Stevens may have believed that the only subject of poetry is poetry, but it is not so for everyone.

There have been some tremendous poems written about the conflict in the Middle East, like James Fenton's "Jerusalem," or anything from Mahmoud Darwish's 2003 volume, "Unfortunately, It was Paradise."

Palestinian-American Naomi Shihab Nye registers a more far-flung sense of displacement in some of her poems, like "Blood" and "Two Countries," while Lebanese born poet and NBCC finalist Venus Khoury-Ghata wrote of how her home country had been ripped apart by war in "Here There was Once a Country."

Out of Israel, Agi Mishol's poems have registered the confusion in the face of attackers who will give up everything, while Yehuda Amichia's poems, like this one, register the sense that, as he writes "hope must be a minefield."

**

On the Road

Bob Sullivan is no Jack Kerouac. At his book event last night at Powell's in Portland, Ore., he skipped the drums favored by the beat poet and used old-time music -- namely, the Foghorn Stringband -- as backdrop for the reading that celebrated the book that if nothing else wins the award for longest subtitle, "Cross Country: Fifteen Years and 90,000 Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America with Lewis & Clark, a Lot of Bad Motels, a Moving Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, My Wife, My Mother-in-Law, Two Kids, and Enough Coffee to Kill an Elephant." The event marked the midway point for a tour that, rightly, is taking the author and his family (wife, 15-year-old son, 10-year-old daughter) from one side of the country and back. It's the obvious promotional tour for Sullivan's travelogue-cum-memoir about -- well, the title says it ALL -- which has received widespread praise, most notably cover treatment from the NYTBR.

Except for all those endless stretches of asphalt and the time he locked his keys in the car in Jackson, Miss., Sullivan, author of four previous books and a contributing editor for Vogue, doesn't have much to complain about these days. The NYTBR treatment was so good, he says, "I wondered if they were reviewing the right book." Why was the daily Times' review so negative? Maybe because the reviewer is a bona fide explorer, and I just pretend, Sullivan replied. Do all the glowing reviews help sales? You got me, he says, and I don't think anybody else knows, either. And he has a question of his own: How do you make a living as a writer? Hey, if he doesn't know, who does?

Three Events this Week

Today, at 3PM EST, T.C. Boyle will be appearing for a live Q&A on the Washington Post website. You can visit at this link here and submit your questions ahead of time.

On Wednesday, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, former Air America hosts Katherine Lanpher hosts a conversation and mind meld between Gary Shteyngart, the author of "Absurdistan," and singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche. The event begins at 7 PM.

On Thursday, at Housing Works Used Book Cafe, New York Times editor Bill Goldstein will interview Andrew Holleran, the award-winning author of "Grief," a novella which Margo Hammond recently wrote of in her Sunday column. That event also starts at 7PM, and the store is located at 126 Crosby Street, betwee Houston & Prince.

**

Round Up

Ted Koppel recently participated in a major brain huddle in Jordan, and he has emerged with a series of interviews with writers and thinkers.

Marjorie Kehe snakes through Siberia with travel writer Jeffrey Thayer on his 17 by 5 foot raft and finds "majesty in [his] descriptions of Siberia's landscape.

Jerome Groopman, whose new book about medicine is forthcoming from Houghton, has another piece in "The New Yorker" that reminds us how much remains a mystery to doctors.

Mickey Spillane has died.

The sad saga regarding the bookseller of Kabul continues.

NBCC board member Art Winslow says T.C. Boyle's "Talk Talk" contains a fascinating meditation on the nature of communication.

Have you been the victim of identity theft, as the characters in Boyle's novel are? Novelist Ellen Ullman says you can take a number.

Nilanjana Roy note that several books, before John Updike's "Terrorist," had a notion of the influence extremism would have on today's world.

As he did in his NBCC finalist "Night Draws Near," Anthony Shadid continues to capture the human side of the current conflict in the Middle East.

Boston Globe critic Gail Caldwell has weighed in on the meaning of best.

-- John Freeman

**

What Are You Reading in Woodstock?

I always read two or three books at a time, all in a stack by my bedside. I have just finished Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy (Genesis, Faces and Masks, Century of the Wind) and his new one, Voices of Time: A Life in Stories. His books are pieces of history with heart and poetry. Wonderful stories. Before that I read Penelope Fitzgerald's The Gate of Angels and Offshore for the third time. Briliant writing. And now I am reading Barbara Pym's Excellent Women, which I read ten years ago and loved it then. It's set in Britain in the 1950s. It's about a certain kind of woman. It touches me tremendously. I so want every voice to have a place. I just started reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twenty Days With Julian and Little Bunny By Papa, about his son. I also am reading the poetry of George Herbert and of William Blake. At night I read Blake--there is something about the place beteen the word and the image, where the mind has no words, where everything begins. --Gioia Timpanelli

Monday Round Up

David Lodge's misfortune about being the third novelist to publish a book on Henry James in the same year has gone down as one of the "contemporary book world's cautionary tales," says D.J. Taylor in the Independent. Now Lodge has told it himself with a new memoir.

Susan Salter Reynolds says Thomas McGuane makes us see the world through the eyes of his characters better then ever in "Gallatin's Canyon."

Former NBCC finalist Robert Fisk continues his reports from the Middle East.

For a very serious profile journalist, former NBCC finalist Gaby Wood does superficial scarily well.

NBCC member Philip Manning recalls how the first thing Francis Crick and Jim Watson did after cracking the code to DNA is go to the pub.

It's official: it's no longer cool to write about Toronto.

For backyard astronomers, July 16th is a very important date: the break-up of Comet Shoemaker Levy 9, which slammed into Jupiter (of course!) The Bradenton Herald gives you a reading list of how to celebrate this milestone.

Editor and Publisher has taken note of NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid's reporting from the Middle East. Here is his one of his recent articles.

NBCC member Diane Scharper has a look at Scott Smith's new novel in "The Baltimore Sun."

-- John Freeman

**

Lazy Sunday

NBCC board member Margo Hammond has a really beautiful column on the books which carried her through grief.

In her first novel, Faiza Guene "offers an authentic glimpse of the painful reality of an existence happening outside the sheen of Paris sophistication," says Christine Thomas.

"The asymmetrical nature of the conflict" in Lebanon was "laid bare Saturday," says NBCC finalist, Anthon Shadid.

