Riverdale reaches for the rainbow

The Internet is buzzing with the news that on Sept. 1, Archie Comics’ Veronica will introduce the series’ first openly gay character: a blond-haired, blue-eyed knockout named Kevin Keller. The initial storyline, titled “Isn’t it Bro-mantic?”, has the new Riverdale resident competing in – and winning – a burger-eating contest against Jughead, while newly single Veronica (apparently that whole “marriage” thing didn’t work out) flirts obliviously. The Washingon Post reports that her friends continue to let her squirm:

“Everyone seems to know where Kevin is coming from except Veronica,” says Victor Gorelick, editor in chief of Archie Comics. “They don’t tell Veronica – they let her stew in it for a while. But he hangs out with Jughead – they seem to have a connection as far as food goes.”

So what does this mean for the future of Archie Comics? Archie is already dating Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats, one of the comic’s few black characters, and in the Toronto Star, Jon Goldwater, CEO of Archie Comics, says Kevin will “probably” have a romance at some point. Might that romance be with perpetually single Jughead? Or perhaps shy, nerdy Dilton Doiley?

Unfortunately, no. Despite ongoing suspicions among many that Jughead has been in the closet all this time, the Post quotes Archie writer and artist Dan Parent as saying “traditional Riverdale characters won’t be coming out.”

Bookmarks: why McCarthy won’t autograph, the definitive titles of the Noughties, and more

• James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity, fought to keep a gay subplot in the novel.

• Cormac McCarthy talks about the film version of The Road in the Wall Street Journal and why you won’t find a signed copy of the book

• Remember when Scholastic tried to censor a tween book because one character had two moms? Mobylives reports that parent fanatics are at it again, this time trying to ban the entire Scholastic catalogue

• Dalton Higgins is this month’s writer-in-residence at Open Book Toronto.

• The Telegraph posted their definitive Books of the Noughties. Nothing very surprising – White Teeth, Atonement, Brick Lane -  Dave Eggers’s memoir comes in fourth, right behind good ol’ Dan Brown, Obama’s memoir, and bien sur, Harry Potter at number one. Sigh.

Harlequin tries for some online love with digital publishing venture

Harlequin Enterprises, best known as a publisher of romance novels in the traditional “dead tree” format, has just launched an online publishing house, Carina Press. According to the Carina home page, the new venture will focus on romance novels but “will also acquire voices in mystery, suspense and thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, erotica, gay/lesbian, and more.” An inaugural blog post on the site provides a kind of mission statement for Carina: “There are hundreds of fantastic stories out there that for one reason or another don’t yet have a home. Our intent is to give them one and provide the authors behind them with opportunities to play an active role in this exciting and ever-changing digital space.”

Indeed, a quick scan of the Carina site indicates that authors will be required to play a very active role in promoting their books: the FAQs page says that authors “have more control over [their] own brand” in the digital arena and that Carina will provide the tools to help authors begin “self-promoting in the digital space.”

Additionally, Carina authors will not be paid an advance, but instead will be “compensated with a higher royalty.” And Carina does not offer digital rights management to prevent authors’ work being copied or downloaded illegally.

According to a Harlequin press release, Carina books will be sold directly to consumers via its own website and various third party websites. The release continues:

“As a digital-only publisher Carina Press is a natural extension to our business; it builds on our digital strength and leadership position. We expect to discover new authors and unique voices that may not be able to find homes in traditional publishing houses,” said Donna Hayes, CEO and Publisher of Harlequin Enterprises. “It definitely gives us greater flexibility in the type of editorial we can accept from authors and offer to readers.”

Angela James, described in the press release as “a well-known advocate for digital publishing,” has been named executive editor of Carina. The “press’s” first books are expected to appear online in spring 2010.

Can a commercial printer invoke religion in order to refuse services?

