Details and some congressional crowing here. (Note to Rep. Cohen’s office: Proofread the website headlines a little more closely.) Publishers and authors cheer. I did a long analysis for the Chronicle back in June on the subject of libel tourism, and it’s good to see some legislative attention being paid to the issue. Now, back to that pesky economic crisis…. Read more...
Cloud tagging with a purpose: “a visual historiography of an evolving discipline.” Fun to play with, and maybe even illuminating, if you pay attention. (Via HNN.)… Read more...
Publishers Marketplace has rolled out the beta version of a bookstore locator. Just select a state or metro area and the program pulls up local results. It’s not perfect or complete—it only lists stores selling new books, so there’s no listing for my favorite nearby used-book destination, Books for America—but it has the makings of a nifty tool for the booklover on the move. (Via.)… Read more...
D.C. Noir 2: The Classics got a nice write-up in the Post yesterday. For obvious reasons I’m predisposed to like the book, and it sounds like there’s plenty to like: Two of the finest stories rely on a collision of cultures. Edward P. Jones’s masterful “A Rich Man” follows a womanizing senior citizen’s descent into a maelstrom of trouble with a younger generation that he fails, tragically, to understand. Elizabeth Hand’s “Wonderwall” captures with visceral immediacy the landscape of Southwest Washington in the 1970s as experienced by artsy college students from suburban Maryland: “gunshots, sirens, the faint bass throb from… Read more...
Don’t yawn. This is critical stuff for publishers who rely on textbooks as a source of revenue and for the students who are less and less willing to pay big bucks for those textbooks. A couple of weeks ago, I did a story for the Chronicle about plummeting textbook sales at university presses. It caught the attention of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has done a follow-up. As they kinda sorta admit, it borrows freely from my reporting (and also from my Chron colleague Jeff Young’s coverage of textbook piracy). Still, I’m glad to see this issue get picked up by… Read more...
One of David Foster Wallace’s students has posted a copy of the syllabus Wallace used to teach an undergrad course on “Literary Interpretation.” The document makes more honest literary sense than most of the overbearing, over-reaching tributes we’ve had thrown at us since Wallace’s suicide: The goals of this section of E67 are to survey certain important forms of modern literature—short stories, novels, poems—and to introduce you to some techniques for achieving a critical appreciation of literary art. “Critical appreciation” means having smart, sophisticated reasons for liking whatever literature you like, and being able to articulate those reasons to other… Read more...