Stephanie Hanson says "reading any story in the collection "Last Evenings on Earth" is like listening to a late-night confession from a stranger in a bar, but with a twist."

Saul Friedland says the saddest thing about the hero of Roth's "Everyman" is that "he touches no one, save his daughter, with genuine caring."

Scotland on Sunday runs an interesting unsigned piece on a short book about the Qur'an.

Former NBCC board members Jonathon Keats warms to "The Librettist of Venice," while Ron Charles says, before you read T.C. Boyle's latest, "brace yourself for another hit of paranoia."

The latest issue of Jacket, the online literary journal, is online, featuring work by Eliot Weinberger.

The British continue to treat Daniel Woodrell like a literary novelist while here he writes "genre."

Former Balakian Award finalist Allen Barra pretty much enjoys Roger Angell's memoirs, "Let Me Finish."

Steven Goode remarks on Mike Lupica's journey from sports beat writer to writer of sports novels for kids.

NBCC board member Steve Weinberg says Dan Fesperman's new thriller, "The Prisoner of Guantanamo," "allows the history and current controversy involving Guantanamo to come alive in ways that news accounts have failed to do."

Julie Taymor's opera "Grendel" is closing today, which gives David Stanton the chance to muse on John Gardner.

NBCC board member Jennifer Reese says "the outrageously talented T.C. Boyle loves nothing more than demolishing a charlatan," but she's not sure she cares all that much about where his latest goes.

**

Planet Content

John Updike isn't the only one noticing that authorship (or artisty) is threatened by the Internet. In the Independent on Friday, Pat Kate reviewed a book by Richard Lanham called "The Economics of Attention," the thrust of which sounds, at first, like this: -- we have all the information in the world now but precious little attention in which to digest it.

But Lanham moves beyond this to embrace a posture of unusual optimism, says Kane. "Artists are the ultimate "economists of attention," he writes, describing Lanham's argument, "who think with most sophistication about grabbing the chunk of our mind-share. They want us to both look through their artworks to the reality behind, and look at their artworks to enjoy the artifice of communication."

In this sense, artists have always looked for and then exploited new means of communication. If this theory is true, then somewhere out there lurks the Great American Hypertext Novel. Or something of that sorts. Now, if someone would just be so kind as to point the way...

**

Round Up

The Guardian summer fiction issue contains stories by Alice Munro, William Trevor, and some other upstarts in the form.

That saucy minx Doris Lessing is having another go at Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Speaking of which, Kim Cattrall will be on the London stage this fall in Josie Rourke's new production of David Mamet's, "The Cryptogram."

Former Balakian Award winner Maureen McLane has been guest blogging on the Poetry Foundation website, while James Marcus describes Frank Bidart's ninja outfit.

The finalists for the 2006 Forward Prize in poetry have been announced.

In the Palm Beach Post blog, book critic Greg Stepanich makes the case for John Updike's "Terrorist."

Jennifer Couzin and Jocelyn Kaiser report on how the largest coalition of US biomedical scientists are attempting to set conflict of interest parameters in research.

Israel continues to deliver on its promise to "turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years," and as NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid reports, Hizbollah responds with more doomsday promises.

NBCC finalist Robert Fisk explains the history of the prisoner swapping, in print and on radio.

Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who wrote "21 grams" and other films, has a try and the novel and Ricardo Gilb comments on the results.

Josh Korr is really happy it's 2006 -- for starters, it's easier to buy stuff.

***

Alison Lurie's definition of the memoir

Over drinks the other night, Celia McGee mentioned that the Columbus Circle Borders, is shelving memoir with fiction. Seems a bit extreme, especially if you believe this definition of the memoir, which appears in "Familiar Spirits," Alison Lurie's memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson. Lurie places the form squarely between fact and fiction.

"A memoir is a more modest enterprise than a biography. Its author doesn't know and can't know everything: he or she hasn't read all the manuscripts and letters, interviewed friends, or consulted reference sources. A memoir may contain truth, but it cannot be the whole truth. Memory distorts, no matter how hard you try to hang the picture straight. This is so even if one has journals and letters to draw on, as I have -- because journals and letters, too, are selective.

-- from Alison Lurie's "Familiar Spirits"

"Voices from Chernobyl" in Words Without Borders Book Club

Michael Orthofer of The Complete Review hosts this month's Words Without Borders book club. The book: NBCC-award winning Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexeivich (translated by Keith Gessen), which Orthofer says "' ...reads like the wildest science fiction, and the distance in time (two decades have passed) and the locale (it happened in a country--the USSR--that no longer exists) make it easier to believe that 'it can't happen here.' On the other hand, the reaction of the authorities to hurricane Katrina in the US last year strongly suggest that should anything even vaguely like Chernobyl happen in the US, the consequences would be similarly catastrophic (as they presumably would most anywhere where they could happen). " Sign up here.

In August, the Words Without Borders book club takes on Palestinian novelist Elias Khoury's Gate of the Sun (translated by Humphrey Davies), with moderator Bill Marx of WBUR, Boston's NPR news station.

Nigerian Author in The Atlantic's 2006 Fiction Issue

Nigerian-born author Ada Udechuckwu has a powerful story called "Night Bus" in The Atlantic's annual fiction issue.

Udechuckwu was born and reared in Nigeria by her American mother and her Nigerian father. In the late 1960s, when her native region of Eastern Nigeria broke off, amid much bloodshed, to form the Republic of Biafra, she and her siblings took refuge in Michigan with her mother while her father stayed behind. They remained in America until Biafra’s collapse in 1971. After returning to her homeland, Udechukwu developed a deep interest in the culture and aesthetics of her father’s Igbo tribe. At eighteen, she enrolled at the University of Nigeria/Nsukku, where a number of prominent artists—including her future husband, Obiora Udechukwa—were rediscovering a traditional Igbo art form called uli.

Udehuckwu describes how her own uli art and the poetry of Jane Kenyon, whose work she discovered while working on an MFA at Bennington Writing Seminars, influences her fiction here.

Trapped in Beirut

From Schona Jolly's comment in today's Guardian:

"Anyone who understands anything about this country knows the government is powerless to stop Hizbullah. With that information at hand, one wonders why the Israeli government is taking these actions. What do they hope to achieve, except the destruction, wholesale, of a country's economy and life line again? Imagine France bombing Heathrow, Gatwick, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, the M1 and M25, as well as strategic locations in the north in order to force Tony Blair to control those Al-Qaeda elements that operate from London. That is what is happening here.

