As an American, the very notion of “the greatest” always makes me think of Muhammad Ali, but for one Brit the very notion makes her think:
Greatness in a writer can only be awarded posthumously. Let them snuff it first, I say. Then we’ll decide.
Read the Guardian article here.
In what appears to be another sign of the downsizing of books coverage at daily newspapers, here’s a blog speaking about the transformation of a biggie:
The LA Times book review section is a changin’?
For further info, here’s a Salon.com article from 2001.
Or check out this previous post of mine.
And don’t forget National Book Critics Circle President John Freeman’s essay on why book reviews matter. The link is here.
“Nature Girl” by Carl Hiassen. Read by Lee Adams. Unabridged, 11.5 hours, 9 CDs. Random House Audio. $39.95.
Honey Santana, the titular character, aims to rid the world of an evil menace with a convoluted plan to change a slimy telemarketer by bringing him to the wilds of Florida’s beautiful Ten Thousand Islands.
A wacky plot, colorful characters, bad decisions and a Florida setting are the main ingredients of Hiassen’s fictional world. And “Nature Girl” includes a half-white, half-Seminole man in the midst of an identity crisis, ghosts, an old bald eagle, a phony religious sect, sexual harassment, a sexy coed, a private investigator, adultery, gambling and gunplay. But it just doesn’t work.
Perhaps it’s because Honey is off her meds, meaning she’s not the usual hypocritical, narcissistic, hubristic hothead that Hiassen’s satire often targets; rather, she’s suffering from a clinical problem, and it’s hard to laugh when that’s the engine of the novel’s unfocused plot.
For the most part, Adams does a good job of keeping the action going and characterizing the main players, but for some reason both the Florida State coed (from Ohio) and a 12-year-old boy sound like Valley Girls.
I recently got a notice about this interesting looking book from a University at Buffalo professor:
Management Professor Uncovers Fast-Food Business Lessons
“My Secret Life on the McJob” Chronicles Undercover Experiences at 7 Fast-Food Restaurants
Jerry M. Newman, Ph.D.,
University at Buffalo School of ManagementAuthor, “My Secret Life on the McJob”
What really happens after you place an order for a Big Mac or a Whopper with cheese?
Jerry M. Newman, Ph.D., SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the University at Buffalo School of Management, knows because he worked undercover in seven fast food restaurants across the country, observing operations from the top down — from the biggest management whoppers to the smallest fries at the fry station.
Newman has chronicled his experiences in a new book, “My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter Guaranteed to Supersize Any Management Style” (January 2007, McGraw-Hill).
Newman’s book reveals what molds employees working for the country’s fast-food producers. In spite of the high turnover and repetitive tasks, the workers consistently produce, aren’t afraid of hard work and thrive under pressure. And the super-sized mega-burger companies boast steady profits in return. How do fast-food managers tease success out of employees to boost the bottom line?
“My Secret Life on the McJob” takes readers behind the scenes at Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s, Krystal and McDonald’s — and serves up, with keen insights into management techniques, wise lessons that can be applied to companies with 6,000 locations, or just six employees.
Calvin Sims, of The New York Times, presents Headline: “Black Man Hails Taxi in New York”
Thursday, February 22, 11:30 a.m., Stockade Building, Room 101. Free.
Calvin Sims was named Director of Television Development for The New York Times in March 2005. In this role, he develops and produces current affairs documentaries and programming and serves as a liaison between the newspaper, its television division, the Discovery Times channel, and strategic partners. Sims joined Times Television in 2003 as editorial producer, after 18 years as a reporter and national and foreign correspondent for the newspaper, reporting from Los Angeles, South America, Japan, Korea and Indonesia.
During his presentation, he will discuss racial perspectives in today’s society.
Here’s a poem from the poet, essayist, author and educator June Jordan, who lived from 1936 to 2002 and was influential in the Black Arts movement and beyond. The poem is taken from the Web site Chicken Bones: A Journal for Literary & Artistic African-American themes:
I Must Become A Menace to My Enemies
Dedicated to the Poet Agostinho Neto, President of
The People’s Republic of Angola: 1976
I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
Be afraid.
I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits and facial tics
I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore
and this is dedicated in particular
to those who hear my footsteps
or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery
cart
then turn around
see me
and hurry on
away from this impressive terror I must be:
I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon
surrounded by my comrades singing
terrible revenge in merciless
accelerating
rhythms
But
I have watched a blind man studying his face.
I have set the table in the evening and sat down
to eat the news.
Regularly
I have gone to sleep.
There is no one to forgive me.
The dead do not give a damn.
