Read Together, Serve Together
Sometimes we want to ignore it all: the stories about writers and literature and publishing, the news about new good books and new bad books. We want to turn our computer off, crawl into a dark space and by candlelight and in longhand draft our very own masterpiece. Now that would be news! But being a literary matador calls for swift movements and grace under pressure. It calls for drafting your own masterpiece in addition to managing a Web site, editing articles, reading submissions, et al. Do we have what it takes? We’ll see. Time will tell. Until then, we will continue to do what we do each and every day here at Dark Sky Magazine: grab the literary bull by the horns. The Library of Congress is a pretty big bull. So big it puts on its very own book festival. Bad art has the rage of a drunken bull. Avoid it at all costs. Multimedia is crashing the book publishing world: Read more about Vooks in Jacket Copy. The great state of Washington announces its winner for finest novel of the year. More editorials arrive, which debate the fate of Roman Polanski. Pol Pot was a maniacal bull but one crafty matador survived. Read the story in Words Without Borders. Finally, Dan Chaon, respected by most, revered by some and abhorred by others has a new book out. Apparently it’s deliciously good. And we’re happy for him. But you’ll have to excuse us. We’re retiring to our dark space, ready to draft with Bic and by flame. — Kevin Murphy
– The Library of Congress is the single most important center of the American collections of reading- newspapers, movies, magazines, audio music and making those collections accessible to Congress and the American people is our true mission.” But for the Library of Congress, Clavell adds, the purpose of the festival goes beyond a love of books. “Even though print media may be on the decline, literacy is on the incline. We still need to increase literacy in this country, for young people and life-long learners. — National Book Festival in the Georgetown Independent
– Most traditional economic theory is built around the concept of scarcity – the idea that there’s not enough stuff to go around. In The Accursed Share (1946), Georges Bataille inverts this; life, he says, is characterized, not by too little, but by too much. Life is excess—it pushes onto every bleak rock, every cranny; it spends itself in profligate sexual activity and in the ultimate profligacy of death. — Bad Art in Splice Today
Lulu Is A Winner In Washinton State
– I am not generally a fan of the Washington State Book Awards—they’ve gone to some real mediocre authors in the past—but any award that sends more readers toward Jonathan Evison—All About Lulu is a great, early John Irving-y first novel—and the marvelous poet David Wagoner is a good thing. — Washington Book Awards in the Stranger
– In fact, what Polanski’s defense boils down to finally is what you might call the Ezra Pound Exception, i.e., that some people consider great artists to be exempt from moral judgment (to wit, “So what if Ezra Pound was Fascist, he was a great poet, etc.”). If you take Polanski’s talent out of the equation, then his defense falls apart, which is easy to see with a little thought experiment. — Polanski in James Hynes
Pol Pot Was An Angry Bull
– The road through the landscape. You have to drive well below the speed limit of 70 kmh unless you already know the wheeltracks, the potholes, the curves. Roads in Cambodia aren’t much different. An ancient pathway that has grown wider over the centuries. Coated with asphalt in modern times. A surface now thinning and cracked.The society builders are looking in another direction. — Pol Pot in Words Without Borders
– Today Simon and Schuster announced that it will integrate books with video by partnering with the Emeryville, Calif.-based company Vook. The new vooks, the company says in a press release, enable “readers to seamlessly read, watch, and enjoy both text and video at the same location on their screen.” The vooks can be read/played on an iPhone or iPod touch, or in a Web-based viewer. — Vooks in Jacket Copy
– In three parallel stories that don’t connect until the end, Await Your Reply features contemporary characters reinventing or misrepresenting themselves. All know more about what they’re running from than what they’re running to. — Dan Chaon in USA Today
Video: Await Your Reply Trailer
