May 10 marks the 75th anniversary of the most infamous book burning in history – on that date in 1933, over 20,000 books banned by Germany’s Nazi regime, including works by Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, and H.G. Wells, were set aflame in Berlin’s public square by Nazi youth groups.

To mark the anniversary, Abebooks.com has an overview of the various authors and books banned at the time, and has posted feature interviews with three experts on book-burning, including Australian author Matt Fishburn, whose debut non-fiction work Burning Books is due to be published this month. In the Q&A, Fishburn discusses why books are burned so often throughout history:

“People love a celebratory bonfire, especially when it can symbolize a letting go of the past: burning old photos, marking a graduation by burning a hated textbook, or the like. […] Tellingly, in the US (and no doubt in other countries) many universities had an impromptu tradition of turning a blind eye to their graduating class burning their textbooks at the end of semester in a great bonfire. Indeed, when the Nazi fires were first reported in 1933, this was one of the most common comparisons made - the fires in Germany were, after all, organized by students and took place relatively early in the new regime. Nor is it idle to point out that such burnings are always a great spectacle. In Berlin there were marching bands, torchlight processions, group singing and college songs, parades, movie cameras, and members of the cultural elite.

“This is not meant to trivialize the impact of any such bonfire. Most officially sanctioned fires are designed to control, and to announce what they stand for and what will be accepted under their rule. Burnings like those of the Nazis have something in common with the early modern burning of books in Europe. They announced what would be acceptable in future, and in the process shaped the new public sphere. The book burnings are the symbol; the repressive legislation that came in its wake was what enforced it.”

The Salon du Livre, an international book fair in Paris, is being boycotted by a coalition of Islamic nations unhappy with the decision to award the ‘Pavilion of Honour’ to Israeli writers.

From The Guardian:

The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Isesco) has urged its 50 members to boycott the fair, which starts on March 14. So far, Iran, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon and Tunisia have confirmed they are to pull out.

A statement issued by Isesco said that “the crimes against humanity Israel is perpetrating in the Palestinian territories” make it an unworthy recipient of the honour.

Christine de Mazières, speaking for the French Publishers’ Association who organise the Salon, said it was an unfortunate move. “What is happening in the Middle East is very sad, but it is not linked to our event.” Israel, she stressed, was not being honoured for its politics but for its writers, such as Amos Oz and David Grossman, both of whom are due to appear at the event. All of the countries now pulling out, Ms de Mazières said, were aware of the Israeli honour at the time they signed up.

Oz and Grossman are both outspoken peace activists and highly critical of Israeli aggression.

The latest salvos in the Amis/Eagleton polemic come from the increasingly rancorous novelist himself, who penned an earnest rebuttal in Saturday’s Guardian – “No, I am not a racist,” pleads the headline – and then glibly ran his mouth at a debate on Monday night. At the talk at Manchester University, where Amis and Eagleton both teach, Amis revisted the incendiary subject that got him into hot water in the first place – namely, the discovery of an alleged Islamist plot against the U.K. in August 2006.

At a debate at Manchester University, where the novelist is head of creative writing, he told a packed auditorium that only a machine would not have experienced “retaliatory urges” upon learning in August last year of the alleged plot to bomb transatlantic aircraft, in which, Amis said, 3,000 people could have died.

“There should be from every corner of the west a permanent factory siren of disgust for these actions,” he told students, staff and members of the public, including Afzal Khan, the first Muslim to be lord mayor of Manchester. He acknowledged Muslim efforts “to put their house in order” were made more difficult by the jihadis’ “monopoly on intimidation”.

Upon closer inspection, Amis seems to apologize in advance for the outburst in the Saturday piece, where he advises readers never to take a novelist at his word. Sort-of quoting Nabokov, he writes, “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished man of letters, I talk like an idiot.”

So we’re likely to hear from Amis again, in considered prose, given that he continues to speak like an idiot.

But there was less assent when he went on to speak of a “distorted sympathy” towards Palestine. “I have sympathy for Israel. It’s not nothing to have six million of your number murdered in central Europe in the last century. Don’t you think that this has had a psychological effect on this race or religion, or whatever you want to call the Jews?

“Palestinians have never suffered anything as remotely terrible as that. There is an inexplicable numbness about Israel.”

One of the more highly anticipated movie releases this fall is an adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s enormously popular bestseller The Kite Runner, but it looks as if most of us will have to wait until after Christmas to see it. According to The Washington Post, the planned early November release has been pushed back so that the film’s two child stars – Afghan natives Zekeria Ebrahim and Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada – can be evacuated from the country.

The move follows warnings that the two boys could face reprisal attacks over a scene in which Hassan, played by Ahmad Khan, is raped by an ethnic Pashtun thug.

[…]

Abdul Latif Ahmadi, president of Afghan Film, the state-run film company, said he and many others repeatedly warned The Kite Runner filmmakers, including producer E. Bennett Walsh and director Marc Forster, that that scene could provoke dangerous problems among religiously conservative Afghans, who might find it insulting.

[…]

“This is the mentality of the people in Afghanistan,” which has a 28 percent literacy rate, Ahmadi explained. “People don’t realize that it’s not true. When they watch a film, they accept it — it’s real, why did they do it?”

The film will be given a limited U.S. release on Dec. 14, in order to qualify for Oscar consideration, but it won’t open widely until sometime in January. The film won’t be released in Afghanistan at all, but, as The Washington Post points out, Afghanis will likely have many opportunities to see it on bootleg DVDs.

If you’re like us, you’re probably getting real sick of hearing about O.J. Simpson’s quasi-confessional If I Did It, but attention must be paid when the queen herself, Oprah, thrusts it back into the limelight. Yesterday, she invited the Goldman family onto her show to discuss the book and their decision to publish it, a choice for which they have been criticized. According to MSNBC, which has posted a good summation of the show’s highlights, Oprah said it was a “moral, ethical dilemma” for her to give more publicity to the book:

Winfrey acknowledged that her program often promotes books and authors, yet, she said, “I don’t want to be in the position to promote this book, because I, too, think it’s despicable.”

The MSNBC piece ends by stating that, as of yesterday, If I Did It was No. 8 in sales at Barnes and Noble and No. 52 on Amazon.com. According to a more recently updated piece on The Book Standard website, however, the book has subsequently shot up to No. 1 at Barnes and Noble and No. 2 on Amazon.com. Way to go Oprah…

After U.S. National Book Critics Circle president John Freeman had finished freaking out over declining levels of American readership, bookselling blogger The Written Nerd looked at the stats from a more reassuring angle:

The [U.S. National Endowment for the Arts] survey states that 56% of Americans read any book in 2002 (that’s ANY book, not just “literary works,” which the survey focuses on).

The Associated Press/Ipsos survey says that 73% of Americans read any book last year (i.e. in 2006).

Therefore, if these two respected organizations are to be believed…

AMERICANS READ MORE LAST YEAR THAN THEY READ FIVE YEARS AGO.

Ah, numbers. So many different ways to interpret them. Good thing words aren’t like that!

Anyway, Freeman’s article raised the spectre of how to attract more people to reading:

Now that cigarettes are becoming less and less palatable in an actor’s hand, put a book there. If the NEA wants people to read, strong-arm a copy of William Carlos Williams’ The Doctor Stories onto Grey’s Anatomy. Companies which spend millions of advertising dollars articulating their brand could say a lot more for less by using books. Why doesn’t The Gap stock copies of On the Road?

The Black Entertainment Television network, as pointed out by GalleyCat, is helping out with that angle – sort of. BET’s new animation department has produced a music video that it says celebrates literacy and black pride.

Its cartoon rapper bounces on a piano, riffing on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and in his first line bellows, “Read a book, read a book, read a motherfucking book!” He goes on in a similar manner to encourage listeners to brush their teeth, care for their children, drink water instead of booze, and wear deodorant. Sound advice, to be sure, but it’s all accompanied by a plethora of profanities and stereotypical rap-video images.

A Los Angeles Times article covers the mixed reactions to the clip – some see it as a funny satire of the hip-hop industry; others find its rampant use of negative African-American stereotypes offensive.

The article also describes the parts of the video that most startled Quillblog:

In one scene, a gangster uses a book as a cartridge in an automatic weapon, while another shows a woman shaking her rear with “BOOK” printed on her low-riding pants.

Nothing says “reading is fun” like guns and booty-shaking, right?

(Thanks to GalleyCat for the link.)

The New York Times has posted an article about a new book being published in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus & Giroux this September: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. It seems that early excerpts from the book, which argues that the pro-Israel lobby wields too much influence in U.S. political circles, are setting off accusations of anti-Semitism. That’s not really all that surprising, of course, but what is surprising – or shameful, at any rate – is that several cultural and political institutions are canceling planned events with the authors.

The subject will certainly prompt furious debate, though not at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Jewish cultural center in Washington, and three organizations in Chicago. They have all turned down or canceled events with the authors, mentioning unease with the controversy or the format.

