educating alice

This is such a generous author that one is tempted to borrow as much as $8,000 from him and then never give it back.

Gary Shteyngart judges the first match in the 2008 Tournament of Books semi-finals.

I came across this event a few years and, ever since, have had a blast following it. Here’s a description from the organizers about its creation:

Artistic awards are like wet kisses from your Aunt Mabel. You should be gracious when you get one, but actually seeking one out is kind of unseemly. And yet every year, our most esteemed, and especially elderly, writers crank out novel with important theme after novel with important theme in the desperate pursuit of the Pulitzer or National Book Award or Nobel. And then a bunch of guys in a conference room halfway around the world go ahead and give the thing to Doris Lessing. (Like the Nobel committee, I too once pretended to understand what Canopus in Argos was all about.) Anyway, it’s enough to make Philip Roth cry and we are not in favor of anything that makes Philip Roth cry, which is why we are also against the unexamined values of the middle class and the songs of Harry Chapin.

A few years ago some of us were up late and we were talking about this very thing, about how much we enjoy literary awards in spite of the fact they are also silly and arbitrary. The idea that we should accept the word of any small group of people—people in most cases whose names we don’t even know—about a topic so subjective as the best literature of the year is pretty ridiculous, and forcing authors to compete against each other is just stupid on its face. We were also drinking quite a lot, which I mention because by the next morning we had the rough outlines of something called The Tournament of Books, in which we would seed the year’s most celebrated works of fiction in a March Madness-type bracket and pit those novels against each other in a “Battle Royale of Literary Excellence.” In honor of our favorite character in contemporary literature, David Sedaris’s brother, aka “The Rooster,” we decided to present the winning author with a live chicken.

Don’t worry. No live chickens have been awarded to date. But the smart silliness is very present. And so here are this year’s books and here are this year’s judges. What is fun about it is the wit of the judges; doesn’t really matter if you’ve read the books (at least it didn’t to me). They have commentary, betting, the works. It starts next Friday. Check it out!

For writers, few steps in the publishing process are as strange as the state of suspended animation between submitting a manuscript and seeing the book appear in stores. The sudden change in cabin pressure from writing to waiting can be jarring — and can last a very long time. “It comes as a huge shock when it happens the first time,” said the Irish writer Colm Toibin, whose first novel, “The South,” appeared in 1990, a year and a half after he turned it in. “It was all slow and strange.”

Why Does It Still Take So Long to Publish a Book? - New York Times

A classic, or a fraud? - Los Angeles Times

Thanks to bookslut I came across a blogger who is indeed reading the new translation of Sir Gawain aloud to his four-year-old.

At chez Salt-Box, I am the one who reads “chapter books” to the Little Man, as opposed to books he can read by himself, or longer picture books or comic books, which anyone is allowed to read to him. As a result, A Santa thoughtfully made to the Little Man and me a joint present: Simon Armitage’s new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which we’re now about 40% through after polishing off the Iliad* Monday morning.

Read the whole post at The Salt-Box.

Very interesting discussion about amazon reviews over at this PW blog: Reading the Book: A Novel Approach to Reviewing.

Thanks to Judith Ridge for the tip.

Of course I can’t get enough of what others have to say about award judging. Here’s Joanna Trollope, about to judge the Costas:

Joanna Trollope: And the readers lived happily ever after - Telegraph

Rafael Alvero, who developed the musical project, said it was the culmination of a decade’s efforts to gain the confidence of the foundation. He said the show would be inspirational, comparing Frank’s life story to a tragic opera.

Anne Frank’s diary to be made into a musical | News | Guardian Unlimited Books

Poetry Stand

How a precocious group of high school poets
learned to provide verse on demand

By Douglas Goetsch

I just posted the following on child_lit in response to some posts directed at teachers who ask their students to write letters to authors:

As a teacher I usually cringe when I see recommendations that children write authors. It is done so casually, too often in a perfunctory manner, and I find it careless and problematic on the part of the teachers.

I remember once being at the HarperCollins’ offices and seeing some of their favorite letters from children posted — to folks like E. B. White and others. Those teachers who had those children write clearly knew nothing about the authors, say that they were long dead. It shames me as a fellow member of the profession that so many teachers don’t read enough themselves or bother to do enough research on this topic. We don’t see what the teachers do, just what the kids do. Then we laugh and discuss yet again how dreadful teachers are. Sigh.

This is not to say I am against any sort of writing to authors. When there is a sincere reason to — because there is a genuine love of the book a child would like to express to its creator or a question — then by all means have the kids write. But they should do so without any expectation of a response. To me that is the most genuine of fan letters. If a response comes it is a delightful surprise, but kids should not write for that reason and be disappointed when none appears (or worse, furious at the author who may not have had any way of responding as Philip describes).

I have occasionally done a letter to an author with my class (fourth graders) when we together felt it was warranted. Most notably, we wrote Gail Carson Levine after I read aloud Ella Enchanted to them the year of its publication. We were studying Cinderella and the kids wrote of their appreciation of how she played with the familiar tropes. They also asked her some great questions. She answered them and offered to visit to hear their own stories (as it turned out she lived nearby). On a couple of other occasions we wrote letters/cards of congratulations when a book we loved won an award. We did that for Gail and for Kate DiCamillo (after The Tale of Despereaux won the Newbery). Since I’m now more known in the children’s lit world and since I’d been a big advocate for the book she called us at school to thank us which was very exciting, as you can imagine. But we didn’t write her for a response, just to congratulate her for winning an award for a book we had loved.