**

Daily Round Up

Mugged by the blogosphere, Guardian journalist Timothy Garton Ash looks for a way to sift the hosers from the gems.

The Memphis Flyer would like to apologize in advance for their taste in white man fiction.

Jews don't join the circus? Oh, yes they do.

"Works on Paper" marks the first publication of noted New York artist Amy Sillman.

John and Jane Davis really, really like to read.

Andrew Furhman says Elisa Albert manages to make some shopworn jewels sparkle anew in her debut collection.

Sahm Venter describes Mandela in the twilight of his work with South Africa.

Laurie Garrett describes the Catch 22 of windfalls: the Gates foundation is so large "it's hard to imagine how priorities can be set by other institutions...If for some reason women's health isn't prioritized then things can be dicey on women's funding."

Anthony Shadid, Scott Wilson and Debbi Wilgoren continue to offer tremendous coverage of what's happening in the Middle East.

If you want further background on this, you can read NBCC finalist Robert Fisk's previous book, "Pity the Nation" or this article by Jeffrey Goldberg in "The New Yorker" about Hizbollah.

**

Reviewer's notes

Art Winslow, John Freeman and I recently got to talking about what kind of notes we take while reviewing a book. Art showed us several pages of loose notebook paper, densely covered in notes, tucked into the novel he was currently reading. John gasped, and said he only took detailed notes when reviewing nonfiction, and THEN we got into the whole ticklish question of whether or not we write in books. Personally, I scribble all over galleys, since they're not "real" books, but I do hesitate to write in finished books. Another critic taught me the trick of putting a small dot of ink with the point of my pen in the margin next to lines I want to flag. Then later, while going back through the book to look for quotes, I can pretty easily find all the passages I've marked and the book is only slightly defaced.

I usually keep written notes with page citations on a steno pad (they're about the same size as the book I'm carrying around with them), but find myself using written notes less and less often for fiction. With nonfiction, I'm with John: it's just too hard to remember where all the information I need is without notes. Lately, I've been using my IRISpen scanner to keep significant quotes in digital format. That way, I always have them on hand even when I can't find the book, and they're searchable. It's surprising how often material from one nonfiction book can come in handy on seemingly unrelated stories. When writing a piece about how some people use classical history to comment on current military strategy, for example, I realized that I could use a quote from a biography of George Washington that I'd reviewed the previous year. And fortunately, I had it right there.

What sort of notes do you take? Do you keep them? And do you write in books?

Fact, Fiction and Families: A Family History in Rewrite

I'm coming a little late to this because I don't have regular internet access right now, but check out this very cool and slightly mind-bending story in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine about the Minots: A family filled with writers whose shared lives infuse their fiction in ways that shed light on their actual lives together, but who can't agree on the facts when it comes to the nonfiction version of their story.

The Libraries of the Future

What will the library of the future look like, and what will it do? The Louisville Free Public Library and the Americans for Libraries Council will be examining those questions in a planning workshop July 17-18, to be led by the director of the M.I.T. Design Lab, William Mitchell. The purpose is to examine how changes in library services, digital technologies and public spaces will affect library design. (This is the kick off of a national campaign, called the Laboratory Libraries Project, in which the A.L.C. hopes to help develop new approaches for libraries in the digital age; results from Louisville will be made available to others.) It's an extraordinary moment for institutions that have evolved from their famous ancestor in Alexandria, as anyone who recalls Kevin Kelly's New York Times Magazine piece, "Scan this Book!" will realize. In T.C. Boyle's new novel, "Talk Talk," incidentally, the criminals are grateful that libraries are keeping up to date: they use public library computers to do their dirty work, so that nothing can be traced back to them, as they borrow identities instead of books.

-- Art Winslow

Thursday Round Up

NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid and others cover the deteriorating situation in Lebanon for the Washington Post.

President Bush landed in Stralsund, Germany today, where to protest his visit, local residents have organized an outdoor reading of Eliot Weinberger's NBCC finalist, "What I Heard About Iraq."

NBCC board member and former Washington reporter Steve Weinberg reviews Peter W. Galbraith's "The End of Iraq," which he says "contains the most useful information for readers across the bitterly divided spectrum."

A book of essays and photos celebrate Nelson Mandela. Among the participants is Wole Soyinka, who turns 72 years young today.

A Nashville television station has begun using vloggers, and this Scene columnist parses the good from the bad in that decision.

Here's a grabber of a lede: "A friend of mine has been working as a dominatrix in a high end dungeon..."

Jonathan Gibbs reviews Simon Callow's new biography of Orson Welles.

Chris Barsanti says Alison Bechdel is so good she makes you almost believe your own life would be worth writing about.

A first folio of Shakespeare is going up for auction today.

**

You Can Stand Very Close

Starting tomorrow, cosmetics mogul Ronald S. Lauer will begin displaying the $135 million Gustav Klimt painting he bought at his very own Neue Galerie, on 86th and 5th Avenue in New York. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art had desperately wanted the painting, the LA Times reported, but the seller, 90-year-old Maria Altman, apparently wanted a museum that was "a bridge between Europe and the United States." You can go ahead and debate whether any work of art is worth half of Alex Rodriguez's salary, but it's hard not to want to go see it just on behalf of the journey it had getting here: looted by Nazis, on display in Austria for decades, obtained through legal action by its rightful heirs just this year. It's a sadly familiar tale, and if you want to learn more about just how familiar check out Lynn Nicholas' 1994 NBCC winner, "The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War."

**

Wednesday Newsreel

Randy Dotinga introduces you to the new sultans of splat.

I know she just won the Caine Prize, but this statue needs to take a step back from Mary Watson.

NBCC board member Carlin Romano meets Victor Navasky.

Hirsh Sawhney talks to Hanif Kurieshi, whose memoir about his father, "My Ear at His Heart," is not yet available in the U.S.

The difference between this headline and this one tells you something.

Ross Simonini says Rich Cohen's new memoir, "Sweet and Low," makes sure not to get lost in its own orbit.

Jasper Fforde goes dark in his latest novel, "The Fourth Bear," says Christina Hardyment.

Marjorie Garber probably has a theory or two about this bizarre story.

In the wake of the Jared Paul Stern scandal, in which a New York Post reporter was accused of blackmail, Robert Love remembers one of the brashest gossip pedalers of all time: Colonel William d'Alton Mann.