A blog post on Torontoist yesterday looked at Toronto printer Harmony Printing, and its refusal to produce author Adam Bourret’s autobiographical graphic novel I’m Crazy, a story that deals with “histories, secrets, obsessive compulsive disorder, drugs, gay romance, hallucinations, and insanity.” Although Bourret is serializing the novel online, he wanted to do a small run of print copies, and approached Harmony for an estimate, to which he received this reply:

Unfortunately due to the content I am going to have to respectfully decline. The reason is we have a lot of long standing clients who are religious organizations. They are in our facilities all of the time and [we] cannot risk having this content out in the open during production. Please understand that this is not a slight against your artwork or the message that you are trying to convey to your audience. I wish you all the best and I hope you can understand our position.

The biggest unanswered question from Harmony’s reply is what dubious “content” they are referring to, since it is not explicitly mentioned. When the Torontoist contacted Harmony, they clarified that the issue was not the sexual orientation of the writer/main character, but rather the images of people having sex. Either way, is Harmony’s refusal of services legal? The Torontoist sums up the details on both sides of the debate:

A good place to start any discussion about the legality of refusing services is the Ontario Human Rights Code, which guarantees the right to equal treatment with respect to services, goods, and facilities without discrimination because of certain characteristics. After much struggle, sexual orientation was added as a characteristic in 1986.

The flip side, however, is that equal treatment isn’t guaranteed if the characteristic isn’t listed. (Exception: a court may choose to “read in” a new characteristic that has been unconstitutionally omitted, but this is rare.) So a magazine can refuse to print ads for escort services, and a club can have a style code, because the Code doesn’t prohibit discrimination in the provision of services against prostitutes or the unstylish.

If you accept Harmony’s defence–that it feared a backlash from religious clients who would object to images of people having sex–then Harmony is probably in the clear. The characteristic of “having sex” is not listed in the Code, and it is (highly) unlikely to be read in.

This is, as the quote above notes, if you accept Harmony’s defence, and that you don’t instead believe that Harmony feared a backlash from religious clients who would object specifically to images of two men having sex.

Atwood spurns Dubai

After agreeing to attend the Dubai-based Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature, Margaret Atwood has opted to stay home instead. Not only that, she won’t even be attending by LongPen. Seems she’s decided to make a statement on behalf of a gay-themed book called The Gulf Between Us, by Geraldine Bedell. According to The Bookseller:

Penguin, which had planned to launch Geraldine Bedell’s The Gulf Between Us at the event, was informed in September it could not launch the book at the fair, which is due to open on 26th February, because it was anticipated that the book would not get past the censor.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell called the decision “deeply regrettable”, while Bedell herself has now written a blog for the Guardian criticising the decision and calling the fair’s objections “weird-sounding”.

In a statement issued yesterday (17th February) Isobel Abulhoul, director of the fair, said: “I knew that her work could offend certain cultural sensitivities. I did not believe that it was in the festival’s long term interests to acquiesce to her publisher’s request to launch the book at the first festival of this nature in the Middle East.”

Canadian kids’ authors on long longlist for rich Swedish prize

Two Canadian storytellers and one Nova Scotia literacy group are in the running for the world’s richest children’s literary prize. Ottawa kids’ novelist Brian Doyle, Quebec author and illustrator Marie-Louise Gay, and Read to Me!, a family literacy program, have all been nominated for the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, worth about $800,000 (or 5-million Swedish crowns).

It’s still too early for the Canadian candidates to get their hopes up, however, as there are 150 other nominees on the list. The winner, whose work “upholds the highest artistic quality and evokes the deeply humanistic spirit that Astrid Lindgren treasured,” will be announced in March, with an awards gala in May. Past winners include Philip Pullman, Maurice Sendak, and Sonya Hartnett.

The international prize was founded in 2002 after the death of Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking.

