Should politicians admit to loving Samuel Beckett?

British Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg professed his love for Samuel Beckett in a Guardian column on Friday. He wrote that Beckett’s work seems more and more subversive to him as the years go by. “It’s that willingness to question the things the rest of us take for granted that I admire most about Beckett; the courage to ask questions that are dangerous because, if the traditions and meanings we hold so dear turn out to be false, what do we do then?”

A bit of a risky statement for a politician, no? Maybe less so for a Brit. The column sparked discussion in the blogosphere over whether or not an American politician would be lambasted for admitting to Beckett-induced existential crises. The Guardian’s Michael Tomasky (an American) was impressed with Clegg.

“You British folks understand, don’t you, that if an American presidential candidate said his hero was Samuel Beckett, he’d be finished. I mean totally finished. He couldn’t even get away with an American equivalent…

“Who’s the American Beckett, Eugene O’Neill? You’d immediately have right-wing blogs (because obviously only a Jesus-hating Democrat would ever conceivably say such a thing) combing through every word the guy ever wrote looking for signs of lack of patriotism, sexual mischief and other alien traits.”

American political blogger Matthew Yglesias disagreed.

“I think Tomasky is actually wrong that it would be deadly. Presidential elections are overwhelmingly determined by the fundamentals. I think people used to think that you couldn’t win a presidential election while being a black man named ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ whose autobiography admits to cocaine use and who used to represent Hyde Park in the State Senate while attending a black nationalist church. It just turns out that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our narrow conventional wisdom.”

Daily book biz round-up, March 29

Your book world news for today:

• Contrary to reports out of Italy, Roth and Grisham both heart Obama
• Stephen King hearts Kindle, hates iPad
• Will e-books put wholesalers out of business?
• Diagram Prize winner: Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes
• Jessica Grant wins Winterset Award
• Get ready for TI2: Long John Silver’s Revenge
• James Franco: dull dramatic actor turned funny comedic actor turned bizarro soap star now becomes author
• Captured on film: Obama purchases books at indie bookstore

Bookmarks: Small press iPhone apps, what Obama reads, and more

• Coach House Books? There’s an App for that
• The New York Times remembers celebrated American poet Lucille Clifton
• Apple may not be on our side after all
• Shocking White House library books!

Bookmarks: R. Crumb’s Genesis and a double helping of George Orwell

Sundry links from around the web:

• Underground comics artist Robert Crumb (Fritz the Cat) has completed his take on the Book of Genesis.
• To the surprise of no one, publishing execs are not immune to pay freezes. To the surprise of this Quillblogger, their base pay is still $800,000 U.S.
• In the reasons-authors-should-never-give-up department: George Orwell’s Animal Farm was rejected by none other than T.S. Eliot.
• Orwell on losing his love of books.
• Turns out Bush and Obama have something in common after all: their agent.

Arrr! J.K. Rowling and John Grisham fall victim to pirates

Two of the planet’s bestselling authors, J.K. “I’ll kick Stephenie Meyer’s ass” Rowling and John Grisham, are among several authors whose books have apparently been illegally uploaded to a San Francisco-based website that promotes itself as “YouTube for books.” Scribd.com was launched by a couple of twentysomething Harvard students, and has since become an attraction for a reported 55 million visitors each month. While the site boasts a number of legal uses – the Obama campaign used it to upload policy material and thereby sidestep media filters – it now looks to have succumbed to the “Napster effect,” whereby copyrighted works are uploaded without permission and distributed for free.

An article in The Times online reports:

A search of Scribd by The Times yesterday found copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Ken Follett’s most recent novel World Without End among many bestselling titles, raising fears that the piracy affecting the music industry may have spread to books.

When presented with a list of links to various Harry Potter books, Neil Blair, J. K. Rowling’s lawyer at the Christopher Little literary agency, said that Scribd did not have permission “and what you have identified are infringing listings which we were aware of and actioning”.