The authors were particularly disturbed by the Chicago council’s decision, since plans for that event were complete and both authors have frequently spoken there before. The two sent a four-page letter to 94 members of the council’s board detailing what happened. “On July 24, Council President Marshall Bouton phoned one of us (Mearsheimer) and informed him that he was canceling the event,” and that his decision “was based on the need ‘to protect the institution.’ He said that he had a serious ‘political problem,’ because there were individuals who would be angry if he gave us a venue to speak, and that this would have serious negative consequences for the council. ‘This one is so hot,’ Marshall maintained.”

In Canada, the default distributor for Farrar, Straus & Giroux is Douglas & McIntyre, but D&M marketing manager Emiko Morita told us that they will not be selling the book here because it has not been made available to them by FSG. As she explained to us, this suggests that FSG is still looking to sell Canadian rights separately.

UPDATE: Q&Q has been informed that Penguin Canada holds Canadian rights and will be publishing the book on Sept. 4.

Bangladeshi writer Talisma Nasrin, who had to be protected from physical attacks at her book launch in Hyderabad in south India last week, is now facing charges of inciting religious tensions, The Guardian reports.

Nasrin, whose writings have been accused of insulting Islam and have led to threats and fatwas against her in the past, could face two years in prison if convicted.

Charges have also been been laid against local politicians alleged to have attacked her at the launch.

The police are also investigating remarks made by the MIM leader, Akbaruddin Owaisi, widely reported to have threatened the author with death, as well as the leader of the MIM’s local rivals, the Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) party, who is reported to have claimed that the attack was an attempt by the MIM to foil a plan to kill the writer outside the press club.

Writs are also to be filed against the MLAs involved in the attack by local citizens’ groups who had condemned the attack and criticised the police response.

But with local elections due early next year, the issue is fast becoming a political flash-point, with the MIM widely expected to use a fatwa against Nasrin as a tool to mobilise the Muslim vote.

The Canadian Magazines blog is keeping track of the battle between Maclean’s and the Canadian Bar Association in the wake of last week’s interview with Lawyers Gone Bad author Philip Slayton and the subsequent heated reply from the CBA. An editorial in the Aug. 13 edition of Maclean’s (which was also publicized with a press release) maintains that while the editors had some misgivings about the splashy “Lawyers are rats” cover headline, they stand behind it and the issues raised in the story, because (they say) other legal experts have brought them up before.

In an introductory note to the editorial, they also accuse the CBA of leaning on the magazine’s financial backers to force an apology.

Furthermore, the CBA has repeatedly attempted to apply financial pressure to our parent companies, Rogers Publishing and Rogers Communications Inc., in order to force an apology from Maclean’s.

Ken Whyte, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Maclean’s, made the following comments: “That the CBA would refuse to debate the serious issues raised by our piece and instead try to — let’s put the best face on this — use its financial muscle to purchase an apology from us rather confirms the sentiment of our cover line.”

Ouch. Lawyers, back to you.

Meanwhile, in Sunday’s Toronto Star, regular crime fiction reviewer Jack Batten looks at Slayton’s book through the lens of Batten’s own time at the University of Toronto Law School. Batten says he’s seen some legal rats himself, and deems the book “smart and lively.”

Via the Canadian Magazines blog, we discover that a number of lawyers are hot under the robes about an interview in the newest issue of Maclean’s with Philip Slayton, author of Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex and Madness in Canada’s Legal Profession, published this month by Viking Canada.

The interview, entitled “Lawyers Are Rats,” has prompted a heated reply from the Canadian Bar Association, which has posted a statement on its web site that accuses the magazine of painting “a distorted, one-sided and sensationalized picture of the legal profession.”

Quillblog can certainly understand the CBA’s anger – as far as we know, this is the first time ever that anyone, anywhere, has suggested that lawyers are anything other than morally upright citizens who want nothing more than to teach the world to sing.

The latest and last Harry Potter book (did you know there was a new one coming out?) will not be available at western-Canadian outlets of Mac’s Convenience, according to a story in The Globe and Mail. Raincoast is barring the chain – and possibly others – from receiving copies of the book in advance of publication, citing security concerns. (Raincoast sought and won a restraining order after the previous Potter volume, Harry Potter and the Annoying Embargo, was sold in advance of the pub date by a few convenience and grocery stores, including at least one Mac’s location.)