**

You say tomato...

Is a reviewer someone of lesser distinction than a critic -- i.e., the equivalent of the untenured professor? That's a question arising from responses to John Freeman's question last week on this blog about how much research is needed to write an authoritative review.

Whenever people start defining terms, I try to ignore them -- and rush for my Webster's. According to the New World version, a reviewer is a person who reviews, esp. one who reviews books, plays etc. as for a newspaper. A critic, meanwhile, is a person who forms and expresses judgments of people or things according to certain standards or values, and/or such a person whose profession is to write or broadcast such judgments of books, music, paintings, sculpture, plays, motion pictures, television, etc., as for a newspaper. Well, the venues look pretty similar, and I'd contend that it's hair-splitting to suggest much difference. But some members of the academy may feel there is more to the critic -- that he or she represents the true man of letters, educated for and engaged primarily and even exclusively in a literary vocation. Journalists need not apply. Such a definition would surely shrink the board, if not the membership, of the NBCC.

They could have used Johnny Depp's Compass

Anyone intrigued by Adam Goodheart's recent New York Times piece on "10 Days that Changed History" (little known events, or non-events, with big and unexpected repercussions) should turn to Nathaniel Philbrick's book, "Mayflower," for a much bigger surprise. The Pilgrims had been en route to settle the mouth of the Hudson River, but were more than 200 miles off course when they hit the outer reaches of Cape Cod. They knew it, and the ship's master, Christopher Jones, started to sail south, to where the religious separatists had the Crown's permission to settle. The Mayflower quickly ran into a notorious area of shoals and sandbars, however, known as Pollack Rip, and when the wind started blowing from the south, progress was impossible. On impulse but feeling the necessity of the season -- it was November, with winter approaching fast -- the group reversed direction and headed north instead. A fickle wind and snap decision, in other words, changed the history of North America. It left the mouth of the Hudson open to the Dutch, who were to settle it and the Hudson Valley shortly afterward, a history chronicled by Russell Shorto's "The Island at the Center of the World."

-- Art Winslow

**

Afternoon Round-Up

What's more complicated than picking your way through Ulysses? How about trying to sort out its copyright issues.

Kate Baldus says Gautam Malkani's debut is fresh, funny and thought-provoking, init?

Hilary Clinton has put forth a bill that would make it impossible for congress to get a wage hike, until they raise the mimum wage. Perhaps she should mail all her colleagues copies of David K. Shipler's "The Working Poor."

Matt Love introduces a new rule of thumb: the garage-sale test for great magazine writing.

NBCC board members Margo Hammond and Ellen Heltzel introduce six types of men you would not want to bump into in a dark alley -- or maybe you would.

In the Christian Science Monitor, Chuck Leddy has a look at Henry Ward Beecher, whose early unhappy marriage drove him into the arms of some other ladies.

Tim McGivern tries to make heads or tails of iconclast Greg Pallast, while in the LA Times Lee Rutman enjoys his antics.

**

Earth to Academia

Internet columnist Scott McLemee has some good advice for academic publishers: Get into cyberspace, fast! Having made the transition from a regular print gig with the Chronicle of Higher Ed to the Internet competition insiderhighered.com, McLemee claims university presses are near-Neanderthals when it comes to promoting their products through the Web. Get with it and exploit the blogosphere, he says.

My only rebuttal to this reasonable advice is that outfits with small publicity budgets are between a rock and a hard place in this regard: Sure, the Internet is where it's at, but where on the Internet? And what portion of scarce dollars should be devoted to sending out review copies and chasing down bloggers and Internet columnists? As someone who writes regularly for Internet sites and thinks it's the happening place, I am still sympathetic to the slow responders. Just ask advertisers: It's harder to gauge size and quality of readership in the New Media with the same confidence as the Old. Newspapers and broadcast have relatively dependable systems for tracking circulation and market share. They are the devil we know. Can you blame people for putting scarce resources in the old tried-and-true?

What're you doing in bed this monsoon?

It's officially monsoon season now in India, which means that the Daily News & Analysis has begun running its regular feature, "What Are you doing in Bed this Monsoon?" Actor Koel Puri is more of a fantasy fiction fan, while TV anchor Simone Singh is slumming with Shantaram, by Gregory Roberts.

**

For all the Carping about Politics

The one book the critical community seems to have found unaminously interesting this summer is Ron Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine." Michiko Kakutani, whose best reviews more and more seem to deal with current affairs, led things off for the Times on June 20th saying the book "not only sheds new light on the Bush White House's strategic thinking and its doctrine of pre-emptive action, but also underscores the roles that personality and ideology played in shaping the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq." In the Washington Post, Barton Gellman was even blunter: "This is an important book, filled with the surest sign of great reporting: the unexpected."

In "The Los Angeles Times," Tim Rutten wisely pointed out that we'd be less eager to read these books if the Bush administration wasn't so obsessed with secrecy, a theme echoed by Gary Kamiya in Salon. Still, you couldn't make these details up. Writing in the Post Gazette on July 2nd, Bob Hoover lead off with the grisly story about Bush's obsession with the severed head of a terrorist. In the Dallas Morning News, Jerome Weeks was willing to overlook the thriller elements for Suskind's ability to deliver the goods.

For all the enthusiasm readers have for finding this information out, and for understanding how this administration works, there is a kind of depressing realization that it is five years after the fact. Last week, the New Republic put "the one percent doctrine" in context of the Bush adminstration's "infringement of the conventions of international relations." In other words, the m.o. of the Bush administration is to stay ahead of the news curve, so it can do what it wants. When we could have really used this information was in 2004.

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Some Things to do in New York the Week of July 10

Tomorrow night at Housing Works at 7PM, Martha Cooley, Gary Shteyngart, and Dhavant Shanghvi will be reading from their respective novels. On Wednesday at 7PM, Roger Angell will be reading from his autobiographical essays, "Let Me Finish," at 192 Books. The next day at 7PM, 192 Books also hosts Ken Kalfus, who will read from "A Disorder Peculiar to the Country."

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Monday Round Up

NBCC board member Mary Ann Gwinn reviews Sandy Tolan's amazing new memoir, "The Lemon Tree," and wonders about the power of denial to shape history.

Jodi DeLong met Margaret Atwood and it sounds like she's still tingling.

