Luna’s Prose Ramblings

Random House is set to release fourteen unpublished shorts by Vonnegut as serial e-books starting end of August this year. As Dave Itzkoff poignantly describes; “In a twist that Kurt Vonnegut, the master satirist, would have appreciated, he continues his career despite the apparent impediments to his productivity.”

If you collected all the books that were ever recommended to be read, one would end up with more books than could ever be read in one life-time. So isn’t it nice then that The Second Pass makes an effort to sum up what not to read ? Saves us time !

Yes, it might raise some eyebrows, but there have always been people that insist that they read Playboy for the articles. And since Nabokov’s 1969 novel Ada was excerpted in Playboy, it gave its literary editor, Amy Grace Loyd, foot in the door.

The original of Laura was long unread, since Vladimir Nabokov stated as a dying wish that his unfinished novella should not be published. After a change of heart, though, his son Dmitri contacted literary agent Wylie to find a suitable purchaser.

Loyd decided to emphasise the long-standing association of Playboy with Nabokov by way of the orchids that appeared in Ada. After Wylie received a notice of no interest from The New Yorker, a publication that also had a strong association with Nabokov in days gone by, he offered the option of first serial to Loyd; “I’m so glad all those orchids did not die in vain. I don’t imagine anybody’s taking good care of them over there.”

In a spectacle reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, John David California, author of 60 Years Later Coming Through the Rye, and his publishers have been served with court orders to stop the American launch of the book after it has already become available in the United Kingdom.

California says he was inspired to write a stand-alone follow-up of Catcher in the Rye after he was entranced by the battered copy he found in an abandoned Cambodian hut. The book sees a 76-year-old Holden Caulfield escape from his nursing home and take a bus through New York all the while reminicing his adult life.

JD Salinger, the author of the original seminal work, instructed his lawyers to seek legal action against California and his publishers, Windupbird Publishing. Salinger’s lawyers, associated with both his United States’ and United Kingdom’s literary agents, have requested copies of the disputed book. According to the suit filed, the right to create a sequel or use the character of Holden Caulfield lies with The Rye’s creator and 60 Years is in no way a comment upon or parody or criticism of the original.

Fredrik Colting of Sweden-based publisher Nicotext, owner of Windupbird Publishing, says not to be worried about the suit. According to him, the action is ludricrous. 60 Years is written in similar style as The Rye, but style is not copyrightable and words and imagination belongs to everyone.

Owner and founder of Windupbird Publishing, Carl-Johan Gadd says not to be in the least bit worried. He has instructed California from the start not to include direct references and the main character is not called Holden Caulfield. He is only referred to a Mr C., which leaves no reference for Salinger’s lawyers to use.

A collection of previously unpublished Mark Twain’s penning will be published in April 2009 by HarperStudio. Many of them, such as a short by the title The Undertaker’s Tale, has been recovered from the masses of personal correspondence that Twain has left after his death in 1910.

The volume entitled Who is Mark Twain ? also includes a musing by Twain on the matter of publishing, in which he says;

the man who does most toward deciding me whether I shall publish the book or burn it, is the man who always goes to sleep. If he drops off within fifteen minutes, I burn the book; if he keeps awake three-quarters of an hour, I publish – and I publish with the greatest confidence, too.

The University of Virginia, Alma Mater of Edgar Allan Poe during his brief stint at university, celebrates the author’s 200th birthday by the acquisition and exhibition of a letter of personal correspondence between Poe and his New York publishers, Langley.

The correspondence is a letter of apology accompanying a request for the purchase of an article, which should elevate his situation of being ‘desperately pushed for money’. In the letter Poe writes;

“Will you be so kind enough to put the best possible interpretation upon my behaviour while in N-York? You must have conceived a queer idea of me — but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying”,

referring to friend, poet and lawyer William Ross Wallace.

The University of Virginia purchased the letter from a private collector for an unknown sum. The University Library released the letter this week ahead of an exhibit opening this Saturday, March 7th, that highlights Poe’s enduring literary works, brief life and mysterious death at the age of 40.

There are many wonderful literary initiatives out there in the world. This time I would like to draw your attention to Fifty-Two Stories, an outlet created by Harper Perennial to give established and new talent a chance to spread their wings and short stories. Fifty-Two Stories will publish a story every week for one year.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announces that The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún will be published in early May of this year. The work by Tolkien is a retelling of Sigurd the Völsung and The Fall of the Niflungs as part of the poetic Edda. The work will include an introduction by Tolkien and note by his son, Christopher.

Thanks to an agreement between United States representative James McGovern and the Cuban authorities, copies of writings by Ernest Hemingway have found their way to the J.F. Kennedy Library. The items include several proofs and items of personal correspondence, some of which have not been accessible to Hemingway scholars to date.

It is well known that Hemingway spent a great deal of his life in Cuba, leaving behind an extensive collection of documents in his house in Fica Viaga after his death in 1961.

Every once in a while, I am amazed when I hear about literary freedom being compromised. However, I am astonished if it happens in my own city.

The BBC reports on the cancellation of a reading and book signing that Waterstone’s Cardiff branch would host for Welsh poet Patrick Jones. His collection of poems ‘Darkness is where the stars are’ is described as questioning the beliefs in society. However, a campaign by the christian organisation Christian Voice, led to Waterstone’s deeming it prudent to cancel the event to avoid potential disruption to the store and consequently led to the author signing his books on the street.

Waterstone’s spokeperson said ‘(t)he book remains available through Waterstone’s and we are very happy for that to be the case. We don’t act as a censor, we stock books in the tens of thousands and would only remove them from sale on the advice of the publisher’.

Stephen Green of Christian Voice said the decision was a triumph ‘for the Lord, not for us. Just the knowledge that we were on our way has put the fear of God into the opposition’.