|
|
|
April 28, 2002
ARTICLES: Pearl in a deal
MARIANE Pearl, wife of Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal, who was kidnapped and killed while he was reporting from Pakistan, is writing her memoirs. Scribner, the publishing house, has acquired the right to the book. Ms Pearl, who was born in France, is a journalist and foreign correspondent who has directed documentary films, had a radio show and has written newspaper columns in French.
Editor-in-chief of Scribner, Nan Graham, gave a hint of the contents of the memoirs by saying that they will probably begin with her husband’s kidnapping to the time of her husband’s death. It is also expected that Ms Pearl will incorporate an account of her own life and that of her husband’s. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Atonement atoned
After missing out on the biggest cash prizes, the Whitbread and the Booker, Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, considered a near-masterpiece, won the UK’s W.H. Smith literary prize. Though it was widely regarded as one of the literary bestsellers of the year, literary prizes had eluded the novel so far.
Atonement beat four other novels to win the 44-year-old award, which is picked by a literary jury. The novel is about England of the 1930s and the war years. McEwan termed the distinction ‘a marvelous public affirmation of what a writer does’. He takes home 5,000.
Author Nick Hornby won the main section of the W.H. Smith award, which is the only major UK book prize to be voted for by the public. His How to be good took the fiction award, whereas Eoin Colfer’s Artemis fowl won for children’s book.
Votes for the W.H. Smith Award were taken through the Internet and by post, as well as at W.H. Smith shops. In 2001 some 65,000 voters took part in the polls.
Updating the Bible
Today, in a world that has 70 English translations and a number of specialities Bibles, yet another translation is making waves. The Evangelical community is split over the new proposal by the International Bible Society to adapt the Bible, this time with gender-inclusive language, ‘in the language of the day’. Conservatives are vigorously opposing the changes they claim will lead to inaccuracies and distortion of meaning. And also because back in 1997 the society had promised not to tamper with the Bible again.
The Board chairman of IBS, Ronald Youngblood, defended the decision by saying that, ‘Everyone should have access to the transforming power of god’s word in a language they can understand and relate to’.
Most changes have been incorporated to clarify passages or to update the language. Mary is referred to as ‘pregnant’, rather than ‘with child’, ‘sons of God’ becomes ‘children of God’, and ‘brothers’ become ‘brothers and sisters’. Male terminology for God has been retained.
And the Pulitzers
Suzan-Lori Park’s two-character play Topdog/Underdog about family wounds and healing won the 2002 Pultizer Prize. The two-character play revolves around two black brothers.
The prize for biography went to David McCullough for John Adams. Amongst the books he beat was former President Jimmy Carter’s An hour before daylight: memories of a rural boyhood. The ecstatic biographer said “It is more of a thrill, because I felt there was something about this subject that I connected with in a way that I have never felt before. I had the best 6 1/2 years of my life writing the life story of John Adams, and every bit of it was a pleasure.” This is McCullough’s second Pulitzer. He won his first for Truman in 1993.
The Pultizer in the fiction category, went to Richard Russo for Empire falls and general nonfiction went to Diane McWhorter for Carry me home: Birmingham, Alabama, the climactic battle of the civil rights revolution. This is her first book.
Libraries going digital
A service dubbed Ebrarian will begin testing in six library systems across America. This is an online research service, which will let people read articles and books online for free but will charge them if they want to copy the text or print the pages. The topics offered under the service are history, classics, business, economics, technology, education and social sciences.
Following the trial period the online research service will be available in 6,000 libraries across the United States. Ebrary will allow libraries to add to their existing digital resources and catalogue services. Ebrarian includes research tools, which will link people to biographical information, definitions, maps and other digital resources. It will eliminate the hassle of retrieving books that are not on a library’s shelf.
The system will get rid of the practice of going from terminal to terminal in order to do comprehensive research. “What we’re enabling libraries to do is to make these electronic resources accessible to people through their card catalogue systems in a context in which all the libraries’ resources can be more efficiently used,” said Ebrary CEO Christopher Warnock.
Oprah puts down the books
Phenomenal American talk-show host, Oprah Winfrey who started a TV book club, became something of a publishing wonder. Every time she nominated a book, sales skyrocketed. Which is why, her announcement of discontinuing her book club as part of quitting her top-rated TV show in 2006 came as a shock to the publishing industry.