The New York Times Book Review is running poetry

Elsbeth Linder learns a thing or two from Gautam Malkani's debut, "Londonstani."

Richard Price wonders if British literature is getting bored with London.

Cheryl Reed profiles Sara Gruen, author of "Water for Elephants," a book independent booksellers are turning into a hit.

Sara Lippincott enjoys Matt Ridley's nimble little biography of Francis Crick.

Over in the Philadelphia Inquirer, NBCC board member Carlin Romano takes his own look at denial, and decides Eviatar Zerubavel's book on the subject is worth taking for a walk.

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Happy Birthday Alice Munro

If our records are right, today is Canadian short story maestro Alice Munro's birthday. In a perfect world, cultural ministers everywhere would suspect the working day an hour so we could all read a story by her. Surely there are writers out there who probably already do this. I have heard her work praised -- no, worshipped -- by Michael Cunningham, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jonathan Franzen, Ian McEwan, It seems as if her influence has begun to eclipse Carver's in the story. This fall, the former NBCC winner has two books of stories coming out -- "Carried Away: A Selection of Stories," and "The View from Castle Rock," which she has said in interviews will be her last collection. Let's hope she shares Kurt Vonnegut's sense of the meaning of "last book."

**

Critical Outakes: Paul Auster on the where of I

Q: It seems like people constantly mistake your fictional voice from your real life identity. Has this chased you since "The New York Trilogy?"

A: I introduced myself as a character in "City of Glass" really just to poke fun at myself. Everything the author character says I disagree with completely. But I was fascinated with the idea that you have a book, and you have the name on the cover: it's the author's name. Now, who is it talking to you? Is it the person or is it an authorial voice?

My feeling is that it is really not the person. When I write novels I know I am not writing as my biological self, my biographical self. I'm in a different zone altogether. It's a bit like acting. You inhabit somebody else. Even if you're writing in the third person. The author, whatever you want to call it. If it's the first person, you literally become that character.

So I was fascinated by the idea of what would happen if you took the name off the cover and put it inside the book, and just see what kind of sparks would fly. That's why I did it. After that people kept thinking, well, Auster's playing games. Life is his fiction. It's not really true. Like all other writers, I've used, now and again, certain facts or incidents from my life. But to a very small degree. Much less than more writers, because I've also written autobiographical works: true stories.

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What are you reading in .....Oxford?

During summer in England and France, away from Key West, I've been reading and have enjoyed Diana Abu-Jaber's two - Crescent and a memoir, Baklava and also Loving Che by Ana Menendez (both these writers live in Miami) and March by Geraldine Brooks. I always try to read dead writers in the summer, it's restful to go back to the classics, but have just finished The Sea by John Banville, beautiful book, won the Booker last year. --Rosalind Brackenbury

Sunday Round Up

It's a big sports day, with both the Wimbledon final and the World Cup final, so if you're reading this...well, vive la France.

There's nothing chatty about T.C. Boyle's new novel, "Talk Talk," says Heller McAlpin.

Pico Iyer mourns the decline of the literary interview, and the fact that, thanks to google preparation, every interviewer he meets asks him about Van Morrison.

Abha Dawesar was seeking a literary godfather, she tells the Financial Express, so she wrote "That Summer in Paris."

NBCC board member Art Winslow reviews Ken Kalfus' new novel, "A Disorder Peculiar to the Country," one of the first 9/11 satires.

Owen King reviews Amy Hempel's stories, and wishes they were all as good as "In the Cemetry Where Al Jolson is Buried."

Maggie Galehouse reviews "The Man of My Dreams," the latest by Curtis Sittenfeld, one of the 19 young writers the NBCC panel at BEA picked out as worth watching.

Jerome Weeks interview Hampton Sides, who, like many other narrative nonfiction book authors, has hired his own fact checker.

In the Seattle Times, Mary Brennan loves Jane Gardam's new novel, "Old Filth," while in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Frank Wilson says "only someone Jesuit-trained could bring to Scripture the kind of cooly passionate imagination on display in [Paulo] Coelho's latest novel, "The Devil and Miss Prym."

Jason Goodwin notes there's a whiff of Thoreau in John McPhee's "Uncommon Carriers," a close study of big-rig drivers, river boat captains and UPS employees.

NBCC board member Margo Hammond reviews four books that take place in Paris, from Faiza Geune's Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, to Kavita Daswani's Salaam Paris.

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Regarding the Pain of Others

Tonight the lead story on the BBC news on TV was a story about an Israeli shell, or possibly a missile, that landed on the home of a Palestinian family, killing 3, including a 6 year old girl. Israel claims the strikes are an attempt to root out rocket attacks on their territory. The footage showed children covered in blood being carried from a collapsed home. Afterwards, with the TV off, I thought of the past 10 days I spent with children the same age as those killed in this attack, and I thought of Susan Sontag's last book, "Regarding the Pain of Others," which was an NBCC finalist for criticism in 2003. In it she wrote: "To set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a consideration of how our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may -- in ways that we prefer not to imagine -- be linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply only the initial spark."

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When Fiction scoops the News

Last year, Christopher Cleave's novel "Incendiary," about a homegrown bombing plot in London, landed on July 7th, the day four suicide bombers blew themselves up on the London transport system.

This July 7th, a story broke in the New York Times about a possible plot to blow up the Holland Tunnel -- the same sort of plot at the heart of John Updike's "Terrorist" -- which was thwarted in Lebanon. It's a rather spooky coincidence, since there is a Lebanese connection in Updike's fiction as well.

Fiction is full of these sort of omens -- from the spooky appearance of the Trade Towers on the cover of Don Delillo's "Underworld," to the story Stephen King wrote that had it's own 9/11 overtones. In the end, it makes you wonder if somewhere way out there in the blue at the NSA, there isn't some analyst assigned not to listen in on phone calls. But to read.

**

Round Up

Israeli novelist Sayed Kashua, whose new novel "Let it be Morning" describes the seige of an Arab Israeli town, tries to imagine the current rash of "targeted assassinations" in Gaza coming to a good end.

Carolyn See beautifully explores the post-9/11 vibrations of Los Angeles, says NBCC board member Ellen Heltzel.

There is a passionate debate raging about rhododendrons in England right now, says Dana Goodyear.

Oliver Burkeman from The Guardian sits down for iced tea with Garrison Keilor at his huge Georgian home in St. Paul.

A columnist for the Los Alamos Monitor says her "inner snob" makes her broadcast her love for Marianne Moore -- then leaves her high and dry when it comes to explaining why.

Christianity Today hold its breath and has a peek at Mary Roach's "Spook."

You've been to Brick Lane. Now visit Curry Mile.

Cornel Bonca enjoys Roth's late period in the OC Weekly.

Happy birthday to novelist -- and former Dissent book review editor Brian Morton -- who turns 51. His new novel, Breakable You, lands this fall.

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Interior Book Designers: It's Not All Font

My bet is that most book authors, critics, and general readers have no idea what a book interior designer does. They pick the fonts, right? Hardly. And apparently, they don't like it when you say that. Just look at this incredibly informative post over at Inda, Ink.

An alert Critical Mass reader emailed me the link the other day (thanks Susan). Once I got over my initial stunned reaction (the volume and detail of the post are truly impressive), I was really relieved to have it. Inda, Ink's post will clearly settle any question about what book interior designers do, but more than that, it provides authors with a wealth of useful information for when their books hit the lay out stage. I mean, who knew we needed to think about things like cast-off, trim size and grids?! I sure didn't, but I'm glad I learned.

As an aside: I'll be posting erratically through the end of August -- I'm at a writing retreat without much blogger access, have been for two weeks. But I still get email (bless the inventor of the Blackberry), so feel free to keep sending tips.

Coulter Plagiarism or Left-Wing Media Conspiracy?

Last weekend, the New York Post published an article called, "COPYCATTY COULTER PILFERS PROSE: PRO" (they really nead to re-evaluate their headlines, but that's another post). In it, they say:

"John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls 'textbook plagiarism' in the leggy blond pundit's 'Godless: the Church of Liberalism' after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program. He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers, including the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. "

These claims weren't entirely new -- several blogs had reported these and other examples. But now, the Universal Press Syndicate (which publishes Coulter's column) has issued a statement saying they're actually going to investigate the issue. In an interesting twist, they may do so using the technology Barrie sells. From where he's standing, this story sounds like sweet vindication, with the added bonus of seriously successful product placement. To Coulter, surely it looks like a left-wing media conspiracy ... I hate to admit it, but I'll be curious to see what they find.

It's called Outrage Fatique

In a funny headline toward the end of the 2004 presidential election, the Onion joked that liberals were experiencing an outbreak of outrage fatigue. Now it seems book editors have a case, too.

As NBCC board member Margo Hammond writes in her recent column -- and as editors on this site have attested -- screeds, be they from the left or the right, are becoming increasingly hard to review. And pointless, too.

As much as I agree with some of them -- say, an upcoming book called Saving General Washington: The Right Wing Assault on America's Founding Principles -- I have to agree with Margo. At a certain point, you are reading only to have your opinion validated -- which isn't really constructive.

But there is a danger here for the reviewing community. When actual reporting isn't sifted from screeds, then even well-researched, newsworthy books about topics -- from the war in Iraq, to the legacy of certain presidents -- can be all too easily ruled off limits, or ignored.

In a recent Cleveland Plain Dealer column, Karen Long gracefully admits to having fallen into this trap. Asked on a radio show what to read about the war, she said most books just "reflected the political divisions." Later she had a think on it and realized that, in fact, there have been some truly terrifying, moving books written by reporters, such as NBCC finalist Anthony Shadid.

As Shadid's book made overwhelmingly clear, the most powerful advocates for an administration's callowness are not the people with ready mouthpieces: but the people who suffer its consequences, like the man in this story Shadid wrote for the Guardian.

**

Nationwide News Doesn't Work

June 30th was the end of the fiscal year, so across the country, many book sections are feeling the perennial belt-tightening that results from bad news -- or the ridiculous notion that newspapers should make a 20 percent profits.

This tug-of-war between Wall Street and the newsroom has entered into the news with The Tribune company, which owns 26 television stations, the Chicago Cubs, as well as the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and Newsday. The company is currently "trying to deflect" some angry criticism from its major shareholder, the Chandler family, which sold the Tribune its newspapers.

The idea was to create an advertising monolith that could reach consumers across the country. But "the strategy of having nationwide ownership of newspapers in many different cities has yet to produce a lot of strategic value," said one major investor in a recent NPR story. And this was a defender of the Tribune management.

Now the Chandler family wants their paper back, saying that the Tribune Company has damaged the quality of its papers by constantly cutting newsroom budgets. (This for a company that made a 20.5 percent profit margin in 2005!) The NPR story notes that a similar break-up occurred recently when a major investor of Knight-Ridder forced the company to put itself up for sale, when deep cost-cutting didn't lead to higher stock value. Amazing, isn't it? You would almost think that it was newspapers' job to bring us the news!

As one industry analyst says, once this dissent gets momentum it is hard to stop. It seems like that moment has arrived. Last week, Pulitzer Prize winning LA Times columnist Steve Lopez said enough is enough: while the Tribune tries to cut another $200 million from their budget, he hit the street to look for some local investors and wrote two columns about it. The first one was mildly hopeful. The second -- which contains one of the most concise defenses of a newspaper's purpose -- hmm, not so much.

How does this all affect book sections? For starters, book pages are part of the leisure section of a paper, and they are not by and large supported by ads, so they begin running more wire copy and fewer reviews. In some cases, editors leave in frustration or get bought out. All this for a few more cents on the dollar in profit -- which, as it turns out, has yet to appear. At a certain point, this slash and burn mentality becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. The more you cut papers back to the bare bones, the less readers turn to them for entertainment or education, or even information. Let's hope someone who really cares about the Tribune papers as vehicles for information and enlightenment -- not just profits -- comes along. Otherwise, Steve Lopez might be standing there telling us I told you so.

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New Tin House: Grace Paley Plus Will Self 'Fesses Up

Grace Paley offers up a dry and delectable new poem in the summer issue of Tin House. The opening lines: "My friend who's ninety-two said sighed/oh Grace there's not much left when/your time comes you'll see wait I/ forgot at least there's ice cream." See Vermont State Poet Paley's poem for the Vermont Art Council's fortieth anniversary here. Also in the issue: new stories by Stephen King, Antonya Nelson, Anthony Doerr and recent Whiting Award winner Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum. (Nelson and Doerr join Lorrie Moore, Michael Ondaatje and others on Sunday for Tin House's annual week-long Summer Writers' Workshop at Reed College in Portland.) And self-styled Luddite Will Self confesses to Rick Moody that he doesn't read other people's blogs, he just writes his own in cybercafes, wandering farther and farther from home (where his computer hasn't been updated since 1996), posting blogs as he goes.