I live like a lover
who drops her dime into the phone
just as the subway shakes into the station
wasting her message
cancelling the question of her call:
fulminating or forgetful but late
and always after the fact that could save or
condemn me
I must become the action of my fate.
II
How many of my brothers and my sisters
will they kill
before I teach myself
retaliation?
Shall we pick a number?
South Africa for instance:
do we agree that more than ten thousand
in less than a year but that less than
five thousand slaughtered in more than six
months will
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?
I must become a menace to my enemies.
III
And if I
if I ever let you slide
who should be extirpated from my universe
who should be cauterized from earth
completely
(lawandorder jerkoffs of the first the
terrorist degree)
then let my body fail my soul
in its bedevilled lecheries
And if I
if I ever let love go
because the hatred and the whisperings
become a phantom dictate I o-
bey in lieu of impulse and realities
(the blossoming flamingos of my
wild mimosa trees)
then let love freeze me
out.
I must become
I must become a menace to my enemies.
Source: Trouble the Water (325-327)
Click here to hear her read the poem: A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters, from 1992.
Her official Web site is here.
Here is a biography from the Voices from the Gap Web site.
From an obituary in the Guardian:
June Jordan, who has died aged 65, after suffering from breast cancer for several years, defied all pigeonholes. Poet, essayist, journalist, dramatist, academic, cultural and political activist – she was all these things, by turn and simultaneously, but above all, she was an inspirational teacher, through words and actions, and a supremely principled person.
Among African-American writers, she was undoubtedly one of the most widely published, the author of well over two dozen books of non-fiction, poetry, fiction, drama and children’s writing. She emerged onto the political and literary scene in the late 1960s, when the movements demanding attention were for civil rights and women’s liberation, and anti-war.
Article continues
She engaged with all of these and more, for her battles were for freedom, whether that involved planning a new architecture for Harlem with her mentor Buckminster Fuller, or speaking out on the Palestinian cause. She spoke out against, or did something about, oppression wherever it was to be found.It was as a political essayist that Jordan stood head and shoulders above most of her contemporaries. Her collection Civil Wars (1981) was the first such work to be published by a black woman, dealing with battles both external and internal. In subsequent volumes, including On Call (1985) and Technical Difficulties (1992), she wrote about South Africa, Nicaragua and Lebanon, as well as myriad aspects of race and class in the US. She championed the use of black English in the education system 30 years before the emergence of the debate about “Ebonics” (a term she hated).
The previous authors and writings featured on this blog for Black History Month:
“The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”
Gwendolyn Brooks
August Wilson
“Our Nig” by Harriet Wilson
“Twelve Years A Slave” by Solomon Northup
“The Souls of Black Folks” by W.E.B. Du Bois
Langston Hughes
“Cane” by Jean Toomer
“The Great Negro Plot” by Mat Johnson
“Passing” by Nella Larsen
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X”
“I Have a Dream” speech”
“Sula” by Toni Morrison
“The Known World” by Edward P. Jones
“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
“The Intuitionist” by Colson Whitehead
“Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington
“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
Sonia Sanchez
“Black Girl in the Ring” by Nola Hopkinson
Media Bistro reports on authors upset with their publishers’ designs for book covers.
Friday’s item on the novelist who rejected his book cover drew a response from another beleaguered St. Martin’s author, historical maritime mystery writer Joan Druett. On her website, she’s launching a light-hearted contest to see who can identify the greatest number of technical errors in the painting that’ll appear on the dust jacket of her next novel, Deadly Shoals, which we’ve reproduced below. (She includes relevant passages from the manuscript to give readers a hint about what to look for.)
Here’s the link to Joan Druett’s Web site.
“State of Denial” by Bob Woodward. Read by Boyd Gaines. Abridged, 7 hours, 6 CDs. Simon & Schuster. $29.95.
This book is difficult to take. I loaded it onto my iPod and listened to it at the gym while TV screens showed captions on CNN and Fox announcing new Iraqi and American casualties in Iraq.
Among the many outrages recounted in the book — advisers too timid to give President Bush bad news, distortions and manipulations by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (especially in terms of troop requirements), Bush and Karl Rove exchanging fart jokes — what stands out most is Bush’s insistence on body counts of enemy dead as a gauge of progress.
Woodward points out the fallacy of body counts with the example of the Vietnam War, which left more than 1 million Vietnamese and 58,193 Americans dead — and the U.S. still lost.
Woodward does the United States a great service with this hard and necessary look at the inner workings of the Bush administration.
Gaines does a good job in reading the book by giving a straightforward performance to highlight Woodward’s words and quotations, without resorting to impersonations.
Head-to-head action of big-titles in search of the best. Cast your votes today. Go here.