That’s right: the sales outlook on this book is so good that Raincoast can afford to not sell it. Won’t all those Potter fans be surprised when they finally get the book, only to discover it’s a 40-page novella that kills off every major character, padded out with 800 pages of Rowling’s journals, letters from fans, some of her favourite recipes, and an unpublished collection of her poetry.

(Note: Jamie Broadhurst, Raincoast’s vice president of marketing, told Q&Q he would “not discuss specific details about customers, logistics, or security,” but did confirm that, at least theoretically, stores not able to stock the book before the pub date of July 21 could do so after.)

A trial began in France yesterday in which five farmers from the Auvergne countryside are accused of attacking a novelist, Pierre Jourde, who wrote unflattering things about their village. As the Guardian reports, the villagers of Lussaud were “incensed by Jourde’s depictions of heavy drinking, adultery, intermarriage, filthy homes, and accidents with farm machinery” in his 2003 novel Pays Perdu.

[Jourde] described a place where the gods were called “Alcohol, Winter, Shit and Solitude”; where having one tooth was a status symbol akin to wearing a monocle and where an old lady let dead dogs decay in her bed, tucking herself up beside them every night… [Later], Jourde heard that villagers were unhappy. Locals felt their ancestors’ secrets had been betrayed.

[…]

In July 2005, when Jourde arrived with his family for a summer break, six villagers appeared outside his house shouting insults. Things turned violent, blows were exchanged and stones were thrown. Jourde’s 15-month-old baby was slightly hurt and his mixed-race daughters were called “dirty Arabs.” Jourde and his family locked themselves in their car and fled. They have never returned.

All Quillblog could think while reading this was: why doesn’t this happen more often? Maybe it’ll start a trend, and the denizens of the Miramichi will come a-callin’ for David Adams Richards. (Hey wait, didn’t they already try to burn his house down once?)

This Is London reports on a British councillor, Alex Aiken, who has called on the library field to redefine itself.

Mr. Aiken, a former policy director for the Tories, told a conference of the Public Library Authorities: “The concept of the librarian has to change and perhaps a start would be to abolish the title itself, with its connotations of middle-aged conservatism.”

Telling the librarians how to get pro-library articles into the press, he said: “From racy books to photogenic librarians and new services that counter outdated perceptions, media is a powerful tool to shape image.”

The library community’s response has been one of predictable and understandable outrage and/or scorn (see the comments section below the article). One blogger, David Rothman, ran a poll asking readers to suggest and vote on new job titles to replace the archaic “librarian”; his favourite contender — and Quillblog’s too — was “information alchemist.”

As any Quillblog reader undoubtedly knows already, librarians are some of the coolest people around. But they’ve often been treated unfairly by popular culture. For example, now that the holidays are looming, let’s think back to a certain classic, heartwarming Jimmy Stewart movie about the true meaning of Christmas….

That’s right, Rear Window. Nothing says “Christmas” like spying on your neighbours for cheap titillation.

Nah, just kidding. Anyway, you may remember that late in It’s a Wonderful Life, as George Bailey tries to wrap his head around the grim alternate universe into which the angel Clarence has dropped him, his thoughts turn to the fate of his wife. We’ll let the script take it from here.

GEORGE
If you know where she is, tell me where my wife is.

CLARENCE
I’m not supposed to tell.

GEORGE
(becoming violent)
Please, Clarence, tell me where she is.

CLARENCE
You’re not going to like it, George.

GEORGE
(shouting)
Where is she?

CLARENCE
She’s an old maid. She never married.

GEORGE
(choking him)
Where’s Mary? Where is she?

CLARENCE
She’s…

GEORGE
Where is she?

CLARENCE
(in self-defense)
She’s just about to close up the library!

It loses something on paper, without the apocalyptic “Dear God, not the library” music, but you get the idea.

Related links:
Click here for the This Is London article
Click here for the David Rothman poll
And yes, click here for the complete It’s a Wonderful Life script

The New York Times confirms a story that appeared on Radaronline.com earlier this week that “James Frey, the author who admitted making up portions of his best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, and his publisher, Random House, have agreed in principle on a settlement with readers who filed lawsuits claiming they had been defrauded.”

The Times relies on an anonymous source for details of the settlement because it has yet to be approved by a judge, but states that “consumers who bought the book on or before Jan. 26 – when both the publisher and author released statements acknowledging that Mr. Frey had altered certain facts – will be eligible for a full refund.” If you didn’t keep your receipt, the publisher will accept some other proofs of purchase such as a particular page of the hardcover novel or the paperback’s front cover.

