Then Lopate asked a couple questions solicited on index cards from the audience; the first question, asking the writers to describe their writing methods, got only boos from the audience because of its banality, and I was delighted to see Richard Ford yell out “Next question!” Before they moved on, though, Eco, looking inordinately pleased with himself, explained his writing method — he starts on the left side of the page and works his way over to the right. This got a laugh.

*

Alexis Rowell writes about Sustainable Consumption and Production in Europe:
Food is something that affects us all. We all have to eat. But very few people know the extent to which oil underpins our food system, how much carbon is used in the production of food, how much water is used, and the impact the food system therefore has on climate change.
The current all-time highs in oil prices – $117 a barrel in April 2008 – is sending convulsive shudders down the food chain . . .

*

The Right Brain vs. Left Brain Test.
Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? I’ll tell you what I see . . . later . . .

The complete list of participants, includes Peter Carey, Umberto Eco, Ian McEwan, Jo Nesbø, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Ondaatje, Annie Proulx, Bernhard Schlink, Mario Vargas Llosa and Salman Rushdie.

The festival runs from the 1st to the 15th March. Although not on the scale of Cheltenham or Edinburgh, there is a varied programme on offer, mainly involving local writers and readers, of whom there are many. Among writers brought in to the festival from the wider world, there will be Tracy Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring), the poet Carol Ann Duffy (The World’s Wife), Joolz Denby, GP Taylor, and Joanne Harris (Chocolat).

Jonathan Heawood, the director of English PEN, will speak about the history and future of PEN International. He will concentrate on the dangerous side of writing, including the 2006 murder of Ann Politkovskaya, the author of books on Putin’s Russia and the war in Chechnya, and the threats to Salman Rushdie’s life in 1988. PEN’s members are writers and literary professionals who aim to promote literature and defend the freedom to write. This event will be in the Marriott Room at York Central Library on the 10th March at 7.30pm.

*

Alex Witchel’s piece in The New York Times starts like this:

The men who ruled the world in the late 1950s, or at least six of the men who ruled publishing, rejected Peg Bracken’s manuscript, “The I Hate to Cook Book.” It would never sell, they told her, because “women regard cooking as sacred.” It took a female editor at Harcourt Brace to look at the hundreds of easy-to-follow recipes wittily pitched at the indentured housewife and say, “Hallelujah!” Since its publication in 1960, Bracken’s iconic book, which celebrated the speedy virtues of canned cream-of-mushroom soup and chicken bouillon cubes, has sold more than three million copies. That helped lift her spirits, her daughter, Jo Bracken, said, about her $338 advance.

*

“If there is a God, he certainly doesn’t need the protection of the British legal system. If there isn’t, he doesn’t need it either. There is therefore no excuse for preserving the offence of blasphemous libel and it should be abolished.”

Salmon Rushdie

I think it’s rather unfortunate that some of the coverage tries to pitch print reviewing against the new media. I think they complement each other very well.

Salman Rushdie

*

Chances are that if you are a writer a little further down the food chain, but lucky enough to have an agent, they won’t be doing much for you. Restless writers, like I used to be, may change agencies frequently, only to find out that after a brief honeymoon all is back to normal – for most writers changing agencies is like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic as they watch the promises of their career go down the drain.

Martin Wagner at The Guardian

*

“Underwear” and “lingerie” reflect and construct opposing world views. Ruth Wajnryb in the Sydney Morning Herald, tells us why.

… some barely literate little Napoleon – to borrow Pak Lah’s term – sitting behind a KDN desk in Johor Bahru, (who) has decided that the book is not suitable for Malaysians

Go to BiblioBibuli for more details. Oh, and it’s 2006 now, we’ve learned some things. One of them is that censorship doesn’t work. It never did and it never will.

*

John Barlow has an admission to make on his site:

When I was invited to say something about page 69 of my novel Intoxicated, I turned to the page in question and shuddered. The text on that particular page, a description of a garden, was plagiarised. I took it from John Halifax, Gentleman, by Mrs Dinah Craik, a popular novelist of the mid-nineteenth century.

*

Spiegel Online has a piece on the growing population of the dispossessed, Globalization and the European Underclass:

In the West, gradual de-industrialization has created a new underclass of the unproductive and intellectually depraved. The spiritual cousin of the American phenomenon of “white trash,” these strangers in their own land have become a serious threat to democracy.

The modern-day member of the underclass is not hungry. He has a roof over his head, he is not disproportionately vulnerable to illness and he even has a bit of cash in his pocketbook. In every Western European country, he is both a citizen and a beneficiary of the welfare state, even if the state’s services are no longer as generous as they once were.

The article, which was brought to my attention by A Reader’s Words, claims that forty percent of the alcohol sold in Germany is consumed by only eight percent of the population.

*

Go take a look at the Neglected Books Page, where you’ll find lists of thousands of books that have been neglected, overlooked, forgotten, or stranded by changing tides in critical or popular taste. A juicy site, this one, especially for lovers of lists. But I didn’t find Arthur Morrison’s The Hole in the Wall there, which would be very close to the top of my personal list of neglected books.

2. Which author and/or book has most influenced you?
This is a tough one – there are so many! Joan Didion, Salman Rushdie, Barbara Lazear Ascher, and Amy Hempel have all influenced the way I write and the way I think about reading and writing.

3. Which three blogs do you most visit?
MetaxuCafe at http://metaxucafe.com/
PowellsBooks Blog at http://www.powells.com/blog/
pulse.inthefray.com at http://inthefray.org/?op=newindex&catid=11

4. Why do you read fiction?
Because I like a good story, particularly one that, on the surface, seems removed from my own life and from which I can learn something about us as people and about myself as a writer and reader.

5. What makes you laugh?
David Sedaris, sarcasm, witty one-liners loaded with political or cultural relevance.

Laura Nathan blogs at L-ement

2. Which author and/or book has most influenced you?
The first book I clung to was The Count of Monte Cristo (in 4th grade). My reading tastes have always been eclectic, much like my taste in other areas. I love Salman Rushdie for his ability to weave environment, storyline, timeframe, social issues and all with a lyrical writing style. I love Charles Baxter’s writing because he is able to not just create a character but become the character (read Feast of Love and you’ll see what I mean). I enjoy Russell Banks for his ability to create worlds that would otherwise seem ordinary and breathe in the extraordinary. I love Amy Bloom for her ability to also take the ordinary and make it sing. When I was a pre-teen I read Dick Francis because I didn’t want to think too much and I liked horses. When I was a teen I read Anne Rice because who wouldn’t want to read about vampires while a teenager? In high school, I enjoyed almost all of the reading assignments (yes, I am an uber dork). Basically all stories that have left me with that “wow” feeling when I turned the final page and read the last sentence have influenced me. If I close the cover and in my mind I’m still in that world and all that it represents, then I’m a marked woman.

3. Which three blogs do you most visit?
I’ve been a bit out of touch lately but I usually visit:
Beatrice at http://www.beatrice.com/wordpress//
MataxuCafe at http://metaxucafe.com/
and this one of course.

4. Why do you read fiction?
Because it gives me insight into anothers thoughts and dreams. Because I’m catapulted into other worlds that have been given a unique perception and taste by the author. Because it makes me think about topics I may not have thought about before.

5. What makes you laugh?
The Three Stooges, children’s laughter, a stupid joke, sarcastic comments, Bill the Cat, silliness.

Lisa D. K. Coutant blogs at She’s At It Again, which can be found here: www.lisacoutant.blogspot.com