The online culture of disseminating information online for free (Quillblog finds it interesting that the word “crib” appears in Scribd’s name) has also been taken on recently by The Globe and Mail‘s Peter Scowen. Scowen writes that the culture of “free” threatens the traditional means by which authors and other content creators earn their living, which seems irrefutable, but it’s open to debate as to whether the solution is to rage against the machine or try to adapt traditional methods of doing business to the new reality.

Scowen’s specific target is the upcoming Book Summit, “Giving It Away: Books, Business, and the Culture of Free.” The conference, sponsored by Humber College and the Book and Periodical Council, is an opportunity for publishers, writers, booksellers, and other interested parties to “learn about the opportunities, the pitfalls, the marketing techniques, the delivery methods, the creators, the readers” that can be tapped by properly utilizing the “culture of free.” The cost of the summit is $145.

Bookmarks: 1,000 novels everyone must read, toilet poems, and more

• The Guardian has created a list of 1000 novels everyone must read, broken down into categories like comedy, crime, family and self, and state of the nation. In considering the list, Stuart Walton wonders whether or not he will lose the will to read.
• A Japanese group is campaigning to use “toilet poems” in bathroom cubicles to decrease toilet paper usage in Japan.
• To: President Obama. From: McSweeney’s, and the kids of the U.S. — Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country

Inaugural poet bolsters small publisher

A small St.Paul, Minnesota-based publisher is hoping to reap big rewards in the wake of Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony yesterday. Graywolf Press is the publisher of poet Elizabeth Alexander, who wrote and recited the inauguration poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” and the company has reportedly been receiving urgent calls from Barnes & Noble to ship copies of the work as quickly as possible.

According to the Canadian Press:

The St. Paul-based publisher is printing 100,000 copies of Alexander’s inaugural poem, by far the biggest print run in its 35-year history but not for an inaugural work. Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of the Morning,” recited in 1993 at President Bill Clinton’s inaugural, was a million seller.

Alexander’s poem, titled “Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration,” consists of 14, unrhymed three-line stanzas, and a one-line coda: “praise song for walking forward in that light.” It will be released as an US$8 paperback, 32 pages, on Feb. 6.

Bookmarks: inauguration edition

• Taken from Fellow Citizens: The Penguin Book of U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses, test your knowledge of the final words of former presidents’ inaugural speeches (Jacket Copy)
• Barack Obama will take the oath of office on the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used, and will eat a meal modelled on some of Lincoln’s favourite dishes (including the apple-cinnamon sponge cake). For The Book Bench, Adam Gopnick and Jill Lepore recommend some Lincoln books (The New Yorker)
• Martin Levin dissects Obama’s reading list (The Globe and Mail)
• Evangelist Rick Warren (and author of The Purpose Driven Life) delivers the invocation at Obama’s inauguration (abc6.com)
• Q&A with inauguration poet Elizabeth Alexander (TIME Magazine)

Capes and tights save publishing

Spider-Man has already saved incoming president Barack Obama; he’s now poised to save the entire publishing industry. In the midst of the gigantic economic clusterfuck global financial meltdown at the end of 2008, one segment of the publishing industry not only remained solvent, but actually grew: comic books.

The graphic novel industry saw a growth in sales of 5% in 2008, according to an article in USA Today.

Marvel Comics’ Secret Invasion #1 was the best-selling comic book of 2008. The eight-issue miniseries about the takeover of superheroes by shape-shifting Skrulls took the first six spots. Only Uncanny X-Men #500 (No. 7) and DC Comics’ Final Crisis #1 (No. 9) also cracked the top 10. Diamond did not release actual sales figures, but best-selling comic books (priced at $2.99 or $3.99) normally sell more than 100,000 copies.

Another title that sold well in 2008 was DC’s reprint of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel Watchmen, which has seen a spike in interest in advance of the March 6 release of the film adaptation.

Hey kids! Wanna read about America’s president-elect?

Well now you can!

For real?

Yes you can.

Oh, and there’s also this: Barack Obama and Spider-Man appear in comic book together