Sour Grapes by Dan Rhodes review – a vengeful satire on the publishing world

The comic novelist takes aim at the industry’s elitism, but his story of a farcical literary festival is dated – and overly focused on Will SelfFunny ha-ha is tricky. For every reader who cackles with laughter at an author writing “this person was making plans to micturate upon one’s pommes frites”, there’s one who will wince. Some will feel the universe joyfully lighten as they read: “There’s a personage at the parsonage.” Or: “I believe it was Roland Barthes who said I love it when a plan comes together.” I can’t pronounce this unfunny, since funny is so largely in the hi-de-hi of the beholder. I cannot, however, report that any laughter issued from my own personal hilarity hole.Dan Rhodes’s half-dozen comic novels have their fans, and he is upfront in Sour Grapes that a falling-out with his publisher (what he calls his “ongoing scrap with the biz”) prompted a satire on the industry. Some of the barbs here, about publishing’s exploitation of young workers and the inertial classism, hit home. But the actual story, concerning a literary festival in a picturesque English village, feels like something out of the 1950s. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2021-11-12 09:00:32 UTC ]
News tagged with: #making plans #literary festival

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The perfect buyer for the National Enquirer, Runner’s World does retail, The Onion’s threats: Publisher’s Brief

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[ Advertising Age | 2019-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bumble's latest foray: scary world of print publishing

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[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2019-04-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Q&A: Ruth Reichl on breaking through the machismo of restaurant and publishing worlds

Ruth Reichl’s latest memoir, “Save Me the Plums,” covers her years as editor in chief of Gourmet from 1999 until the magazine folded a decade later. It’s a chronicle of Reichl’s conflicted feelings about success: her ambition to remake a legendary food magazine that had become out of touch, and... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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World Editions to publish Dieudonné’s debut

World Editions has scooped the English translation of Adeline Dieudonné’s debut Real Life, translated by Roland Glasser, with 18 foreign publishers snapping up translation rights. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Emirates Publishers Association at 10: Driving Books’ Fast Progress in the Arab World

Bodour Al Qasimi, the founding president of the Emirates Publishers Association reflects on the last decade of book publishing in the UAE and the Arab world The post Emirates Publishers Association at 10: Driving Books’ Fast Progress in the Arab World appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives

[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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London Book Fair’s International Excellence Awards Honor ‘Publishing To Build a Better World’

Even as the UK Parliament was compounding the UK's confusion on Brexit at Westminster Tuesday evening, the London Book Fair International Book Awards audience cheered internationalism and cross-cultural solidarity in the largest yet round of honors for the program. The post London Book Fair’s... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives

[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-03-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Ahead of London Book Fair: IPA’s New Leadership on the State of a World Publishing Industry

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-03-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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We rush to condemn fakers such as Dan Mallory but the world has made impostors of us all | Rachel Cooke

The reaction to the exposure of the bestselling American author as a serial liar reveals more about our own insecurities than his duplicityWhat’s the difference between something going viral and a storm in a teacup? Not an awful lot, it often seems to me. Last week, everyone in publishing and... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2019-02-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Guardian view on Dan Mallory: a twisted tale of publishing | Editorial

The story of Dan Mallory, aka the bestselling author AJ Finn, reads like a thriller. But it asks uncomfortable questions of the literary worldA true story worthy of a Patricia Highsmith thriller was published this week in the New Yorker. The magazine detailed the deceptions of Dan Mallory, who... Continue reading at The Guardian

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We investigate how specialist children's, illustrated/comic and academic/educational publishers fared last year in our Review of 2018.   Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-01-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Pearson Is Still the World's Largest Publisher

The U.K. educational publisher remained the biggest publisher on the planet in 2017. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-09-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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‘Go Out and See the World’: Mexico’s Publishers Urged To Accelerate Innovation

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Books: A teen reviews '#Neveragain,' a World War II tragedy comes to life and more book news

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Patricia Cornwell signs world rights series deal with Amazon Publishing

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