Bookmarks: Atwood has a new novel, so do Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie

Some book-related links:

• Because it’s been, what, almost four months since her last book, Atwood has a new novel coming (CBC.ca)
• Martin Amis has a new one, too – guess what it’s about…. (The Observer)
• And Rushdie, too! (Sydney Morning Herald)
• Poet Asa Boxer finds a crate full of photos of Canadian poetry’s earlier days in his father’s cabin (The Avi Boxer Archives)
• Can manga make you smarter? (The Kansas City Star)
• What if you’re gay and you hate gay fiction? (Guardian Book Blogs)
• Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards announced (Critical Mass)

Marchand on the Giller

The Toronto Star‘s regular book critic and culture columnist, Philip Marchand, has a column up about this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist, announced this past week. He confesses to having felt some unease at the announcement of the longlist back in September, mostly due to its seeming emphasis on the inclusion of writers who, as the accompanying statement from the Giller jury put it, “populate every region.” Marchand detected a familiar cultural problem rearing its head:

The list had a faint whiff of political correctness, in short. It made me recall the press conference announcing the founding of the prize in 1994 and the late Mordecai Richler, one of the three initial judges, along with Alice Munro and University of Ottawa English professor David Staines, proclaiming, “All three of us are politically incorrect. Looking for the first winner, we will not favour young writers over old writers, or vice versa. We won’t favour a book written by a woman over a man, or a black, gay or native writer, any more than somebody whose family has been here for 200 years.”The criterion was to be strictly literary quality. What a concept! Richler’s comments at the time reflected widespread unease over the Governor General’s Awards for literature, a suspicion that juries for these awards were increasingly all too aware of the need for diversity in handing out prizes — the children’s birthday party syndrome. Make sure everybody gets a prize. Although Richler did not mention regions, the biggest bugaboo in this regard was certainly regional.

Marchand, though he still thinks releasing a longlist has as much to do with politics as marketing, feels much better about the shortlist. He especially approves of the small press-bent of the list, and of the inclusion of two titles in translation.

(Which goes to show, we guess, that the definition of “political correctness” can be a slippery one.)

Related links:
Read Philip Marchand’s column on the Giller shortlist

Gay book yanked from high-school reading list

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported today on the removal of a gay-themed book from a Webster, N.Y. high-school summer reading list and the author’s subsequent accusation that the Webster Central School District officials are “un-American” and “wrong.”

“Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez, was removed from the list of about 200 books earlier this month by Webster Central School District officials,” according to the article. Despite landing the International Reading Association’s 2003 Young Adults’ Choice award and the American Library Association’s Best Book for Young Adults, the book was pulled from the summer reading list earlier this month. This was reportedly done because of the book’s sexual content, not its gay content.

In response to the book being yanked, author Sanchez said, “We live in a country where freedom of speech and thought are cherished values. Every attempt to censor a book is an attack on our constitutional freedoms.”

Related links:
Read the full Rochester Democrat & Chronicle story here

On the graphic memoir

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently posted an article on its website about the rise of graphic memoirs, or memoirs in comic book form. This news itself isn’t so noteworthy: with numerous autobiographically inspired books like Art Spiegelman’s Maus (published in 1992), Chester Brown’s I Never Liked You (1994), Craig Thompson’s Blankets (2003), and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis books already in existence, memoirs have long been a staple category in the comix genre. What’s interesting is the continuing acceptance of the form mainstream publishers, as shown by the glut of graphic memoirs slated for release this year from conventional trade publishers like HarperCollins, Knopf, and Houghton Mifflin.

The other thing that’s unusual is that the exact subject matter of these new memoirs differs somewhat from the traditional historical and youth romance paragons of the genre. Houghton Mifflin’s upcoming release is Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, about Bechdel’s closeted gay father and her childhood spent in the family funeral home, while Dragonslippers, by Rosalind B. Penfold, is about an abusive relationship. (The latter was first published in Canada by Penguin Canada.) There are also three new graphic novels that take personal looks at cancer.

Related links:
Click here for the piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer