Omnivoracious

Purple Prose

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today 2 talk about 21 Nights, the just-announced debut book from Prince. Available September 9, 2008, it's a multi-media volume filled with poetry, lyrics, and 124 full-color images from photographer Randee St. Nicholas, who had an all-access behind-the-scenes pass ("on stage, backstage, and into his sleeping quarters") into the public and private life of the multi-award winner. The book highlights the energy of last year's record-breaking sold-out 21 concerts in 21 nights at London's O2 Arena, and will come packed with Indigo Nights, an exclusive 15-song CD featuring one brand-new song and 14 live versions of Prince classics and recent favorites that captures Prince's "speak-easy, after-hours, raw, after-show sessions of pure unadulterated jams."

--BTP

 

221 days to 2666

I've bowed to no one in my advance hype for Roberto Bolano's masterpiece-in-waiting, 2666, but the Literary Saloon beat me to the story in my own backyard by noticing that the book has appeared on our site with a release date of November 11 (I've checked with Farrar Straus and that is indeed the right date). And he further discovered that there will be two parallel editions: a single-volume, 912-page hardcover, and a three-volume paperback boxed set. What can I say: I'll probably get both, even if the publisher doesn't send them to me. And I bet I'll read the paperbacks. But why stop at 3 volumes? I adored the six-paperback galley set of Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games that Harper sent out last winter:

The Saloon also linked to some of the continuing chatter about The Savage Detectives, including an essay from translator (and coffee drinker) Natasha Wimmer and a roundtable discussion at Bookninja. --Tom

The Art of Fake Fiction

I am, as I think I have noted in this space before, a geek for the Paris Review interviews. In my college library I procrastinated my way through all of those old Writers at Work collections when I should have been studying up on the Yugoslav economy or some such immediate assignment, and I still keep an eye on the newsstands to see which authors have been brought into the Art of Fiction canon in the latest issue (this issue, by the way, it's Kenzaburo Oe). So when I got an advance copy of Nathaniel Rich's upcoming debut novel, The Mayor's Tongue, with an unexplained photocopy of an interview (The Art of Fiction XXI) with the writer Constance Eakins folded inside, well, I felt that someone had found my alley and parked right there. It's a fun pastiche, down to the spine-shading to make it look like the Xeroxes I've made of my favorite exchanges over the years, and you can see it for yourself on the still-building site for the book .

Who is Eakins? It appears on first glance that he's not one of the main characters of The Mayor's Tongue, but rather a main character for one of the main characters (who idolizes him). In the interview, he comes across as some sort of a combination of Chuck Norris, Gore Vidal, and Thomas Pynchon:

Interviewer:
Did you write this morning?

Eakins:
I did. I wrote twenty-three pages. That's what it's come to. I used to write ten thousand words a day and sometimes even more, in my golden years. But now it's just a paltry seven thousand or so. Things move so slowly sometimes I feel that I am living in reverse. This is the trouble with being in one's thirties, and past one's prime.

Interviewer:
Do you write by longhand?

Eakins:
Yes, but I often go back to typewriter when my arm can't keep up with the jet engine that is my image-narrative-thought-machine.

Interviewer:
What do you mean by "image-narrative-thought-machine"?

Eakins:
Brain.

And the book itself? I haven't gone past the first page, but Rich's well-placed use there of the phrase "excessively affricative" does give me hope that it will live up to the promising blurbs from Gary Shteyngart ("Here is a young writer who is not afraid to give literature a kick in the pants") and Stephen King ("a novel brimming with brio"), and makes me, even more than the fake interview, want to keep reading. --Tom

P.S. I just noticed that Nathaniel Rich also happens to be a senior editor at the Paris Review, which explains how he got the layout just right...

Watching The Wire with the Thugs (and Reading with My Eyes Closed)

I wrote last month about Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day, one of my Best of the Month picks, and I was neither the first nor the last to describe it as a real-life, Chicago version of The Wire. This week I checked into the Freakonomics blog on the New York Times site for the first time in a while and saw that Venkatesh, who first came to popular notice when his work on the (lousy) economics of crack dealing was featured in that megaseller, has been guest-blogging about watching the fifth and final season with some self-described "real thugs" of his acquaintance.

Which is all just wonderful (and apparently they love the show), except that we are currently in obsessive catchup mode with The Wire at my home. We've Netflixed our way into the middle of season three, and now with season five live on the Home Box Office I've had to avert my eyes at any discussion of what's going on--and, as you'll notice if you're averting your eyes, there's a lot of that discussion these days. Even seeing a proper name pop out of a headline will tip you off that a character has survived a few more seasons, and just from the fragments of sentences I've let slip past my guard I've already spoiled major plot developments, which I now have to spend the next many months not revealing to my wife as we work our way through the episodes. So all I can say as I point you toward Venkatesh's Wire blogging is that it is there; I won't allow myself to find out anything more. And don't tell me! --Tom

(BRIS-ing-gr)

Dragon-lovin' Christopher Paolini fans rejoice today with the announcement of the title and jacket art for the next book his bestselling Inheritance series. Brisingr (an Old Norse word for fire) was originally meant to be the final book of a trilogy, before Paolini's vision outgrew the limitations of three volumes; Inheritance is now a "cycle," with the promise of (at least) a fourth book at a future date (see Paolini describing the evolution of the series here). According to the author:

Brisingr is one of the first words I thought of for this title, and it’s always felt right to me ... As the first ancient-language word that Eragon learns, it has held particular significance for his legacy as a Dragon Rider. In this new book, it will be revealed to be even more meaningful than even Eragon could have known.

Random House also announced a change in publication date--originally scheduled for September 23, 2008, the book will be moved up to 12:01 a.m. on September 20. Brisingr follows Eragon and Eldest, which have combined for sales of over 12.5 million copies worldwide. --Jon

Don't Get Any of That Blood on the White Suit: New Tom Wolfe

The big publishing news last week was that Tom Wolfe, after 43 years (!) at the thrifty Nobel Prize factory over at Farrar Straus Giroux, has signed with Little, Brown for his upcoming novel, Back to Blood (not listed on our site yet), for the reported sum of $6 to 7 million (a sum which his last book, I Am Charlotte Simmons, would not have come close to earning back, it has also been reported). Now this week New York's Vulture blog has gotten its greedy mitts on Wolfe's 28-page proposal for the book, about a half-a-page of which they share with the general reading public. It's a fictional (but of course heavily reported!) expose of the racial politics of Miami, covering "class, family, wealth, race, crime, sex, corruption, and ambition." "Our story begins"--so begins the proposal--"inside the mind of a young Cuban policeman." I dunno--who do you trust to tell a complex modern tale of race and class and get "inside the minds" of its principals: Richard Price? Junot Diaz? Or Tom Wolfe? He wouldn't be my first choice, but we shall see...

Also via Vulture, a link to comics blogger Laura Hudson's mom's very funny review of The Best American Comics 2007, edited by Chris Ware. Her response to the navel-gazery (which, I should note, I at times adore): "There’s a tendency to want to say to a lot of those stories, 'hey, suck it up a little.'" --Tom

Five Tales, Seven Copies, One Book: J.K. Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard

As you may have heard, J.K. Rowling has created a new book of fairy tales, but unlike her last book, which has reached print runs in the tens of millions, this one has a very limited edition: seven. Handwritten and illustrated by Rowling herself and bound in morocco leather, silver ornaments, and semi-precious stones, The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of five wizarding fairy tales. (The tales played a crucial role in the plot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after Dumbledore left them to Hermione Granger, but only one of them, "The Tale of the Three Brothers," was included in the story.) Of the seven copies, Rowling gave six to "those most intimately involved" with the Potter books (names as yet unknown), and the last was auctioned off this morning at Sotheby's in London, with proceeds going to The Children's Voice, an organization cofounded by Rowling that campaigns for children's rights.

The book, which according to the AP was expected to sell for around $100,000, ended up selling for 1.95 million pounds (or, given the state of the U.S. dollar these days, $3.98 million). The buyer was unknown at the time of purchase, but later today was revealed to be ... Amazon.com. So needless to say, you can now read more about the book on our site, including some lovely photographs, a few of which I've added below. And there's an already-busy discussion board, where we (and our customers) are answering as many questions as we can about the book. --Tom

Stephen King's "Duma Key": Where It All Began...

"I started to imagine a little dead girl standing on that road--twin dead girls, with their hands linked. The image came from nowhere... it came around dusk, which is a spooky time of day anywhere, but particularly on the coast of Florida." --Stephen King

The quote above is from a video message from Stephen King talking about an image that had been lurking in his head for years... one that eventually found a home in his new novel, Duma Key (available January 22). In an exclusive essay for Amazon.com, King's longtime editor Chuck Verrill offers a side-by-side comparison of "Memory," a King story that appeared in the summer 2006 issue of Tin House, and the first chapter of Duma Key, the book it eventually grew into.

--BTP

In the spring of 2006 Stephen King told me he was working on a Florida story that was beginning to grow on him. "I'm thinking of calling it Duma Key," he offered.  I liked   the sound of that--the title was like a drumbeat of dread. "You know how Lisey's Story is a story about marriage?" he said. "Sure," I answered. The novel hadn't yet been published, but I knew its story well: Lisey and Scott Landon--what a marriage that was. Then he dropped the other shoe: "I think Duma Key might be my story of divorce." 

Pretty soon I received a slim package from a familiar address in Maine. Inside was a short story titled "Memory"--a story of divorce, all right, but set in Minnesota. By the end of the summer, when Tin House published "Memory," Stephen had completed a draft of  Duma Key, and it became clear to me how "Memory" and its narrator, Edgar Freemantle, had moved from Minnesota to Florida, and how a story of divorce had turned into something more complex, more strange, and much more terrifying.

If you read the following two texts side by side--"Memory" as it was published by Tin House and the opening chapter of Duma Key in final form--you'll see a writer at   work, and how stories can both contract and expand.  Whether Duma Key is an expansion of "Memory" or "Memory" a contraction of Duma Key, I can't really say.  Can you? 

--Chuck Verrill

Read "Memory"

Read the first chapter of Duma Key

Weekend Reading List

Based on your feedback, this weekly post has been expanded with more info on the titles that occupy the Saturdays and Sundays of the Amazon Books Team.

Happy reading!

Tom:
Lush Life by Richard Price
Customer Rating: 4 stars out of 5 (30 Amazon Vine reviews)
Release Date: March 4,  2008
Sorry, it's not out until March, but it's time for us to start thinking about 2008 and I can't keep myself from devouring this one.

Mari:
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin 
Release Date: November 20th, 2007

Dave:
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet
Customer Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5 (102 reviews)
Currently available
Since finishing Musicophilia, I've been on a bit of a neurology kick and Tammet's story is amazing.

BTP:
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields
Release Date: February 8th, 2008

The Story Behind the "Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2007"

In case you missed it, the New York Times published its annual list of the Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2007 in last weekend's Book Review, featuring sample art work from each book in its centerfold—and in a cool online slide show.

Like most year-end lists, it has many people asking why this book and not that book. The School Library Journal just posted an interview with Ellen Loughran, a panel judge, who provides perspective on the judges' decision-making. She admits that the list is probably more for parents and industry professionals than for kids (which is why librarians often disagree with the selections):

I have always felt that this particular list is like the Society of Children’s Book Illustrators’ list—a lot of those picture books do not have child appeal, but they do have wonderful art and wonderful illustrations. And what that says to me is, “Look for this person’s next book”—artists feel the art in this book is exceptionally strong.

Here's the list (with writer/illustrators) so you can judge for yourself if they got it right:

• Every Friday (Dan Yaccarino)
• Jabberwocky (Christopher Myers)
• The Arrival (Shaun Tan)
• First the Egg (Laura Vaccaro Seeger)
• Not a Box (Antoinette Portis; image shown above)
• 600 Black Spots (David A. Carter)
• The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea (Guy Billout)
• The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (Peter Sis)
• Old Penn Station (William Low)
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick)

--Heidi

New on Amazon Wire: Talking Schulz with Michaelis

Our latest episode of Amazon Wire features an interview I did with David Michaelis, the author of a new biography of Charles Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts. You can listen to the interview on our Wire blog, and for a quick glimpse you can read the short Q&A excerpt I posted on our blog back soon after I did the interview back in June. We talked at BookExpo America back in June (cue the background noise for convention-floor atmosphere), well before the book came out (and even before there was a full advance copy to read), so we talked more about the strip than Schulz himself, since I didn't know the full story yet.

I've since read the book--and liked it a lot, it's one of my favorite books of the year--and I must say I'm completely flummoxed by the apparently controversy that's surrounded the book. (See here and here as well as some 1-star customer reviews on our site.) Well, not completely--I can certainly understand a family's discomfort with a biographer's take on the life they knew so well. But the idea that this is a hit piece that paints Schulz merely as a bitter, miserable man bears almost no relation to the book. You read many biographies that give you the sense that the author came to dislike his or her subject while writing about them (Arnold Rampersad's recent Ralph Ellison bio, while certainly respectful of his achievement, gave me that feeling, and made me not like Ellison--long a hero of mine--as much either), but I didn't get that sense at all from Schulz and Peanuts. Schulz comes off as unhappy and often difficult, to be sure, but never unlikeable (and always a genius). One of Michaelis's main points is that Schulz (as he himself said on many occasions) cultivated that unhappiness as a spur to his art; perhaps if his biographer has emphasized that simmering misery in a way that his family finds excessive, it's because his main goal is to see how the life led to the art. In any case, I came away from the book with more admiration for Schulz rather than less, and with a fair bit of admiration for Michaelis as well.

Coming up next week on Wire: an interview our former classical music editor, Tom May, and I did last week with Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic whose excellent new history of twentieth-century music, The Rest Is Noise, must be the first book of classical music criticism to hit our top 100 in a very long time. --Tom

Marilynne Robinson: New Novel Next Fall

A little like the Red Sox, who waited 86 years to win a World Series in 2004 but took only three more years to win their next title (last night!), Marilynne Robinson, after a 24-year-gap between her first novel, Housekeeping, and her second, Gilead, is not making her fans wait nearly as long for her third novel. According to PW Daily, she's just signed with Farrar Straus Giroux, the publisher of her previous novels, to publish Home, which she has already completed, in September 2008. The title echoes her first book, but the story, apparently, is connected with the second, taking place at the same time as, and sharing some of the characters with, Gilead.

People who know me know I love Housekeeping as much as the Sox, and the Pulitzer-winning Gilead was a very worthy follow-up, so this news makes me so excited I want to do a Papelbon dance. --Tom

Where Are the Wild Things? Everywhere Dave Eggers Is

Usually the doings at the Frankfurt Book Fair concern books too far ahead or too far abroad to hit our radar, but one report did catch my eye this year. Apparently, not only is Dave Eggers adapting Where the Wild Things Are for the movies, as Paul noted yesterday, but for fiction as well. According to PW Daily, Ecco has acquired a novel from Eggers based on the Sendak book for publication in fall 2008, just when the movie's coming out, and thinks it will be "his biggest book" (which is saying something). My reaction: slight horror, mixed with curiosity. For one thing, adapting the original picture book for a movie seems natural (and I'm looking forward to it) compared to the idea of filling up that spare little story, whose brilliance in large part consists of what it leaves out, with words, words, words. How often can we read, as in the screenplay snippet New York revealed, "Max can't believe what he's seeing"?

And then there's the whole Dave Eggers/McSweeney's childhood infatuation. In this month's American Scholar, novelist Melvin Jules Bukiet laid waste to an entire borough with his piece on "Brooklyn Books of Wonder," the recent rash of fiction and memoirs (from Sebold, Foer, Krauss, Kunkel, and Goldberg, as well as Eggers and his McSweeney's/Believer empire) that celebrate wide-eyed youth (and a few oldsters) triumphing over trauma. The idea of Eggers, the presiding genius of this whole child-centered moment, diving into the ur-text of Zoom-era upbringing, seems so spot-on that it's in danger of imploding. It's like Norman Mailer writing on Marilyn Monroe: so deep inside someone's obsessions that it gets claustrophobic.

Or, possibly, he's found his great subject. Despite the well-known clairvoyance of bloggers, all we can do is wait a year to find out for ourselves. --Tom