People keep saying that it would never get past the censorious new generation, rather forgetting its arduous struggle to be printed in the 1950sIf millennials are currently aged between the ages of 22 and 36, I am one, albeit somewhere in the upper echelons – and I am also a publisher. And so I note with particular interest when people who are usually not millennials and don’t work in publishing share their view that Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita would never be published now because of awful young people like me. Not in a million years, they say. Highly unlikely, at a push.It’s a view that pops up with surprising frequency. In the Spectator this week, Rachel Johnson writes that Lolita would be stuck on the slush pile if Nabokov had written it now, casting doubt over whether the classic would even be placed on curriculums any more. Ignoring, of course, that it is on curriculums now. Johnson then asked Dan Franklin – a publisher, granted, but not a millennial – who said he wouldn’t publish it now for fear “a committee of 30-year-olds” would resign in protest because of #MeToo and social media.While promoting her film The Bookshop last year, actor Emily Mortimer also talked about the “sanctimony” of #MeToo, telling the Telegraph: “Lolita would have a hard time being published today.” And Twitter provides a smorgasbord of spluttering about the terrors of our new prudery. Railing against “safe-space publishing”, veteran broadcaster and journalist Iain MacWhirter tweeted: “No one... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
“Borges and Me,” a memoir by Jay Parini, recounts a young poet’s travels with Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine master. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-08-18 09:00:07 UTC ]
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When Sylvia Beach, the New Jersey native who published Ulysses and opened Paris’ Shakespeare and Co. (“the most famous bookstore in the world”), died in 1962, Princeton University purchased and catalogued her papers. This trove of materials reveals, among other things, the reading preferences of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-05-08 19:46:30 UTC ]
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Blake Gopnik argues that Warhol had a lasting effect on advertising, fashion, music, film, television and photography. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-04-17 15:51:05 UTC ]
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Stephen Dixon left us yesterday. The author of Frog (1991) and Interstate (1995) two National Book Award finalists, published some thirty other books, including collections of his over 500 short stories. I first met Dixon on the final day of a class in my junior year of college called “Short... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-07 20:03:05 UTC ]
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Two Australian online book retailers have suspended sales of Ronan Farrow’s investigation into #MeToo, following legal threats from one of the book’s subjects. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-18 08:21:31 UTC ]
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Who needs secret government sources when you have Donald Trump? Yesterday, a reporter on the White House driveway asked Trump what he hoped Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, would do after Trump asked him to investigate the Bidens. “I would think that if they were honest about it,... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2019-10-04 11:58:13 UTC ]
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Serpent’s Tail has acquired a novella, This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill, about the “unravelling of the life of a male publisher undone by allegations of sexual impropriety and harassment” which was first published in the New Yorker earlier this month. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-07-25 18:04:04 UTC ]
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Older generations argue that young people’s insistence on equality in all things – including books – threatens to stifle free speech. But is that always true?I wouldn’t normally air my dirty literary linen in public, but here goes. When I finished writing my novel Putney, about a 13-year-old... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-07-10 10:03:01 UTC ]
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Following the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, religion and spirituality publishers are addressing issues related to masculinity in new titles geared toward men. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-06-12 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Marlantes’s second novel, 'Deep River,' is a sprawling, painstakingly realistic novel about Finnish immigrants in the Pacific Northwest during the first half of the 20th century. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-05-17 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Viking has signed two new books from author Ben Macintyre, with the first revealing unpublished intelligence sources about the 20th century's "greatest woman spy" Ursula Kuczynski. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-03-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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People keep saying that it would never get past the censorious new generation, rather forgetting its arduous struggle to be printed in the 1950sIf millennials are currently aged between the ages of 22 and 36, I am one, albeit somewhere in the upper echelons – and I am also a publisher. And so I... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Burningham, who was married to fellow children’s writer Helen Oxenbury, created beloved picture books including Mr Gumpy’s Outing and Avocado BabyJohn Burningham, the children’s author and illustrator behind some of the 20th century’s most enduring children’s books, has died at the age of 82.The... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-01-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In Germany, Turning Point, the finale of Carmen Korn’s Century Trilogy, a historical series about four women in the 20th century, topped the fiction bestseller list in September, and prolific mystery novelist Charlotte Link was in second with The Search, about a missing teen. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-10-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury has pre-empted The Right to Sex, a book about male sexual entitlement and #MeToo by Oxford professor Amia Srinivasan. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-10-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Writer and academic steps down after publishing and defending Jian Ghomeshi piece deemed to be at odds with spirit of #MeTooIan Buruma, the writer and academic, has stepped down from the editorship of the New York Review of Books after only 16 months, after he caused outrage by publishing and... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-09-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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At the September 16 Brooklyn Book Festival, four critics and curators tackled one of the most hotly-debated topics in the book and arts worlds in the era of #MeToo: how should the public reckon with the works of abusive artists? Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-09-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Folio Literary Management, LLC, has acquired Harold Ober Associates, a full-service literary agency founded in 1929 that has represented some of the literary titans of the 20th century, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Agatha Christie and J.D. Salinger. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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V. S. Naipaul, the award-winning writer born in Trinidad who settled in England and wrote an astonishing number of great novels and searing works of nonfiction, died over the weekend at the age of 85. After publishing a novel, The Mystic Masseur, and a number of short stories about Trinidad in... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2018-08-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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