Quillblog prefers the more creative terms set out in a mock memo from Random House on Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant blog. The memo promises a refund of $4.24 for anyone returning the dust jacket with a hand-drawn moustache on the author’s photo, and a special offer: “If you send us a videotape, a VCD, or a DVD, in which you can demonstrate that you led or coerced a group of people to throw at least 200 copies into a public bonfire, we would like to offer you a promising career here at Random House.”

Related links:
Click here for the full story in The New York Times
Click here for Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant blog

Radar Online is reporting that Random House U.S. is looking to settle the various class-action lawsuits brought against it by readers of James Frey’s notoriously fictional memoir A Million Little Pieces who claim they were victims of fraud.

As part of the settlement, Random House (which has not confirmed any of the details of the story) will offer a full refund to all who bought the book before it was officially announced to contain many, mmm, embellishments. The catch: you need your original sales receipt to claim the money, so unless you’ve been using it as a bookmark, tough luck.

Another unconfirmed rumour has it that Random House is planning to send an English professor to the home of every enraged reader of Frey’s tome to explain the meaning of the expression “caveat lector.”

Related links:
Read the Radar Online story here

The east London borough of Tower Hamlets is up in arms again against Booker-nominated author Monica Ali and her novel Brick Lane. Now that a movie’s in the making, they’re really pissed.

According to a Guardian story, “a community action group in Tower Hamlets has launched a campaign to stop production” of the movie. “In an echo of the controversy which surrounded the initial publication of the book, set partly in the east London borough, the novel is accused of reinforcing ‘pro-racist, anti-social stereotypes’ and of containing ‘a most explicit, politically calculated violation of the human rights of the community.’”

Three years ago, community advocates came down hard on the book, saying that it “portrayed Bangladeshis living in the area as backward, uneducated and unsophisticated, and that this amounted to a ‘despicable insult.’”

Brick Lane Traders’ Association chair and sweetshop proprietor Abdus Salique is leading the charge, and has circulated a petition “to put pressure on the council to halt Ruby Films’ adaptation, already in production in a London studio, and calling on ‘all right-thinking people to join in preventing this attack on good social, ethical standard and idea [sic].’”

He says, “Nobody can come with a camera make a film about that book here. She [Ali] has imagined ideas about us in her head. She is not one of us, she has not lived with us, she knows nothing about us, but she has insulted us.” The fact that the book is a work of fiction makes no difference to Salique; he feels that the book isn’t, in fact, fiction and that Ali’s claims that it is are “lies.” Says Salique: “She wanted to be famous at the cost of a community.”

He then goes on to claim that community groups prevented Ali from snagging the Booker and that, if filming should go ahead in their neck of the woods, there could be trouble. “The community feels strongly about this. We are not going to let it happen … Young people are getting very involved with this campaign. They will blockade the area and guard our streets. Of course, they will not do anything unless we tell them to, but I warn you they are not as peaceful as me.”

Claudia Kalindjian, a spokesperson for Ruby Films, the company producing the film, says that they wouldn’t have gone ahead with the movie if they had thought the source material racist.

Related links:
Read the Guardian story here

India will be the guest of honour at the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair. To represent its massive, booming literature and publishing industry, India will be sending a somewhat meagre delegation of 33 writers. The Literary Saloon directs us to Outlook India’s Bibliofile column, which says that the selection “made by a steering committee headed by the secretary, HRD ministry and included other quasi-government organs like the Sahitya Akademi” has inevitably ruffled a few feathers among those many thousands of writers left off the list.

In order to help smooth things over, India’s National Book Trust has “sent 14 semi-finalists to the Leipzig Fair in March. Another lot will go in September. As further consolation prizes, it also sent a list of 150 books – an awesome balancing act of regional quotas — to German publishers to print before the fair. There was a bribe too: a subsidy of Rs2 a word for every book they published. But the ‘finicky’ Germans didn’t bite.”

According to Bibliofile, the NBT will also be screening a number of Indian movies at the Fair. Here’s hoping the ‘wet sari’ look takes off in Germany this fall.

Related links:
Read Outlook India’s Bibliofile column
The Frankfurt Book Fair’s “India Guest of Honour” site

The world just can’t seem to leave its wealthiest conspiracy theorist alone. The latest incident in the Da Vinci Code money grab sees Mikhail Anikin, a Russian art historian, vying for a public apology and a slice of the Brown pie as compensation for Dan Brown’s alleged use of at least two of his theories in The Da Vinci Code. The theories in question hold that Leonardo Da Vinci was both a painter and a theologian and that his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, is not a portrait so much as an encoded theological message on the state of the Christian Church that combines the images of both Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Anikin told the Agence France-Press that he shared these theories with colleagues in Texas, one of whom asked if he could impart the information to “a detective book author that he knew.” Anikin says he granted permission on the condition that the theory be attributed to him if used in one of the author’s books.

