Ivanka Trump, Donald's 26-year-old daughter who works for his real-estate company, maybe wants to write a book. Cindy Adams says, "Doesn't know about what yet nor even who'd be her collaborator yet... it should deal with her being a role model, that the number she expects as an advance is in the neighborhood of $2 million." [NY Post]
The Times vetted the hell out of Kate Brennan, who's written In His Sights, "one of the first full-length memoirs of a stalking victim." In the wake of fake memoirists—JT Leroy, James Frey, and Margaret Selzter (whose book they reviewed favorably before the jig was up)—one just can't be too careful these days! Because Kate's stalker is bug-fucking-crazy and has been stalking her for ten years, she lives and gives interviews under assumed names. She also gives her stalker "Paul" a different name in her book. However, the Times needed to check all of this out for reals in her profile:
Here's an interesting variation on the blog-to-book deal: the webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield, which simply removes the cat from all the Garfield comic strips, will be a book—published by Ballantine, the publisher of the regular Garfield books. ("Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?") It will come out in conjunction with the official 30th anniversary of the Garfield book. Creator Jim Davis says he approves!
Fewer publishers are sending their authors on a book tour these days, but that doesn't mean they're not important. For example! Manhattan writer Stephanie Lerner is suing her husband for $25 million 'cause he gave her an STD, reports the Sun. (He may or may not have gotten this from prostitutes.) Lerner, author of Kids Who Think Outside the Box, had to cancel a book tour due to complications from HPV. Meanwhile, the Atlantic has an essay by author Ann Patchett about the lonely life of book touring. So what are us authors waylaid by STDs missing out on?
Leon Neyfakh at the Observer reports on David Carr's fastidiously investigated druggie memoir The Night of the Gun and thinks it's just the rehab an ailing genre needs: "After years of abuse, the memoir has found its white knight, galloping in to show how a personal story can be engrossing, shocking and true. Mr. Carr's book...practically issues a challenge to those current reigning kings-David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Ishmael Beah-of the memoir genre: You get a video camera and tape recorder, and retrace the steps of your life. Will your story sound the same?" Carr even hired a reporter to help him reconstruct the evidence of his forgotten crackhead years, which raises an interesting question: Will he be credited for bringing journalistic rigor to the memoir, or will a superabundance of facts and sources — "No, this really happened, I have affidavits to prove it!" — baptize the next big thing in literary narcissism?
Author Brendan Halpin wrote a post on his blog using the phrase "life-changing fiction," and soon received a missive from the desk of Christian/inspirational author and NYT bestseller Karen Kingsbury, who has trademarked the term. Now we're using it, and can't wait to receive our own copy of the cute lil' cease-and-desist order. Let's all use it on our blogs, actually. Nobody gets to own a phrase—sorry! (Click to read.)
Here's the just-released longlist for the coveted Man Booker Prize for Fiction, awarded to novels whose authors are from the Commonwealth and/or Ireland. Previous winners include Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Ian McEwan's Amsterdam, and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. (The most buzzed-about novel on this year's list, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, involves cricket. New Yorker critic James Wood called it "one of the most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read.")Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger Gaynor Arnold: Girl in a Blue Dress Sebastian Barry: The Secret Scripture John Berger: From A to X Michelle de Kretser: The Lost Dog Amitav Ghosh: Sea of Poppies Linda Grant: The Clothes on Their Backs Mohammed Hanif: A Case of Exploding Mangoes Philip Hensher: The Northern Clemency Joseph O'Neill Netherland Salman Rushdie The Enchantress of Florence Tom Rob Smith: Child 44 Steve Toltz: A Fraction of the Whole Chair of Judges Michael Portillo said of this year's Man Booker Dozen, "The list covers an extraordinary variety of writing. Still two qualities emerge this year: large scale narrative and the striking use of humour." [The Man Booker Prize Website]
Remember how Wikipedia revealed that there's a character in an old Jay McInerney book based on Rielle Hunter, the woman who allegedly gave birth to John Edwards' love child? Well some enterprising Wikipedia editor erased that nugget of TRUE and NOTABLE information. Thankfully Radar actually picked up the book itself, and they share some words of wisdom from the fictional version of John Edwards' alleged mistress.
Last week, Simon & Schuster sued Brooklyn rapper Foxy Brown for failing to complete her memoir, Broken Silence. Now, her lawyer says that the publisher had allowed Foxy to put the project on hold after she suddenly lost her hearing, but then "decided not to go forward with [her] project." [All Hip Hop]
Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory used his tattoos as mnemonics for all the hot figure skating trim he'd gotten over the years. Emily Gould's using hers as nut graphs or something for her forthcoming essay collection. And now there's a whole website that lets you signpost your erudition through skin ink. Some readers are strict formalists: one guy's got an ellipsis on his wrist, I guess because a semicolon would have been pretentious. Others are fond of Vonnegut and Thomas. But if there's a discernible trend here, it's in the damaged goods department. Meet the smarter version of the tramp stamp: call it the borderline blazon. Sylvia Plath on either arm? Naturally. A lengthy disquisition about love and hate and learning to control the masterful tyrant in you, courtesy of psychiatrist Theodore Isaac Rubin? Well, boys, you can't say the girl didn't warn you. A photo montage after the jump.
The music industry has long since stopped using cassettes, and now the pokey old book industry is quitting them, too. Hatchette just released their last audiobook-on-cassette-tape, reports the NYT. Meanwhile, cassette players built into cars have dropped from 23% to 4% in just three years. However there are still a few consumer holdouts who want books on actual tape: truckers.