She explained that she was finding it harder to find novels she felt ‘absolutely compelled to share’. Adding, ‘I will continue featuring books on the Oprah Winfrey show when I feel they merit my heartfelt recommendation’.
Her 46th and final book choice is Sula by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, an acclaimed novel written in 1973 about the friendship of two women.
Winfrey is one of US TV’s highest paid personalities and she earned a reported $150m in 2000 alone. She launched the book club back in 1996 to get Americans to read more.
Author on Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame got a new star, that of Ray Bradbury. Bradbury who is the author of The Martian chronicles and other science fiction classics inaugurated the ‘One book, one city L.A.’ programme, the city’s month long reading campaign with his addition on the Walk.
Now 81, Bradbury, has lived in Los Angeles since he was a teenager and sold newspapers on the street corners while making a career in writing.
“I received so much inspiration from the city that it is a wonderful feeling to be a permanent part of my hometown,” said Bradbury at the ceremony when he received the 2,193rd star on the Walk of Fame.
The campaign focuses on boosting readership and residents will be encouraged to read the same book: Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. A symbolic choice, as the novel is an anti-censorship saga about a firefighter whose job is to burn books.
“By reading great literary works like Ray Bradbury’s we can foster dialogue among our city’s diverse groups,” said the LA Mayor James Hahn.
Finally a free lunch
Stacks of books come and go at the Book Thing, but no money changes hands. In a world where there are no free lunches Russell Wattenberg is an anomaly. Everyday he looks into the night book bin outside his basement door to see what has turned up. For the last six years Wattenberg, proprietor of Book Thing, has given away hundreds and thousands of books on the condition that they are presented for free.
Giving away up to 10,000 books on a weekend he has put up a sign outside his house announcing ‘Free Books’. Every book from Plato to Clancy is rubberstamped ‘Not for Resale. This is a free book’.
Downright vile
A book called Harmful to minors has become the most reviled book in America. The book which is due in stores next month has been condemned by politicians and commentators, alike and the University of Minnesota Press, which printed it after numerous publishers turned it down, is looking to review its policy.
The book provocatively subtitled The perils of protecting children from sex is actually a survey of the ways children learn about sex. Outrageously for many parents the book begins with “In America today, it is nearly impossible to publish a book that says children and teenagers can have sexual pleasure and be safe, too.”
It goes on to criticize sex education, which focuses on abstinence and advocates that the anxiety surrounding abhorrent crimes such as paedophilia are a result of ‘the politics of fear’. It also proposes that sex, ‘meaning touching and talking and fantasizing for bodily pleasure, is a valuable and crucial part of growing up, from earliest childhood on’.
Unperturbed, the author Judith Levine, 49, said that the negative response that the book has received only confirms the book’s perspective that the US is gripped by anti-sex hysteria that is bad for young people.
Various politicians and media men have given statements that the book promotes ‘disgusting victimization of children’, and have also called it ‘a vile piece of work’. Levine persisted in defending the book, saying that the views are “a narrow, worried, solemn view of sex”.
Greek poetry: maths or literature?
A team of researchers has applied mathematical principles, statistical physics and computer analysis to ancient Greek and Latin poetry, and may have shed light on one of literature’s most enduring mysteries, who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey?
The classic Greek works have been attributed to the poet Homer. But according to the study, or rather calculations, Homer — if he existed — probably wrote the Iliad single-handedly but got help from other poets to write the Odyssey.
In a collaborative effort, Ricardo Mansilla, professor of mathematics, and linguist Edward Bush, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, came to the conclusion after replacing syllables and pauses in the poems with numerical symbols. The numerical strings were fed into a computer programme to reveal patterns.
It was found that rhythmic patterns in the Iliad were more consistent, suggesting one author while the Odyssey was broken into groups of similar structures, indicating more than one poet.
The ‘Homeric question’ has been the focus of controversy since 1795, when the German scholar Friedrich August Wolf first suggested that the poems had been pieced together, and that Homer never existed.
Mansilla and Bush are also applying their analysis to other Greek poems.
|
|
|
|
