December 11, 2001

The book-turned-film Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone broke box-office records in the UK and the US and has become the biggest grossing film over the American Thanksgiving holiday. The film raked in $93.5 million over the first weekend and opened in a record 3,672 movie theatres with many showing the first show as early as 8.30 AM. One of the movie’s three online ticket brokers had sold over $1 million in advance movie tickets, seven times more than any other movie.

Many critics have however been harsh on the film. Newsweek voiced a widely felt sentiment when it said that ‘(The movie) Harry Potter has many delights, but the magical alchemy that the book seemed to achieve so effortlessly eludes it. The movie gets most of the book’s events in, but loses much of the lightness and charm of Rowling’s vision.’

Indeed a rare breed of possessive Potter fans refused outright to watch the film. A twelve-year-old who abstained doesn’t think a movie could ever match the way author J.K. Rowling describes Hogwarts, not to mention his own rendering of the world she created. ‘I have my own visuals of what Hogwarts looks like, what the people look like,’ said the seventh-grader. And then there are the accusations. A Seventh Day Adventist primary school in Australia has stopped students from bringing the stories to class, saying they promote witchcraft and the supernatural.

But undeterred by the brickbats, Warner Brothers has started filming the second Harry Potter film scheduled for release on November 15, 2002.

In the meanwhile J.K. Rowling still rules the bestseller list and took the five top spots on the UK fiction charts with the release of a ‘celebratory edition’ of her best-selling fantasy. She also bought herself a mansion and is set to become the first billionaire writer.

The National Book Award
America’s National Book Award for fiction went to author Jonathan Franzen for his novel The corrections, a story about a dysfunctional family in middle America. Franzen recently came under fire for offending talk show queen Oprah Winfrey. Franzen complained about having Oprah’s book club’s logo on the cover of his widely acclaimed novel that prompted Oprah to rescind her invitation to him on her influential TV book club.

Franzen, has also written The twenty-seventh cityand Strong motion. ‘I feel as if I was the person who provided some bloodsport entertainment for the literary community,’ Franzen joked after accepting the award, adding ‘I was very happy to provide the service.’

Other prizes went to Andrew Solomon for The noonday demon: an atlas of depression, in the nonfiction category. Virginia Euwer Wolff won the award for young people’s literature for True believer, and Alan Dugan won the poetry prize for Poems seven: new and complete poetry.

Critically acclaimed playwright Arthur Miller, 86, was awarded the National Book Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Miller has written such well-known plays as Death of a salesman and The crucible.

Archive sold as movie gears up for release

Ahead of the release of the movie version of J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the rings next month, a rare collection of Tolkein’s proof copies, first editions and 11 letters fetched more than £58,000 at auction.

An anonymous telephone bidder snapped up the archive, which includes first editions of all three books in the best-selling Lord of the rings trilogy.

A Christie’s spokesperson said that the archive charted the ‘trials and tribulations’ of writing the trilogy. Following the lead of the enormously successful movie version of Harry Potter, J.R.R. Tolkein’s world of hobbits, trolls and wizards will appear in the $300 million dollar movie version of The Lord of the rings slated for release on December 19. The film stars Sir Ian McKellan, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler and Elijah Wood.

Tolkien’s epics have enthralled more than 100 million readers worldwide and Lord of the rings regularly appears in surveys of the most popular books in Britain.

Cuckoo’s nest author dies
Author of One flew over the cuckoo’s nest, Ken Kesey died on November 10. He was 66 and was suffering from cancer. Kesey wrote the book in 1962, while working at a Veteran’s Hospital in California. Soon after in 1964 he wrote the critically acclaimed Sometimes a great notion and embarked on an LSD fuelled ride across America in an old school bus named Furthur. The bus was filled with friends who referred to themselves as the Merry Pranksters and sought enlightenment through the drug LSD.

In 1975, Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz produced the movie “One flew over cuckoo’s nest” starring Jack Nicholson. The film swept the Oscars but, Kesey detested the effort and sued Douglas and Zaentz for altering its original content. The suit was eventually settled out of court. Kesey continued writing short autobiographical stories, magazine articles and children’s books, but wrote his next novel Sailor song years later in 1992. Kesey is survived by his wife and three of their four children (a son, was killed in an accident in 1984).

Revamping brief history
A brief history of time, the rather unfathomable international bestseller by Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking is about to become shorter. The 1988 blockbuster attempted to unravel the fundamental questions of the universe to its 10 million readers but didn’t quite succeed. The newer version to be written by Hawking, promises to be more accessible. It is likely to be titled A brief history of time for children or for young adults, and will be aimed at readers aged 12 upwards. The book is expected to run to 100 pages and will include more pictures,

When it was released the 1988 blockbuster, stayed on the Sunday Times non-fiction bestseller list for more than four years and was translated into 35 languages. Yet it also became notorious for being one of the most frequently unfinished books.

Children’s book on Taliban
Canadian author Deborah Ellis, has written a children’s book about life under Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. Ellis tells the story of Parvana, an 11-year-old Afghan girl, and her struggle to survive in war ravaged Afghanistan.

Oxford University Press, the book’s publishers, said that the book was written before the current conflict began and was intended for publication later this year or early in 2002. Titled The breadwinner, the novel is a depiction of life under the Taliban regime, and is aimed at nine to 12 year olds. Since Taliban women must be covered in public the heroine of the book has to masquerade as a boy to be able to leave the home.

Ellis, who is a counsellor in Toronto, has paid many visits to refugee camps in Pakistan during Afghanistan’s 20 years of conflict.

Roy’s book of political writings Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, the Booker Prize-winning author of The god of small things, will publish a collection of her political writings next month. The first instalment of Roy’s writings appeared with an essay in The Guardian, which has since been reprinted in a number of non-US newspapers and circulated widely on the Internet. She wrote, ‘It will be a pity, if, instead of using this as an opportunity to try and understand why September 11 happened, Americans use it as an opportunity to usurp the whole world’s sorrow-to mourn and avenge only their own.’ She has since called the US bombing of Afghanistan ‘another act of terror’, and described Osama bin Laden as ‘America’s family secret’.

Roy also appeared on the ABC news program Nightline, where she read from the Guardian essay and said, “The majority of the countries in the world, if they were free to say what they felt, would say that they are neither with America nor with the terrorists,” she said. “We all don’t have to choose between Mickey Mouse and the Mullahs.”

Unfinished novel to be published
An unfinished novel by science fiction author Douglas Adams is to be published next spring. Adams is the creator of the cult classic The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, who died of a heart attack in May. He had been working on the book for eleven years and numerous versions of the novel, titled A salmon of doubt, were found on Adams’ computer.

New Ulysses ‘breaches copyright’
James Joyce’s literary classic Ulysses was ‘cleaned up’ for a special Reader’s Edition published by Macmillan. The new version re-punctuated and altered some 8,000 words — those misprinted by French typesetters in the first edition — and added some unpublished material.

The Joyce estate, however, said the new material taken from archive manuscripts was protected by copyright, and consequently sued Macmillan. London’s High Court ruled in favour of the estate and deemed the ‘clean-up’ a breach of copyright. It also ordered that 1,000 undistributed copies of the work be handed over to the Joyce estate.

The novel, which was prosecuted for obscenity when it was originally issued in serial form in 1918, was eventually published in Paris in 1922.

First short story written on the Net
Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Robert Olen Butler has claimed to have completed the first short story written entirely online. With three webcams exposing him to scrutiny of Internet viewers Butler finished the 4,800-word story, This is Earl Sandt. Thus viewers were able to watch the creation from ‘keystroke to keystroke’ over 20 days.

Butler is an English professor and teaches creative writing at Florida State University, under whose auspices the writing sessions were held. Butler said the project offered aspiring writers the opportunity to share in the ‘moment-to-moment act of personal intimacy formerly found only behind the veil of private life’ that is required to create literary fiction and that this was a way of teaching creative writing that had never been attempted before.

Butler used random vintage postcard from his collection of hundreds, as a starting point. The chosen postcard was a 1913 photograph of a biplane with a torn wing, with, ‘This is Earl Sandt in his aeroplane ... just before it fell’ written on the back.

He has published 11 books, including novels, and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his collection of short stories, A good scent from the mountain, in 1993.

Awards
The Whitbread book awards will be revamped this year, with bigger prize money, a new logo and a new website. The Book of the Year award has risen from £22,500 to £25,000, while the winners of the five categories — novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s book — will each receive £5,000, an increase of £1,500. The total prize money will now be £50,000.

Whitbread is also set to help raise awareness of the awards, which celebrate their 30th birthday this year. The awards are controversial mainly because of their choice of celebrity judges. Past judges have included model Jerry Hall and thus the award has often been accused of ‘dumbing down’.

In the meantime the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys literary prize went to a biography of the Western Avenue, one of London’s major arterial roads, the A40. Edward Platt’s Leadville tells the story of the A40 from its construction in the 1920s to its partial demolition 70 years later.

One of the judges, described the book as “exceptional... a work of genuine originality. I found it very moving because it tells a story of a dream that has now turned into an urban nightmare”. The John Llewellyn Rhys is one of Britain’s oldest literary award and is given to a writer under the age of 35 for a work of fiction, poetry, drama or non-fiction. Platt picks up a cheque for £5,000.

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