So this is where the career trajectory of Ashley Dupre has led: A $2 million offer from "an entertainment network and a major studio" for virtually all media rights to her high-priced hooker story, including an interview, reality show and possible book. The story was broken in the Post, so Fox's TV and movie divisions are decent bets. As the scandal over her onetime john Eliot Spitzer cools toward tepid, it's hard to imagine Dupre getting a better deal, no matter how many more times paparazzi "catch" her in a hotel with a married construction heir or on the beach in a bikini. Oh, also, here are the three insane careers Dupre is interested in once she gets her payday and this scandal blows over:
Female rapper Lil Kim and female rapper #2 Foxy Brown are both being sued for the same reason: being procrastinating authors. Ha, [we're-all-in-same-boat joke]! Simon & Schuster has filed suit against both of them for taking their advances ($40K and $75K, respectively) and then not writing a damn word. Ha, if only [Keith Gessen joke]! And they have no excuse for not doing it-they were both in jail! Ha, [OJ-confessional-book joke]! I'm sure you'll all grieve for the lost opportunity to read Lil Kim's prospective book, which was titled "Untitled Novel." Ha, how come these things never happen to [blogger-turned-author joke]? [NYS]
Here's Rex Sorgatz's video of various people reading from the de-Harvardized copy of tortured soul Keith Gessen's All The Sad Young Literary Men. It was shot largely in the Gawker offices! And it involves such noted internet personalities as Andrew Krucoff, Choire Sicha, Julia Allison, Alex Pareene, Rachel Sklar — the d-list goes on and on. You'll either find it entertaining and funny (I did!) or feel like you need a decoder ring. A cheat sheet to the best moments is after the jump, if you want all the surprises spoiled, along with an update on the status of the modified All The Sad Young Literary Men, now an official literary hot potato.
When we used to wake up in the mornin’ after the alarm gave out a warnin’, it was always alright ‘cuz we were Saved By The Bell. Yes, all you ‘80s-born kiddies, the show we embarrassingly grew up watching religiously despite the fact that catching a rerun these days makes us dry-heave, is in the headlines again. The frizzy-haired, unemployed trophy winner of the World’s Most Nauseating Sex Tape (that is, until Mini-Me stole the title), Dustin “Screech” Diamond, has given up on those comedy club circuit dreams and made the heroic decision to put his nose to the mirror grindstone. As Vulture reports, we will soon have the pleasure reading a tell-all book scripted by Diamond, detailing what really went on behind the scenes of that epic show. And if you’re like us, who consider Jesse Spano’s “I’m So Excited...I’m So...Scared” scene a pivotal moment in our adolescence, don’t despair — Diamond is said to be more than ready to spill each and every bean when it comes to revealing all of the dirty deets of Bayside High School's Class of 1993.However sad it is, it seems that the aforementioned influential scene of diet pills and pointless high school ambition best exhibited by Jesse's freak-out was not as fictional as our wee tween minds originally believed. According to Vulture's sources, Dustin and his ghostwriter (i.e.: mainly his ghostwriter) will reveal all kinds of details about the "sexual escapades among cast members, drug use, and hardcore partying" that went on after Mr. Belding shut down the lights each night. As insanely thrilled we are to go and purchase a retro wall SBTB wall calendar on which we shall X out each day until the book is released, there's still a tiny part of us that always hoped Zach and Kelly never actually did the deed after "Cut!" ended the day. Nor do we want to learn the inevitable truth that Slater was on steroids. Same goes for how many rails it took to keep Lisa Turtle from transferring to rival Valley High. Oh well, it can do anything more to ruin our childhood memories than The Phantom Menace did, right?
This is what happens when publicity-shy authors let someone talk them into doing something on the Internet. Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's agent or publisher was probably going on and on about how it was important to have an "online presence" or whatever, resulting in Time magazine collecting questions for him from readers—via their website. Slog has pointed out some of the more intelligent questions, such as "ur gay right?" After the jump, the rest of the proof that user-generated content is utter crap:
Literary critic James Wood left a comment at New York's Vulture blog, objecting to its prior characterization of his new book How Fiction Works. It is not, he says, a "prescriptive guide to writing one kind of book," nor is there is any such thing as "the high realist novel," and even if there were, he would not be its Zhdanovite champion. He esteems "stylistic flourishes," for one — just don't go thinking you can write a pretty little book about nothing. In its defense, Vulture argues that nowhere does Wood actually deny being the leader of a new lit school; the original post referred to Leon Neyfakh's Observer profile of exultant, MFA-carrying Woodies, which quoted the master as saying that his favorite remarks are from writers who claim his essays helped them escape this or that brier patch in their own work. Not sure that makes him a didactic commissar so much as just good. Full comment after the jump:
In his just-released book, The Man Who Ate the World, restaurant critic Jay Rayner explores the oft-overblown luxury dining of the world. In a scene from New York, the man behind the Zagat Survey—Mr. Tim Zagat himself—takes him on a whirlwind tour. It's fun to watch brash American Zagat embarrass Rayner, a Brit with a sense of propriety. Who do they run into at Meatpacking District monstrosity Buddakan other than America's favorite "One Tough Cop," private investigator Bo Dietl—who tells them that he came for the food, but stayed for the "pussy":
If you only read the Washington Post for one thing, read it for its offbeat profiles of weird people in the Style section. Screw politics! Today they profile an author named Max Holland, who's spent the last 12 years—12 years!—working on a book about the Kennedy assassination. His big revelation in that decade-plus of research? That maybe there was a gunshot before the Zapruder film started filming. But, a shot that missed! So who cares, right? Are Kennedy assassination people the most serious-minded crazies in America? Very possibly:
