December 4, 2013 On the Shelf People Are Angry, and Other News By Sadie Stein The Supreme Court has spoken: Amazon will pay taxes in New York. The family of Norman Rockwell is going to the mattresses over a new biography by Deborah Solomon, which raises questions about the artist’s sexuality. Says Rockwell’s granddaughter, “She layers the whole biography with these innuendos … These things she’s writing about Norman Rockwell are simply not true.” In praise of writing while one reclines. Eight prominent Dominican figures have written an open letter condemning the work of Junot Díaz, who is currently visiting the Dominican Republic. They accuse the lauded writer of “a scarce capacity for reflection and a disrespectful and mediocre use of the written word,” and resent his self-identifying as Dominican.
December 3, 2013 On the Shelf Amazon, Robots, and Other News By Sadie Stein Publishing legend André Schiffrin has died, at seventy-eight. Amazon and drones. In the immortal words of Pillow Talk, “some jokes are too obvious to be funny.” Stephen Colbert disagrees. Speaking of! Joyce Carol Oates on Mike Tyson: “To the extent that Tyson has a predominant tone in Undisputed Truth it’s that of a Vegas stand-up comic, alternately self-loathing and self-aggrandizing, sometimes funny, sometimes merely crude.”
December 2, 2013 On the Shelf Good-bye, Peter Kaplan, and Other News By Sadie Stein New York Observer veteran Peter Kaplan has died, at the age of fifty-nine. At the Girolamini Library in Naples, a librarian has been accused of “one of the most dramatic thefts ever to hit the rare-book world.” Pilfered volumes include rare editions of Aristotle, Descartes, and Machiavelli. New Zealand’s national airline has painted a giant image of the dragon Smaug, from The Hobbit, on the side of one of its planes. So, how are the leaked J. D. Salinger stories?
November 27, 2013 On the Shelf Amazon Is Stressful, and Other News By Sadie Stein In honor of Thanksgiving, novels full of good food. Hundreds of writers have volunteered to sell books at indie bookstores this Small Business Saturday. An undercover BBC investigation has found that working at the Amazon warehouse during the holiday season can lead to “mental and physical illness.” Keep a notebook, write daily, and other tips from Nicholson Baker. And whether or not you finish the books, twenty great opening lines.
November 26, 2013 On the Shelf On Not Thinking Like a Writer, and Other News By Sadie Stein “The artist must avoid thinking like a writer.” The letters of Cézanne. “It isn’t only about droll or absurd situations, it’s about the language used to describe those situations.” Paul Auster on Samuel Beckett. In honor of Umberto Eco’s Legendary Lands, maps of imaginary lands. “Last December, on a Sunday like so many Boston Sundays, one that began in sunshine but gave way to snow showers, three hundred members of Old South Church gathered for a congregational meeting. After hours of debate following weeks of discussion, they voted to sell one of their two copies of the Bay Psalm Book.” Casey N. Cep on America’s first book.
November 25, 2013 On the Shelf How the Magic Happens, and Other News By Sadie Stein Begin your week with these lovely shots of the Strand Rare Book Room. Cary “Westley” Elwes is, as one might expect, writing a memoir about the making of The Princess Bride. “Compiling this Guardian/Observer list of one hundred great novels in the English language, and rediscovering old favourites from week to week, has become as much an autobiographical as a literary process.” How the magic (or at least the list) happens. “That swaggering conception of manhood now seems wholly deleterious, and even his worldliness suggests little more than a knack for talking to waiters.” Michael Gorra on Hemingway.