Round Up

Two minutes of silence were observed today in London for the victims of the 7/7 bombings.

Gerry Feehily profiles novelist Yasmina Khandra, who has a firm handshake, a touch of copper in his skin after a trip to the West Indies, and some big ideas about how fiction can save the world.

Robert De Niro earns a cameo of sorts in Rawi Hage's debut novel about Lebanon during its civil war, "De Niro's Game."

A photographer and a mother looked at "stereotypes of Jewish mothers" on things like Seinfeld and the novels of Philip Roth. They have put together a "Jewish Mothers" exhibit in response.

McKenzie Wark is writing a novel in public, sort of, which harkens back to Robert Olen Butler's "Inside Creative Writing Project" of 2001 -- which allowed plebes to "watch a Pulitzer Prize winner create an original story"

A year ago, it seemed gay marriage had a chance in New York. But a high court ruling struck that down yesterday for New York and Georgia.

"N plus 1" editor Marco Roth says "Kalooki Nights" is [Howard] Jacobson's latest attempt to write about Jewish men and communities whose lives have come to ordinary goornisht."

Paul Reidinger says Proust's greatest accomplishment was not that novelette he dashed off, but "dodging the dumdum bullet" of being a gay writer.

Happy birthday to historian and former NBCC winner David McCullough, who turns 73 today.

NBCC member Carole Goldberg reviews Donald Antrim's terrific new memoir, "The Afterlife," which she finds a "heroic, revelatory journey."

**

What to do with your July 6th in New York

Tonight at 7PM the Scandanavian invasion comes to Partners and Crime. Norwegian crime writer Karim Fossum will be reading from "When the Devil Holds the Candle," which will probably shake a few of Norway's finest out of the woodwork. The bookstore is located at 44 Greenwich Ave. Contact: (212) 243-0440.

Here's Our Other Question for You

Here's a common critical dilemma. You are assigned a review of, let's say, a biography of Richard Wright -- or a story collection by William Trevor. How much background reading do you do? In Wright's case, if you're reviewing Hazel Rowley's book, would you also read the four other biographies of the Mississippi-born novelist? Do you read James Baldwin's essays on Wright. Do you reread any or some of Wright's work? In the case of Trevor, do you read (or reread) the mammoth 1,000-page volume of his collected stories? Do you read any previous reviews?

There is, of course, no real answer to this question, because at 700 words, if that, most reviews have room for a paragraph, maybe two, for putting a book in its proper context. And here is why the shrinking of book pages is so damaging to cultural memory. When book pages get smaller -- and word counts are reduced -- each book is reviewed as if it were a stand alone event in an author's history. Hence many reviewers talking about "Terrorist" have failed to note its similarity to "The Coup," Updike's other book abut an Islamic terrorist of sorts, or even "Roger's Version" and "In the Beauty of the Lilies," Updike's two other novels about religion in America.

In the end, to be fair to critics, when you have 600 words and a whopping $150 paycheck at the end of the day, there is a limit to how much background reading you can do. So here's the question: how much preparation do you do before you sit down to read the book at hand?

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Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalists Announced

The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation recently announced the nominees for its book awards in the categories of Fiction, Debut Fiction, Nonfiction, and Contemporary Fiction. Among the finalists are former NBCC finalist Caryl Phillips, for "Dancing in the Dark," and Benilde Little, for "Who Does She Think She Is?"

**

Round-Up

Here's an interesting sales tactic for a bookstore: charge customers for browsing.

They may follow those Rove talking points a little too closely, but every now and then the Post uncorks a headline like this.

Anthony Shadid writes about the struggle to save the soul of Hamra Street in Beirut, once the most cosmopolitan place in the Arab world.

Richard Speer describes his moonlit encounter with comics artist Richard Alexander-Tanner, whose PDX Exposed present slice of life Portland vignettes.

Lisa Belkin is a good 20 years from retirement, but she's already looking forward to her third act.

The Telegraph gives you some suggestions about what to take on your holiday, from Elias Khoury's "Gate of the Sun" to Anne Tyler's "Digging to America."

E.L. Doctorow, who won the 2006 NBCC prize for fiction, has also nabbed the Shaara Prize.

The "parochialism of the Book Review is legendary west of the Alleghenies," says a librarian in Fairbanks, Alaska, "and that's why our library looks to the Publisher's Weekly Best Seller List when buying books."

Maria Browning reviews "This is What Democracy Looks Like," an anthology which posits that the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle were a political watershed.

The dual portrait of Ahmad and his guidance counselor makes up for the unconvincing thriller elements in "Terrorist," says Alexander Kafka.

NBCC winning poet Adrienne Rich is making an appearance in the UK this week: Kristy Gunn sings her praises.

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An Update on the San Francisco Chronicle

A few weeks back, the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review was cut from eight pages down to four: a large cutback for a section that enjoyed readership numbers above 50 percent (which explains why books that get good reviews in the Chronicle go almost immediately to the SF bestseller lists).

The Chronicle Reader Representative Dick Rogers has responded to a query about this change, which the paper explained had to do with "production constraints." Here's what he had to say:

"The production constraints result from the sale of a four-page advertisement and the fact that the paper's presses are extremely old and have limited capacity in terms of maximum pages and color positions.

I don't like to see any lessening of an editorial section, but I can't quarrel with the decision here. I may be speaking out of school, but this paper has endured big financial losses over the last couple of years. That's not a happy situation for anyone who wants the paper to grow and become more ambitious. Or endure.

So I'm glad to see the business side of the paper selling more ads, even if it means short term headaches for the news side. The alternative is bad, and not just for the Book Review.

I'm told that other sections might have been reduced in size, but the consequences would be at least as dire, perhaps more so. In the case of the Book Review, there was the possiblity to soften some of the impact by carrying reviews in the daily Datebook section. In the last month, Datebook has carried 15 reviews in addition to those in the Book Review.

I hope the ad department does a lot more selling. That appears to be the path toward new presses, a robust Book Review and an overall better paper."