Anikin is threatening Brown with a lawsuit if compensation and an apology are not promised within the next couple of days. Keep up to date on the news with In Other Media, who finds that a happy side effect of all these lawsuits is that she can intelligently discuss DVC at cocktail parties, despite never having read the book.

Related links:
Click here for the story on the Book Standard website
Click here for the report on CBC.ca

The American Library Association has released its “10 Most Challenged Books of 2005″ list, and though it’s comforting that such immoral tomes as Of Mice and Men and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have finally been deemed acceptable by all of America’s library-card holders, there are still a few vintage titles on the list that might raise a few eyebrows. To make the list, a book must have generated at least one written request in the past year that it be removed from the library system. Such requests inevitably arise from a concern with the book’s sexual content or use of bad language, but it’s hard to imagine that anyone with a basic cable TV subscription could still be calling for the removal of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (third on the list) or Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, which placed fourth. The most challenged book was Robert H. Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, and Sexual Health for its “homosexuality, nudity, sex education, religious viewpoint, abortion, and being unsuited to age group.”

Related links:
Read the list on the Library Journal site

With book clubs being touted as part of the future of book marketing, the idea of author visits to book club meetings is getting more and more popular with publishers and writers. Meetings are seen as a win-win situation: books get sold and writers get their egos stroked. But what happens when a book club hates your book? In a recent edition of The New York Times, novelist Curtis Sittenfield explores just that.

“It’s pretty obvious that some readers say they hate your protagonist as a more polite way of saying they hate your entire book,” writes Sittenfield, “but when I want to hear from people who hate my book, I prefer doing it in the comfort of my own home by looking at customer reviews on Amazon. I also think some readers say they hate your protagonist as a polite way of saying they hate you. This might sound paranoid, but what else am I to assume when somebody says in one breath, ‘Lee is insufferable!’ and in the next asks, ‘The book’s completely autobiographical, isn’t it?’”

Related links:
Click here for Sittenfield’s piece on the NYT website

As if James Frey doesn’t have enough problems to deal with, now he’s got readers in Quebec threatening him with a lawsuit over his misrepresentation of the facts in A Million Little Pieces. An article posted on the CTV website is reporting that outraged reader Joshua Adam Levy is launching a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Quebec readers to the tune of $2-million. Levy’s lawyer claims that the lawsuit would never have been launched if the book had been labelled as fiction and even goes so far as to say that “Levy … has lost confidence in the memoir genre.”

Related links:
Read the article on the CTV site

The Beast, an indie newspaper from Buffalo, New York, that is a little more angry than most of its mealymouthed Canadian counterparts, has recently published a list of the 50 most loathsome people in America. A few writers or, at the very least, people who have published books (or read books) are on the list (which is a good enough excuse for this Friday afternoon glass of haterade).

Here are some of the high-ranking notables and the specific sentence handed down by the editors of The Beast to punish the loathsome:

#20 Oprah Winfrey: “Crushed by self-commissioned 40-story platinum Oprah statue.”

#10 Bill O’Reilly: “After O’Reilly’s influence fundamentally changes the nature of jurisprudence, he is tortured and jailed for life when it is discovered that he once leafed through a copy of the Communist Manifesto as a teen.”

#8 Judith Miller: “After a brief but horrible stint as a chemical weapons test subject for Monsanto, Miller is vivisected without anesthesia and her organs are harvested alive to be preserved as spares for Seymour Hersh.”

#7 Thomas Friedman: “Column outsourced to Bangalore, where there is some difficulty in finding a peasant ignorant and ineloquent enough to please his audience. Compelled at gunpoint to write a 500-page retraction of his recent best-seller, called No, Actually the World Is Round.”

And one more, just for kicks, #3 George W. Bush: “Trapped for eternity under shoddily manufactured Diebold voting machine, unable to reach nearby refrigerator full of hot dogs and bourbon.”

Related links:
Click here for the full list from The Beast

Well, now we know why James Frey cancelled his appearance in Toronto, which was scheduled for Thursday. We may have assumed he was simply going into low-profile mode, but it turns out something else came up: Oprah Winfrey had the fibbing author back onto her TV show on Thursday, and she wasn’t happy with him.

