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385

Remembering Maurice Sendak on his 85th Birthday

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The animated doodle on Google’s main search page today is really inspired. If you haven’t already seen this tribute to Maurice Sendak, there’s a screen shot below. You can view it via this link, and make sure you click on the arrow to start the animation.
Screen shot 2013-06-10 at 3.47.59 PM

Last May, soon after Sendak’s passing, I published a recollection on this blog called, Warding Off a Zealous Censor of Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. Via this link, I invite you to read about this episode from my bookselling days, when a prudish religious conservative woman demanded we stop selling Sendak’s work.

Update: I also just found this animated video on the Daily Beast narrated by Sendak himself.

386

#FridayReads, June 7–Eric Lundgren’s “The Facades” & Suzanne Corkin’s “Permanent Present Tense”

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#FridayReads, June 7–The Facades by Eric Lundgren–a witty and heart-filled novel about a man in a post-apocalyptic world who’s searching for his family. I’m also reading Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H.M. by Suzanne Corkin–a scientific biography of a historic medical subject, a man who after undergoing brain surgery suffered a permanent loss of his capacity to make and retain long-term memory. In 2008, when I was Editorial Director of Union Square Press, I heard an NPR segment about Prof. Corkin’s work with H.M. and contacted her to ask if she was writing a book. Indeed, she said she was working on a manuscript, though she added it was a long way from completion and she suggested I should stay in touch with her agent. When I left the job in 2009, I wondered what would become of the project. At BEA last week I was pleased to see it had ended up on the list of Basic Books. Please click through to see full post and all pictures

387

A Special Treat–Weekday Baseball at Yankee Stadium

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IMG_0194 Had a great time yesterday watching the Yankees vs. the Indians play ball on a bright and gorgeous day at Yankee Stadium. Longtime friend and publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin got tickets and had invited me to join with him two other friends of his–Dick and Mike–with whom he’s in a rotisserie baseball league. The game ended up as a 6-4 win for the Yanks. As a Tribe fan, I would have been happier to see my old hometown team prevail but the Bombers were much the better team, with Yankee starting pitcher C.C. Sabathia, the former Indian, throwing a complete game.

As Mike put it at one juncture, “What’s the point of having your own business if you can’t take time off to go to a day game?” I agreed wholeheartedly, and really enjoyed the wide-ranging conversation the four of us carried on for all nine innings, ranging over photography, New York City, New Hampshire, the economy, the early days of the Internet, publishing, and of course, baseball. My camera happened to have enough battery power for one photo and I’m glad I got this good shot and could include it here. What a great way to spend a late spring afternoon!

388

A Hot & Sunny Day in Manhattan, 1939

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On Facebook longtime friend Martha Moran has shared this timeless film of a Manhattan tour from 1939, remastered in bright, vibrant color by the excellent Romano-Archives. You can view the 3-minute film below, or via this link posted by Eric Larson at mashable.com, @_ericlarson on Twitter. For this post I’ve made two screenshots of favorite images from it. One shows a theater marquee in Harlem where they were evidently screening W.C. Fields’ “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” my favorite movie comic. Oddly, it anticipates the compressed spellings mandated by today’s social media, as the narrow marquee reads, “U Can’t Cheat a Honest Man.” It reads like a tweet. The second screenshot is of the #5 bus, a route I still use regularly in Manhattan. I consider it my personal “scenic drive” as for part of its route it cruises along Riverside Drive, affording splendid views of the Hudson River. It must have been glorious in 1939, when it was a double-decker bus with an elegant curving stairway that conveyed passengers to the upper deck!I suggest that at the very end you notice all the big ships docked at piers on the west side of Manhattan. This reminds me of a line in one of my favorite S.J. Perelman humor sketches, where a woman tells the narrator she’s waiting to pay him a debt “until my ship comes in,” whereupon he retorts with, “I’ll be watching the shipping news,” a reference to the ubiquitous maritime tables that newspapers used to print every day. Thanks for this to Martha Moran.
Fields film# 5 bus

389

One More BEA In the Books

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It was not the most energetic Book Expo America (BEA) I’ve ever attended, but it was still a good show for me. Wednesday–when the Buzz panel was held, before the Exhibit Hall officially opened–was a good day. And then the next 3 days (Thursday-Saturday) were a roller coaster with busy, agitated activity to slow times when one could imagine the proverbial bowling balls rolling down the carpeted aisles. On Friday afternoon, there were so many publishing executives off the main part of the floor–I surmised many of them were in meetings, closeted behind the black curtains I saw that shrouded makeshift conference rooms at a distance from the publishers’ stands–that there was a palpable deflation of activity out on the floor. And yet, over all, I picked up many galleys and download cards of important forthcoming books. It took three jumbo zippered red totes that I’d kept picking up at the McGraw-Hill stand to drag it all home, which I did by myself. 

On Saturday, BEA for the first time ever opened itself to members of the reading public, not just book industry professionals. I saw many well-organized groups of fans and other readers powering around the floor, often under the concierge-like care of publicists who brought them en masse to signings with authors like Sylvia Day (at Harlequin), and Jami Attenberg and Jeffrey Deaver (at Hachette). There must have been at least 20 lines I saw like that today. I also saw smaller groups of two or three Power Readers, as the BEA dubbed them, eagerly snapping up galleys and stuff. I know there were some book industry people who, when the announcement of this innovation was made, were skeptical it would be a good thing, but I’d say that this not so daring–and to me, welcome–experiment went very well, indeed.

I took a pic of the jacket of David Folkenflik’s forthcoming Murdoch’s World: The Last of Old Media Empires, a book I’m very eager to read, having in 2008 edited and published a book on Roger Ailes, Dark Genius: The Influential Career of Legendary Political Operative and Fox News Founder Roger Ailes by Kerwin Swint.Murdoch book

I’ll have more to write and share about the book convention over the next few days and weeks, with photos and reporting. Meantime, glad to get a post up today, even though I’m exhausted from the four days of the show.

390

Book Expo America–Off to a Quick Start on Day I

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Buzz panelAlthough the exhibit floor doesn’t open until tomorrow, there was lots of activity at the Javits Center today. My wife and I stopped in the hall just before 10:00 AM and got our badges as certified press, covering BEA for this blog. In the late afternoon, was the annual Editors’ Buzz panel, where a select panel of editors get to pitch their favorite titles of the coming fall season. By far the most exciting presentation was made by Liese Mayer [spelling corrected here from above tweet], of Overlook Press who touted the novel she acquired just after joining the company, The Facades, a first novel by Eric Lundgren. She said the novel combined elements of Kafka’s forbidding city and Batman’s modern Gotham. I grabbed one of the galleys and, after her compelling presentation, am eager to start reading the book. I also was interested in the presentation by  Picador editor Anna deVries of The Affairs of Others, a novel by Amy Grace Loyd and so took a galley of it. Now, running off to evening activities!

391

A New NBCC Award for a First Book, in Honor of John Leonard

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I am an associate member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), the only association of freelance and full-time book critics in the country. Readers of this blog may recall the superb literary event, with readings and awards, they put on every spring in NYC. This link is for my coverage of the most recent celebration this past March

This morning I was excited to learn that the NBCC is adding a new category for their annual awards, a citation that will recognize the best first book of the year. It could be a novel, a book of short stories, a memoir–it will not be limited to a particular genre. The award will be given in memory of the late John Leonard, longtime NBCC member, and eternally effervescent man of letters. The announcement was just emailed to members, with the screenshot of it pasted in below these lines. The NBCC is a great organization of dedicated readers and writers. You can follow them on Twitter, @BookCritics and check them out on the web, NBCC.

NBCC.

 

392

Paul Elie, on J.S. Bach and His Modern Interpreters

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A great conversation this morning on one of my favorite weekend radio programs–CBC Sunday Edition, hosted by Michael Enright–with Paul Elie, author of Reinventing Bach, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in criticism, examining how Albert Schweitzer, Pablo Casals, Leopold Stokowski, Glenn Gould and Yo-Yo Ma have interpreted Bach over the past century. I had heard Elie read from his work last March at the readings hosted by the NBCC with many of this year’s finalists. In a post about that occasion, I wrote,

BachLike all the categories, Criticism was filled with standout titles. Paul Elie, (Reinventing Bach), read a fascinating passage about the blockbuster album of 1968, “Switched-on Bach,” for which Walter Carlos had played Bach on the recently invented moog synthesizer. Elie quoted Glenn Gould on the fusion of Bach and the new electronic instrument, where the Canadian pianist heard an ideal match. Gould relished the moog’s absence of vibrato and inflection, which I imagine probably had an aural quality for him akin to a harpsichord.

Elie is very knowledgeable but not pedantic in discussing Bach and the modern musicians. Today’s program is highly recommended listening.