American literary couple reunited after 150 years

One of the most passionate couples in American literary history were reunited yesterday when the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter, was laid to rest alongside him in New Hampshire after an extended British detour lasting nearly 150 years.

Absolution

Absolution is Icelandic author, Olaf Olafsson's, first novel. It is a true pleasure to discover a wonderful author and to know that he has written other books that I can look forward to reading.

The novel moves from Iceland to WW2 Denmark to contemporary Manhattan. Peter Peterson is a wealthy old son of a bitch. He's estranged from family and friends and relies on a young Cambodian woman, likewise estranged from others, to care for him as his health wanes. At the end of his life he is forced to confront events of fifty years ago that have coloured his life ever since. He has dragged the guilt of that "little crime" around with him like a ball and chain. It eats away at him, As death approaches he writes his memoirs in an attempt to rationalize his actions. He is despicable but Olafsson's sparse style is so engaging that we share Peter's agony of unrequited love that drives the story.

What was he thinking? Forget it, I don't want to know.

Pete Townshend came under fire last night for writing an erotic short story about two 16-year-olds and publishing it on the Internet.
The 61-year-old guitarist with The Who was warned his actions were inappropriate and ill-advised in view of the fact that he is on the sex offenders' register after being cautioned for child pornography offences three years ago.

susan orlean (2006)

Susan Orlean continues to exhibit her command of ingenious reporting and smooth, lucid and often humorous writing in her signature 'oddball pieces' and brings those talents to bear on her latest project, a 'biography' of Rin Tin Tin. Susan and I met for the second time [see previous IDT interview] at a neighborhood coffee shop in South Boston, not far from her downtown loft. We talked about being a New Yorker, The New Yorker, Rin Tin Tin and this and that.

Via Kottke

Koreans' Kimchi Adulation, With a Side of Skepticism - Los Angeles Times

For years, Koreans have clung to the notion that kimchi, the pungent fermented
cabbage that is synonymous with their culture, has mystical properties that ward
off disease. But what was once little more than an old wives' tale has become
the subject of serious research, as South Korean scientists put kimchi under
their microscopes.

My mum was married to a man of Japanese descent who was raised in Hawaii. My mother married him after communicating with him as a pen pal for a year or so. She'd never met him face to face but felt she knew him through their correspondence. She sold all her meagre earthly possessions and flew down to Arkansas to marry a man she'd never met - what a leap of faith! He was good to her and cared for her diligently until she succumbed to Alzheimer's. Mr. Nag, my mother's sister and I drove down when we were particularly concerned that my mum was failing. When we arrived, we found a fridge filled with jars of kimchi. My mother was a very finicky eater and would never have eaten kimchi if she were herself. It appeared, however, that this was what she was now eating exclusively. It broke my heart. I guess her husband was trying to ward off the inevitable. It didn't help her.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme

Some folks have family meetings to air their grievances. In Courtney Love's go-nuclear family, they write books instead, or communicate via courtrooms. Courtney has mouthed off about her parents for decades.

I'm a Sedaris Slut

In truth, I had no idea what I wanted to study, so for the first few years I took everything that came my way. I enjoyed pillaging and astrology, but the thing that ultimately stuck was comparative literature. There wasn't much of it to compare back then, no more than a handful of epic poems and one novel about a lady detective, but that's part of what I liked about it. The field was new, and full of possibilities, but try telling that to my parents. . . .
Dad followed his "I'm so disappointed" speech with a lecture on career opportunities. "You're going to study literature and get a job doing what?"he said. "Literaturizing? "

My Promise to You: I Respect Your Intelligence

Ed got the drop on me. I'm busted. He wilted under the harsh spotlights, billy clubs, and genitally-placed electrodes of John Freeman's Amazon link expose and he ratted us all out. Now, the grifters of the Lit Blog Cartel are all on the run, hiding in the shadows and safe houses of the book world. Trust me, the stool pigeon who will forever be known as Ed The Rat, will be handled in good time. Someday in the near future, a fisherman trawling along the coast of San Francisco will hook onto a heavy object. Divers will make the grisly discovery of The Rat himself, sleeping with the fishes, with a full set of Proust's Rememberance of Things Past strapped to his legs.

Books to soothe after a divorce

For a long time, Elizabeth Buchan led a double life as a publisher and author, successfully pursuing both careers simultaneously until she became a full-time writer in 1994. Her latest novel, The Second Wife, is published by Michael Joseph this week, priced 12.99. Here she chooses her top 10 books guaranteed to give comfort during the ending of a relationship.

Murder in Belleville

This Aimee Leduc mystery focuses on the plight of Algerian "sans papiers" or illegal immigrants in Paris. Aimee, a P.I. who specializes in corporate security, agrees to help a friend and before you can say "illico" she is up to her neck in blackmail, car bombings, gun running, hunger strikes and hostage taking. The plot is a little hard to follow at times and sometimes just absurd (a preschooler takes down a presumed terrorist and wanders around the ecole maternelle with a sub-machine gun). Aimee gets shot once and beat up several times. Cara Black's Aimee Leduc series covers Paris a quartier at a time and I read the books primarily for their Parisian ambience. They're ideal for whiling away the time with a glass of rose on the patio.

iNovel, a novel idea

Imagine a paperback book that also exists like a blog, allowing you to interact with its characters and their creator.
Hot Springs is the title of a new 'interactive novel' published by Toronto's McArthur & Company. The so-called iNovel, as it's called on the cover, is a marriage between book and the Internet that embraces characteristics of each.