In the latest twist in the saga (a post-holiday gift that keeps on giving, at least for us publishing-media types), Oprah has reversed her original stance of supporting Frey and now says that he “betrayed millions of people.” When she brought him out in person, her main question was “Why did you lie?”

Frey’s original publisher, Doubleday’s Nan Talese, was also on hand. Was she repentant? Has she taken anything away from all this? Well, according to the Gawker recap, she took the opportunity to testify that she once underwent a root canal without novocaine, in support of one of the more preposterous unverified claims in Frey’s book, A Million Little Pieces.

The New York Times and Gawker have the first of what will undoubtedly be many, many post-mortems; the Gawker one is more complete, at least at this writing.

Related links:
Click here for the Gawker recap of Frey’s latest Oprah appearance
Click here for the NYT article

Given current levels of inspiration following last night’s election results, In Other Media sees fit to return, one last time, to the well-worn comfort of the James Frey fiasco. Remember when Frey appeared on Larry King Live, testifying to the essential truth of his so-called memoir, A Million Little Pieces? Remember one of Frey’s chief defences – that investigative website The Smoking Gun disputed only a small portion of the book? Remember how he claimed that the rest of the book, set in a Minnesota drug rehabilitation centre, was essentially true?

Well, apparently, there are things rehab counsellors can say about the stays of alleged patients in their centres that could make things worse for people like Frey. And apparently, most of those things were said by many counsellors to Edward Wyatt in an article appearing today in The New York Times.

Wyatt reports that more than three months before The Smoking Gun’s report, and even before Oprah Winfrey had Frey on her show, Debra Jay, a frequent guest on Oprah and a counsellor formerly affiliated with the Hazelden rehabilitation centre in Center City, Minnesota, where Frey was allegedly committed, told producers of the show that “his portrayal of his experience there grossly distorted reality.”

“His description of treatment at Hazelden is almost entirely false,” said Jay. “I’m coming forward because his descriptions of treatment are so damaging…. These are things that could not happen to anybody at Hazelden or at any reputable licensed treatment center.”

Jay and other former Hazelden counsellors claim that Frey’s book may have done more harm than good, insofar as addictions treatment is concerned. “I have had young people say to me that if they had a child who was having problems, they would never send them to treatment after reading that book,” says former Hazelden counsellor Carol Colleran, adding that according to her experiences at the Hazelden, “98 percent of that book is false.”

In response to these claims, Frey resorted to tried and true Defence No. 2: “I told James that I’ve been there, that I worked there and I’ve never seen any of those things happen at Hazelden,” said John H. Curtiss, who worked at Hazelden for more than 19 years. “In a million years those things would not happen at Hazelden. He said that was his recollection, but that he changed the names.”

Winfrey and her associates were, as usual, unavailable for comment.

Related links:
Click here for the full story from The New York Times

The controversy continues over allegations that James Frey invented/embellished chunks of his Oprah-sanctioned bestselling memoir, A Million Little Pieces. The latest bit of news is that the next printing of Frey’s book will include a note from the author that will address this. As Hillel Italie of The Associated Press reports, however, it is unclear what Frey will write in his author’s note: “Doubleday spokeswoman Alison Rich declined to offer details about the note or to comment on why it was being added. She would not say if the note was an acknowledgment often found in memoirs but not in A Million Little Pieces that names and events had been altered.” In Other Media is sincerely hoping that the author’s note addresses beard-trimming techniques. (Was it just me or did his beard look a little mangy on Larry King Live?)

The story broke last Sunday on The Smoking Gun, so, just in time for the weekend newspapers, readers should be girding themselves for think pieces and other related fare, like this list on the CBC Arts website of the top 10 literary hoaxes, which includes everything from Ern Malley (the inspiration for Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake) to David Solway’s creation, Andreas Karavis.

One of the best articles on the controversy so far is on Slate, where journalist Seth Mnookin, who has dealt with his own addiction problems, says that Frey’s fabrications are typical of the insecurity that he often encountered in rehab: “Based on all the evidence, it seems Frey’s weird, macho fear of seeing himself as a ‘victim’ led him to fabricate a life that was painful and extreme enough so as to explain the sadness and despair he felt.” Mnookin goes on to point out, however, that Frey’s fabrications are significant because of the simplistic message about addiction that the book reinforces.

Related links:
Click here for the AP story
Click here for the CBC Arts
Click here for the Slate article

Frey Week continues here on In Other Media. Today, we spotlight the transcript of the embattled author’s appearance on Larry King Live last night.

