Writ Large Press

Big and sad literary news: John Updike has passed away.

John Updike, 1932-2009

We’ve received the sad news that John Updike has died, at the age of seventy-six. His writing has been a mainstay of The New Yorker, starting with the poem ‘Duet, With Muffled Brake Drums,’ which was published in August, 1954, and followed two months later by his short story ‘Friends from Philadelphia’; his last work of fiction for us was ‘The Full Glass,’ which appeared last May.

Great stuff. The power of literature, and all Arts, to provide a common ground, a common passion, for people from all over the world. I often imagine that when aliens arrive (if they haven’t already, that is!), it will be some work of art that will be able to communicate some important truth about the human race.

The Greatest Literary Show on Earth – The Daily Beast

Now in its third year, the Jaipur Literature Festival brings the voices of India and Pakistan together in peace.
Every January, the ancient city of Jaipur, India, celebrates the written word in a literary festival that easily places first in Asia for cultural cachet and star power. It’s hard to believe that the festival is only three years old, given the crackle and buzz around its events and personalities—Salman Rushdie chose the occasion for his first public appearance after the fatwa. And this year too, through five sun-drenched mornings and vivid, musical evenings in the dignified old Diggi Palace, the festival made headlines across India.

We haven’t seen this film yet, but it’s definitely on our list. All our friends who have seen have been raving about it.

Via Publisher’s Weekly:

Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Macmillan, will publish a full-color graphic novel adaptation of Israeli director Ari Folman’s much acclaimed animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir, in February. Waltz with Bashir seems to pick up a new award with every passing week. The film was named Best Movie at the Israeli Academy Awards; Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics; and, over the weekend, was awarded a Golden Globe as the Best Foreign Language Film of the year. Metropolitan Books plans a 17,000-copy first printing for Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story.

The graphic work was created by the art director of Waltz with Bashir, David Polonsky, an award-winning children’s book illustrator in Israel, in collaboration with Folman and a team of Israeli comics artists. Polonsky will make appearances in the U.S. to promote the book.

This reminds me again of how much we eventually want to publish graphic novels or books with much artwork. It is part of our future plans. Once we have picked up enough momentum, success, not to mention funding.

This sounds like fun. I wish I was a scholar so I could browse through these archives:

Cuba on Monday made the first of thousands of digitized documents, photographs and books that belonged to writer Ernest Hemingway available to scholars after the items languished for decades in the basement of his home outside of Havana.

Most of the papers have never been published and will give new insight into the 21 years Hemingway spent at Finca Vigia in San Francisco de Paula where he wrote some of his greatest works, said Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, director of Museo Ernest Hemingway.

(Via Cuba opens Hemingway archives to scholars – Reuters.)

Funny (or is it sad?) proposal for a publishing industry bailout in the NY Times Are you listen Mr. Paulson?.

For Immediate Release:

R. O. Blechman
Statement by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. following Congress’s passage of today’s rescue package:

As we all know, lax writing practices earlier this decade led to irresponsible writing and irresponsible reading. This simply put too many families into books they could not finish. We are seeing the impact on readers and neighborhoods, with five million Americans now behind on their reading. Some are just walking away from novels they should never have been reading in the first place. What began as a subprime reading problem has spread to other, less-risky readers and contributed to excess inventories.

NYT Piece – A Modest Proposal for the Publishing Industry – NYTimes.com

(Via Boing Boing.)

Hopefully, this is good sign not only for Writ Large Press, but for the book business in general (okay, especially for Writ Large Press) and all of those writers out there with manuscripts ready/almost ready.

The Biz Is Alright – 12/15/2008 – Publishers Weekly:

The bad news just keeps on coming: the layoffs, the cutbacks, the raise and bonus and pension freezes. It’s grim out there, all right—and that grimness is just about all anybody in Bookland is talking about.

And yet… as sure as there has been some lashing, there is now, of course, some backlashing. Just scroll through our headlines on the PublishersWeekly.com Web site this past week, and you’ll see small signs that all is not lost.

(Via Publishers Weekly.)