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What to do on your July 5th in New York City

Open City literary journal will be hosting a series of literary events in Brooklyn this summer called Park Lit. Tonight's event is sponsored by The Believer and involves writers and musicians -- and writers talking about musicians. The readers include poet Sarah Manguso, TimeOut editor Elisabeth Vincentelli, Deb Olin Unferth, whose book, Sicko, is coming from McSweeneys, and Brooklyn musician Gretta Cohn. The event starts at 6:30 and it is held in the Backyard Garden, a Greenthumb Garden near Red Hook. To get there, go to The Believer site for directions.

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Round Up

Michelle Goodwin informs Australians it's not just the sharks in the Great Barrier Reef who have a taste for human body parts.

NBCC board member and calzone-fan Oscar Villalon tells NPR listeners that Bill Buford's Heat is really, really worth reading.

Nona Balakian Award winning critic Maureen McLane reviews former NBCC poetry winner Louise Gluck's new volume, "Averno."

Gaby Wood returns to the New York City primary school she left long ago and describes how the mommy scene there has changed since.

Memphis Commercial Appeal critic Frederic Koeppel reviews the new Harper Lee biography. The accompanying photo is not Harper Lee.

Mary C. Curtis returns to Charlotte and describes her 10 months as a Neiman Fellow at Harvard.

Toronto Star reviewer (and armchair traveler) Michael Hanlon goes a-sailing with summer reads by Frances Mayes and former NBCC finalist Elizabeth Gilbert.

Anne-Marie O'Connor shows how a new generation of writers are bringing greater diversity to the mystery.

If you think nations are the lowest of the low in profiting off war: think again. Warwick McFayden reminds us about those who sell the arms.

Lawyer-critic Michael O'Donnell reviews "The Most Famous Man in America," and he makes a strong case this is a balanced portrait of Henry Beecher Stowe.

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The NBCC's Tips for Successful Book Reviewing

[This is a re-post due to a blog glitch, sorry if it appears twice]

When we launched Critical Mass, we asked what topics or questions you'd like to see us address on the site. In response to your responses -- and the steady stream of emails we get asking for tips on becoming a professional book critic -- we've put together and posted the NBCC's all new "Tips for Successful Book Reviewing: Strategies for Breaking in and Staying in." It covers a range of topics: getting started as a critic, building your reviewing portfolio, going national, keeping editors happy, ethics, and more.

The document is a work-in-progress: We look forward to hearing your thoughts here in the comments section (or via email), including tips of your own (I'd love to hear strategies other critics have developed), and additional questions/issues we haven't addressed but should.

Stay tuned for more projects like this one: To answer some of the other issues you raised, we're conducting interviews with professional critics and review editors, to tackle some of the issues like, how does a critic pick which book to review, what's with the shrinking review sections, and more. In the meantime, check out this first installment, let us know what you think, and have a great long weekend!

[Please read and post comments here, in the original post]

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You Say you Want a Revolution?

NBCC board member Lev Grossman harkens back to the panel he moderated at BEA with a long essay in this week's issue of Time. After a tip of his hat to Hemingway, Salinger, and David Foster Wallace, he cycles through a subjective round-up of today's best young novelists and comes to the conclusion that there really is no voice of a generation (V.O.A.G) -- not because no one is good enough, but because the very idea of a V.O.A.G., as Douglas Coupland says in the piece, is "an exclusionary and delusional concept."

It's hard not to wonder if this problem has always existed, though. Did "Home to Harlem" make Claude McKay a voice of his generation? Published in 1928 when he was 39, the book was a bestseller, and was read by both blacks and whites. In 1940, Richard Wright's "Native Son" was literarly an instant bestseller -- it sold 215,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication, more than John Updike's "Terrorist" had sold to date. Wright was just 32.

The list could go on, from Ralph Ellison (38 when "Invisible Man" was published in 1952), to Jerzy Kosinski (36 when "Steps" was published and won The National Book Award) to Toni Morrison (39 when "The Bluest Eye" was published in 1971) to Amy Tan (39 when "The Joy Luck Club" was published in 1989) to Sandra Cisneros (37 when "The House of Mango Street" was published). A novelist's late '30s suddenly seem like a productive time. (It's useful, too, to remember Kerouac was 37 when "On the Road" was published.)

Perhaps the nostalgia of there not being a voice of a generation today has less to do with there having ever been one, and more with the decline of the novel's cultural importance. Publishers do not reveal sales figures for a reason -- it allows us to continue to believe in the fiction that fiction sells in larger numbers than it does. That the sky really is the limit when a new voice emerges. Some might see this as a bit of clever marketing. But if that suspension of disbelief encourages critics and readers to seek out new voices, and new stories -- be they from California via Peru or from Vermont via Vietnam -- than so be it. As for the Voice of a Generation, perhaps we need to just simply rename what is we're after.

-- John Freeman

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The Will Self Award for metaphor

This passage from "On Junky," his introduction to William S. Burroughs' classic:

"Burroughs's raptor propensity for looting the wilder cliff eyries of intellectual speculation and mixing their eggs with his own embryonic ideas, is what makes Junky such a nourishing omelette."

From "Junk Mail," by Will Self.

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Holiday Round Up

NBCC board member Geeta Sharma Jensen discovers that John Updike has been thinking about being "a global novelist" since the late '70s.

It's not only book reviews which give out blurbs: this Times (news!) story says Chief Justice John Roberts is "clearly in charge, presiding over the court with grace, wit, and meticulous preparation."

Jonathan Yardley wades through Nick Bryant's "exhaustive and exhausting" examination of JFK's record on civil rights and determines that he's right in pointing out that Kennedy was "passive on the moral issues raised by segregation and manipulative on the political ones."

Alex Clark muses on some unlikely literary comebacks.

Nilanjana Roy uncorks one of the most unusual journalism constructions: a profile done (in this case of Zadie Smith) without speaking to the author.

Globe & Mail columnist Martin Levin judges books by their titles and declares "What it Takes to be Human" to be the winner among fall books.

The pleasingly-named Frederick Smock reviews two-time NBCC finalist Bobbie Ann Mason's latest collection, "Nancy Culpepper."

Rachel Howard admires former NBCC president Marie Arana's debut novel, "Cellophane," "which is fleet and farcical even as the plotlines turns violent."

NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari travels sideways into Forestville, CA, a western Sonoma vacation spot San Franciscans have been enjoying for years.

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