In defending his memoir A Million Little Pieces against charges that significant parts had been exaggerated or fabricated, Frey hit a few key messages again and again: that “memoir” means you’re allowed to make stuff up; that only a tiny portion of the book has been disputed; and that his story’s “essential truth” (a phrase he uttered seven times, according to the transcript) remains unaffected by any embellishments. Frey also brought out his own mother to plead his case, a move that seems a little incongruous with the macho posturing he’s known for.

Apparently his explanations were good enough for Oprah, who broke her silence on the controversy by calling into the King show, saying “although some of the facts have been questioned … the underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me. And I know that it resonates with millions of other people who have read this book and will continue to read this book.”

In Other Media, though, feels the need to point out a couple things. For one, that writers who prefer to get at “the essential truth” without being bound by the facts usually do so in books called “novels.” And that in fact Frey shopped his book as a novel before he and Doubleday decided to publish it as a memoir instead. (To be fair, King did grill Frey about that one a bit.) And finally, as for the “tiny portion” argument, the distortions and exaggerations that The Smoking Gun uncovered represent only the parts of Frey’s book that can be compared against public records. Most of the story takes place within the confidentiality-protected walls of a rehab clinic, and a couple of major characters are now dead.

Which means readers have to take Frey’s word for the accuracy of the bulk of the book — and why on Earth should they?

In Frey news closer to home, the Toronto Star’s Judy Stoffman reports that the author’s scheduled appearance at the Elgin Winter Garden in Toronto on Jan. 26 is still going ahead as planned.

Related links:
Click here for the transcript of the Larry King Live appearance
Click here for the Toronto Star piece

An article in today’s New York Times collects the responses, or lack thereof, to the allegations that James Frey falsified much of the content in his bestselling memoir A Million Little Pieces. The publishers of the hardcover and paperback editions of the book, Doubleday and Anchor Books, respectively, both divisions of Random House, issued a joint statement that downplayed the importance of truth in memoirs. “Memoir is a personal history whose aim is to illuminate, by way of example, events and issues of broader social consequence,” it read. “By definition, it is highly personal. In the case of Mr. Frey, we decided A Million Little Pieces was his story, told in his own way, and he represented to us that his version of events was true to his recollections.” The statement continues: “Recent accusations against him notwithstanding, the power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers.”

But Edward Wyatt, the writer of the Times article, says that the statement’s lack of definitive comment on the objective truth of the memoir suggests that little to no fact-checking was done by the book’s publishers. None will be done after the fact of publication, either, according to Doubleday and Anchor spokesperson Alison Rich. “This is not a matter that we deem necessary for us to investigate,” she said.

Needless to say, many readers are miffed and many key figures in the book’s publication and popularization, including Frey’s agent Kassie Evashevski, his editor Sean McDonald, who signed Frey on for two more books with the Penguin imprint Riverhead Books, and the one who started all the hoopla, Oprah Winfrey, were unavailable for comment.

Related links:
Click here for the full story from The New York Times

Even Greenpeace has joined the fray in the latest Harry Potter debate. The organization has thrown its support behind Raincoast Books, criticizing American publishers Scholastic for failing to print on post-consumer paper. In their press release entitled “Harry Potter and the half-good prints,” Greenpeace encourages consumers to specifically order the Canadian editions from the only Potter publisher to use ancient forest friendly paper.

Related links:
Click here for the release from Greenpeace
Click here for the full story from CBC Arts

With the launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince fast approaching, Chris Zammarelli puts together a column detailing widespread controversy over the books — the author of which, according to the American Library Association, has been the fourth most objected to between 1990 and 2004. From book burnings to anti-Potter websites to challenges over the books’ lack of moral messages — as Zammarelli writes, “You can’t burn witches at the stake any more, but you can burn books about witches.”

Related links:
Click here for the full story from Bookslut.com

The CBC website has an item on a most unusual poetry tour organized by Tate Young, an Edmonton-based Book TV producer and poet (who released a collection this year under the nom de plume Mingus Tourette). The Write the Nation campaign will see Young and other poets, including Saskatoon’s Glen Sorestad, road-tripping to several Canadian cities in a bright pink ambulance. “Young says that the brightly coloured ambulance – a 1986 Chevy C-30 that was transporting patients as late as August – symbolizes the idea that Canadian poetry is in a state of crisis.”

Related links:
CBC.ca story on Write the Nation tour