Author: Michael Janairo
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Page Turner awards
Uber-best-selling mega-author James Patterson has announced the winners of his second Page Turner Awards.
The 39 winners of the 2006 James Patterson PageTurner Awards will receive cash prizes totaling $500,000. Among the winners are libraries, schools, bookstores, and innovative individuals and organizations that go to extraordinary lengths to spread the joy of books and reading across the country.
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In the library of historic cookbooks
The Guardian has a fun story about a great cookbook collection.
Housed in his chefs’ academy in a quiet south-west London backstreet, the library is a modern space, lit by huge windows and with a ceiling high enough that you could imagine clouds forming. Nearly 6,000 cookbooks stretch along the shelves, taking in seven languages, half a dozen centuries and a staggering diversity of subjects. Some of the ingredients in Mosimann’s older books are fairly unappealing. Boiled cow’s udders jump out from Meg Dodd’s 17th-century book, Cookery: A Practical System of Modern Domestic Cookery, sliced and served with tomato or onion sauce, unless you would prefer them simmered and salted, served cold with oil and vinegar.
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Among the earliest handwritten recipe collections in English was The Forme of Cury (cury meaning cooked food, derived from the French cuire – to cook), compiled around 1390 by a master cook to Richard II to show readers how “to make common pottages and common meats for the household, as they should be made, craftily and wholesomely”. A decade earlier, Guillaume Tirel, chef to the French royal family, produced the first known French cookbook, Viandier. Original copies no longer exist, although an 18th-century version of The Forme of Cury is available on Amazon and you also can download it free from manybooks.net.
England’s entry into the printed cookbook stakes occurred in 1500, when Richard Pynson – one of the first English printers – published The Boke of Cokery [sic], though it was thought to be lost until a copy reappeared in 2002 during a clearout by the Marquess of Bath at Longleat House.
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Mat Johnson: Debating Black Books
Mat Johnson continues to offer some interesting arguments and definitions on his blog, this time in a posting about the differences between high and low culture and their respective relationships to the marketplace.
Of interest is that he puts his reasons for trying to start a dialog at the end of the posting (which I include below). But the essay is worth a look, if only for his willingness to lay out the kinds of demands different kinds of writing have not only for their readers, but also for their writers.
Why I’m Bothering
Another thing that has come up repeatedly, from emails and other responses, is why I’m even bothering to trying to have a critical dialogue at all. For those that wonder, here is a list of my intentions for this dialogue:
1. To create an understanding of the difference between highbrow and lowbrow art in the African American community, and for an intellectual space for both of them so that they might better co-exist.
2. To make aspiring literary writers aware of the pitfalls between them and their goals.
3. To foster inter-community discussion about the current direction of African American literature.
4. To bring a discussion about quality of writing to the black commercial fiction arena.
5. To turn these resultant discussion into an anthology to be published by my new imprint, Niggerati Manor Productions ($39.95 hardcover). Then to come up with a nationwide speaking tour, charging college campuses another $8-12,000 a pop to have a live debate on their campus (think Carl Webber versus Edward P. Jones). Next, I’ll spin that off into a reality show on BET where 10 writers live together, struggling to get published, but one team is commercial and the other literary. We’ll kick one off each episode, with the tag line “You’re a hack!” This show will of course be hosted by LeVar Burton, the winner being published by Niggerati Manor Productions with us retaining the movie rights (because let’s face it, it’s all about the movie rights). Then it’s just sit back, and let the revenue streams pour in.
Now, dear reader, it’s time to test your critical thinking skills. Which of the above statements is false?
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Long live the real American hero
As you know, Captain America is dead.
But do you know who has earned the right to carry his shield?
Click here to find out.
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What is “Asian”?
The Complete Review links to an interesting article about the Man Asian Prize.
Here is the write-up about the prize from the organization itself:
This major new literary prize aims to recognise the best of new Asian literature and to bring it to the attention of the world literary community. A distinguished panel of judges selects a single work of fiction to be awarded the prize each year. Works submitted for consideration must not yet be published in English, although they may have been published in other languages.
The prize was initiated through Man Group plc, a leading global financial services firm based in London, and the Hong Kong Literary Festival, the premier event of its kind in Asia.
Here is the official Man Asian Literary Prize Web site.
The difficulty, of course, is that Asia is such a diverse region, including more than half the world’s population, stretching from Turkey to Japan. Complicating matters, is finding the right judges.
How far do Asians identify themselves as Asian, though? I cannot answer this question in historical or economic terms, but when it comes to literature, we have our barriers up. Even well-read Indians would find it difficult to name Korea’s greatest authors, Sri Lanka is not necessarily interested in the literature of Malaysia, Japan isn’t reading the best of Pakistani writing. And when we do read each other, we stick with authors who have been identified for us chiefly by curious Western readers in the media or in publishing. This is not such a bad thing—literature is an open community, and I don’t care who’s picking out the good stuff so long as the good stuff gets to me.
The Man Asian Literary Prize has its heart in the right place—it’s open specifically to literary fiction written in any Asian language that have not yet been published in English. This could do a lot to reverse the “Iceberg effect” that many writers suffer from—if you’re not published in English, you’re invisible to all but a small percentage of your potential readers.
But the controversy that’s grown around the 2007 Prize rests in the details. Nury Vittachi, the writer who came up with the idea behind the prize, has been effectively sidelined by Peter Goran, the prize administrator. Both men have played key roles—without Vittachi’s idea, there would have been no prize, without Goran’s flair for management, there would have been just a magnificent idea floating in mid-air. Without getting into the politics of the Prize, here’s the gist of the controversy.
Vittachi feels that an Asian prize deserves Asian judges.
The article is here.
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Goodbye, Frank Bascombe?
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The Washington Post reports that Richard Ford won’t be returning to the fictional mindscape of the New Jersey hero who garnered him a Pulitzer Prize.Ford has made it plain that a fourth book that would take his protagonist beyond his “Permanent Period” and into his sunset years isn’t in the cards.
“I’ve ruled it out as much as I’ve ruled anything else out. I won’t ever get married again. I’ll always be married to the same girl. And I don’t think I’ll ever write another Frank Bascombe book,” Ford said in an interview at his home overlooking Linekin Bay.
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More on self-publishing
The author Mat Johnson writes about self-publishing on his blog. Here’s his take:
I don’t think the physical act of self-publishing hurts a writer, just that the hustling involved takes away from time that could be spent developing craft, which is essential to do in the beginning before bad habits set in. I don’t think publishing with a major publisher helps or insures the quality of a work in any way, in itself. And I don’t give a damn about the business of selling books, or typos. My focus is on originality of prose, storytelling, and thought. I don’t think a writer has to write literary fiction—there is a time for popcorn and there is a time for steak—but I don’t think the two should be confused, or that burnt stale popcorn is okay. My primary goal is helping those who want to write literary fiction (like the works of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, etc.) avoid modern day publishing pitfalls.
