Consider the most striking literary canonisation of our times. Jane Austen has always been esteemed, and FR Leavis sanctified her as one of the bearers of the “great tradition,” a sort of doctor of his secular church. But in the past 15 years she has turned into the English novelist, an inescapable part of the public consciousness, more universally present than any other writer bar Shakespeare. Some people think she owes her current prominence to popular fantasies of tight breeches and bosoms heaving beneath empire-line dresses. This does not seem likely: if that is what people want, they can get it more readily from Georgette Heyer. Another view is that she has benefited from nostalgia for a safer, quieter and more decorous world; but the idea that the world of her novels is cosy and comfortable can hardly survive the reading of them. Most of her modern popularity is the result of her actual merits, and in a broad sense the highbrows and the lower-middlebrows are admiring the same things: well-made plots, perceptive depiction of character and the acute study of social interaction. It is a genuine popular canonisation.

Why are my bad guys so bad? Were they good once, but were hurt somehow? Can they become good again, or are they past hope? What are their redeeming qualities? What do the bad guys want?
Do my good guys have any flaws–if so, what?
Are my good guys more sympathetic than my bad guys? If not, what can I do to change this?
Will any of my good guys turn out to be secretly bad, or vice versa? Will anyone switch sides–if so, how and why?
Who’s going to win? Will it be a “final” ending? Can good ever “finally” vanquish evil?

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An interesting interview with Arundhati Roy at haaretz.com:

Arundhati Roy writes her articles for, and publishes them first, in the Indian press, in English, after which they are translated into the multitude of Indian languages. She is able to write in Malayalam – the language spoken in Kerala, the southern state where she grew up, “but not as a writer,” she explains. “When I grew up, I learned the language, but my mother used to hit me if I spoke it. I had to write down, ‘I will speak English, I will speak English.’ So now English is the language I am most comfortable in.” That, she says, is the way things are when you have a Christian mother from Kerala and a Hindu father from Bengal.

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Chinese dissident, Guo Feixong, has been sentenced to five years jail for illegally published a book which exposed widespread corruption in the north-eastern city of Shenyang.
He received a five-year jail term and was fined $6,000.
ABC News reports that human rights groups are criticizing the country’s legal system.

The first evening we arrived, exhausted, dragging suitcases behind us, morale a little bit bruised, the Kurdish family sent over their representative – a 9 year old boy missing two front teeth, holding a lopsided cake, “We’re Abu Mohammed’s house- across from you- mama says if you need anything, just ask- this is our number. Abu Dalia’s family live upstairs, this is their number. We’re all Iraqi too… Welcome to the building.”

I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.

Terror of Flight 101: An echo of Orwell.
The flight leaves Heathrow airport’s Terminal Four, every Wednesday bearing the number KQ101. The echo of George Orwell’s Room 101 is unhappily appropriate. On this Kenya Airways jet, many asylum-seekers’ worst nightmares do come true. KQ101 is the deportation flight chartered by the British Government to return refugees to Africa. According to human rights groups, this flight carries out the most Africa-bound removals of unsuccessful asylum applicants to the UK. It has also become a flight that has attracted allegations of abuse by guards. From Nairobi the detainees are flown all over Africa where they are handed over to security and immigration authorities.

An investigation by The Independent concludes that many of the deportees suffer assault and racial abuse at the hands of the guards who accompany them.

And The Guardian makes an offer – We would love to hear about the book that first opened your eyes to the women’s movement. Whether it was one you found hugely inspiring, or an anti-feminist book that riled you into action, please write to women@guardian.co.uk, and we will publish a selection of your stories in the coming weeks.

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Websites that authors should avoid . . .

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I went to see the film, Michael Clayton. George Clooney is always worth watching. But this time around he was overshadowed by a wonderful performance from Tom Wilkinson. The movie itself was fluff.

This photograph, taken by chotda, made me think about reorganising my current book collection. What the hell, I can, anyway, never find it when I want it.

At age twenty-four, Dylan, spinning on the edge, had a well-ordered mind and an intense, at times biting, rapport with reality. The songs are rich meditations on desire, frailty, promises, boredom, hurt, envy, connections, missed connections, paranoia, and transcendent beauty—in short, the lures and snares of love, stock themes of rock and pop music, but written with a powerful literary imagination and played out in a 1960s pop netherworld.

The view over Sun Valley from Ernest Hemingway’s house in Ketchum, Idaho. This is the house in which the writer ended his life in 1961.