Book 'Em: Crime Magazine's Review of True-Crime Books by Anneli Rufus

Deadly Masquerade, by Donita Woodruff (New Horizon, 2005): When she met a handsome Hollywood insider after moving west with two small kids, Woodruff fell hard. Visual-effects master David was everything the lonely woman could have wished for: tender, attentive, and fabulously rich, with connections all over the world. They married, but by then Woodruff was already suspicious of Valerie, an exotic figure whom David had first introduced as an old friend, then admitted was a former lover whose sex-changed operation he had financed. Further revelations followed, as the author embarked on daring detective work of her own and discovered deception, dark secrets, and a murder that some hoped would never be solved.

Read em all

Ask the author - Douglas Coupland

Dear Douglas
Aren't you a bit old and successful to be writing about loser-geeks-in-cubicles? TT, Aberystwyth

What makes you think they're losers? They're still doing better than most folks - they're just different. And am I too old and successful? Hey, wait. The phone just rang. Stephen King's on line three and, sorry, I have to go take his call right now or he'll be very very angry.

Stephen Joyce in The New Yorker

From The New Yorker: June 16th marks the hundred-and-second anniversary of Bloomsday, the date on which the events in James Joyce's Ulysses take place. There will be the customary commemorative celebrations surrounding Leopold Bloom.s famous walk through Dublin: public readings and festivals in cities around the world, including Dublin, New York, Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Melbourne. In Budapest, two hundred or so academics will convene a Joyce symposium,the twentieth to be held on Bloomsday.
There is a chance that Joyce's grandson, Stephen Joyce, will go to Budapest. He lives in the French town of La Flotte, on the Ile de Re off the Atlantic Coast. He loves the island, which is the Martha's Vineyard of France, but he has sometimes been willing to leave it when academics have invited him to attend Joyce commemorations and symposia. The scholars' courtesy is, in part, tactical: Stephen is Joyce's only living descendant, and since the mid-nineteen-eighties he has effectively controlled the Joyce estate. Scholars must ask his permission to quote sizable passages or to reproduce manuscript pages from those works of Joyce's that remain under copyright,including Ulysses and Finnegans Wake,as well as from more than three thousand letters and several dozen unpublished manuscript fragments.

'Lee Miller: A Life,' by Carolyn Burke

A NY Times Review:

IT seems fitting that Carolyn Burke, whose first biography corrected history's error of undervaluing the avant-garde poet and artist Mina Loy, has written 'Lee Miller: A Life.' Fitting, also, that she begins the tale of a forgotten visionary photographer who was muse and lover to some of the most
influential artists of the early 20th century, as well as one of the few women able to transcend this role and become an artistic force in her own right, with Miller's birth as a muse.

Robert McGinnis

American artist Robert McGinnis has painted well over 1,000 paperback covers since the 1950s. He is best known for his unsurpassed depictions of glamourous, elegant women.

Watermark- Joseph Brodsky

A book of 48 tiny chapters about Brodsky's impressions of Venice.

Let me reiterate: water equals time and provides beauty with its double. By rubbing water, this city improves time's looks, beautifies the future. That's what the role of this city in the universe is.

He sees it through the eyes of a poet. Beautiful language describes the water, the sun, the winding streets. A tiny gem.

Ramsay needs to shoot a movie about Kevin

"The Scottish film-maker Lynne Ramsay will write and direct the film adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver's Orange Prize-winning novel set in the aftermath of a high school massacre. BBC Films is producing the project, expected to cost around $6m.
Shriver told the Guardian that Ramsay is working on the script with Rob Festinger, screenwriter on the award-winning In the Bedroom, which starred Sissy Spacek and Marisa Tomei. The author herself is keeping well away from the adaptation process. 'I've had it up to my eyeballs with that book,' she says. 'Not that I'm complaining, but I feel that I did my job. I need somebody else to come in and inject a freshness. They've been very nice about promising me some sort of consultative role, but I know better than to take that seriously. It's sweet of them even to offer.'"

The Shakespeare Book of Lists

The old joke goes something like this: A guys walks out of the theater after seeing Hamlet for the first time. "I don't know why everybody thinks Hamlet is such a well-written play," he says. "It is full of cliches." Well, here is a whole list of cliches, along with where they originated.
Via Kottke

Dalai Lama Honors Tintin with Tibet Award.

"Tintin will be the first comic character to be awarded the Truth of Light award by the Dalai Lama, for making a significant contribution to the public's understanding of Tibet.
In the story, the young intrepid reporter Tintin and his companions, the blustering Captain Haddock and faithful dog, Snowy, go in search of Tintin's Chinese friend, Chang, in the Tibetan mountains."

top 50 adaptations revealed

As anyone who has seen any version of Anna Karenina knows, a great book does not necessarily make a great film. And while The Godfather was a great movie, was it a great novel? Probably not.
These and other debates went into deciding a longlist of what are deemed the 50 best film adaptations of all time. Organised by the Guardian, a panel of experts has drawn up the list, which will be voted on by the public. The chains Waterstones and Borders are also involved and will promote the books in shops.