After years of literary investigation, a professor at the University of Nottingham said Tuesday he’s certain “Double Falsehood, or the Distressed Lovers” was born out of “Cardenio,” a play Shakespeare scholars believe existed…”There is definitely Shakespearean DNA,” said English literature professor Brean Hammond, who has worked since 2002 to determine if “Double Falsehood” has Shakespearean roots.

As the article mentions, there is not enough proof with 100% certainty that “Double Falsehood” is based off of this mysterious “Cardenio” play.

However, there is more evidence for the existence of another Shakespeare play than just speculation about Shakespearean DNA found in another drama:

There is strong evidence “Cardenio” existed: records showed the actors in Shakespeare’s company were paid for acting in it. And Hammond said Theobald claimed he had used three of the Bard’s manuscripts when he wrote “Double Falsehood,” which opened to positive reviews in London’s West End.

As someone who enjoys Shakespeare (although I’m no scholar), it’s fascinating to think that there could be one more play to add to his folio.

Of course, there’s also the age-old controversy about whether or not Shakespeare wrote anything at all, or if his plays were written by someone else. I’m not going to get into this debate on this post because I’ve written about it here The verdict is in: Shakespeare is a fraud and Was Shakespeare a fraud?.

The possibility of another Shakespeare play is just another fascinating chapter in the ongoing research of the most famous writer in the English-speaking world.

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In this particular case, Scribner is going to be publishing and shipping a modified version of Hemingway’s book A Moveable Feast to bookstores around the country (and probably the world). I haven’t seen this new version yet in my local bookstore, though I’m keeping my eyes open.

The changes made to the book are the result of one of Hemingway’s grandsons who did not like the way the novel portrayed his grandmother:

The grandson has removed several sections of the book’s final chapter and replaced them with other writing of Hemingway’s that the grandson feels paints his grandma in a more sympathetic light. Ten other chapters that roused the grandson’s displeasure have been relegated to an appendix, thereby, according to the grandson, creating “a truer representation of the book my grandfather intended to publish.”

This brings up a whole host of ethical questions for the publishing world. Can and/or should a publisher really do this? Even the person wanting the changes holds the copyright to the work, shouldn’t they have to publish a separate book instead of forever changing the original?

While those aren’t easy questions to answer, they are questions that need to be addressed, especially today where digital content has thrown a wrench in the copyright machine.

A Moveable Feast was first published by Scribner in 1964, after Hemingway died. By all accounts, the manuscript was pretty much complete and Hemingway intended it for publication. So why would Scribner want to change Hemingway’s work in such a dramatic fashion? And, as the NYT OpEd points out, what happens if family of other prominent people mentioned in the book (think: F. Scott Fitzgerald) don’t like the way their own family member is portrayed?

As an author, I am concerned by Scribner’s involvement in this “restored edition.” With this reworking as a precedent, what will Scribner do, for instance, if a descendant of F. Scott Fitzgerald demands the removal of the chapter in “A Moveable Feast” about the size of Fitzgerald’s penis, or if Ford Madox Ford’s grandson wants to delete references to his ancestor’s body odor.

I’d be concerned too. And I’d certainly hope that anything I have written would be preserved ‘as is’ for publication, even after my death. Okay, maybe the publisher could clean up my writing and correct the occasional spelling error or typo, but I definitely wouldn’t want any major re-writing to be done in the name of sparing someone’s feelings. Publishers, after all, have a responsibility to the authors they publish, and then to the readers:

All publishers, Scribner included, are guardians of the books that authors entrust to them. Someone who inherits an author’s copyright is not entitled to amend his work. There is always the possibility that the inheritor could write his own book offering his own corrections.

I totally agree with the above assessment. If the grandson does not like the way A Moveable Feast depicts his grandmother, then write a new book offering the new corrections. Scribner needs to leave the original alone.

Do you think Scribner should be allowed to make these changes to Hemingway’s work? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

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People get all sorts of stuff tattooed on their bodies: Everything from animals, dragons, names/pictures of children and various symbols that hold special meaning for the wearer. I even have a tattoo on my arm that I got over a decade ago when I was in the US Navy. Back then, and even now, I never considered a ‘literary’ tattoo.

According to this LA Times Book Blog article, Justin Taylor and Eva Talmadge from HTMLGiant are asking for submissions from anyone with a literary-related tattoo on his/her body:

We are seeking high quality photographs of your literary tattoos for an upcoming book. Send us your ink! …All images must include the name (or pseudonym) of the tattoo bearer, city and state or country, and a transcription of the text itself, along with its source. For portraits or illustrations, please include the name of the author or book on which it’s based. We’d also like to read a few words about the tattoo’s meaning to you — why you chose it, when you first read that poem or book, or how its meaning has evolved over time. How much (or how little) you choose to say about your tattoo is up to you, but a paragraph or two should do the trick.Please send clear digital images of the highest print quality possible to tattoolit@gmail.com.

I don’t think I’ll be running out to the nearest tattoo parlor anytime soon to have my favorite Emily Dickinson poem enshrined on my skin. Once the anthology is published, however, it will be very interesting to see the diverse number of tattoos and literary references that people have chosen to be permanently inked on their bodies.

Would you ever get a tattoo of a line from your favorite poem or novel tattooed on your body? And if you already have one, please share your experience with the rest of us by leaving a comment below.

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I’m reading the book right now and find it very funny. But I should also admit that I haven’t read the original Pride and Prejudice, so I might be missing out on some of nuances of the story. Nevertheless I’m still being thoroughly entertained. You can bet that when I’m finished, I’ll write a more detailed book review here.

When I first saw the book, with its disturbing cover, at my local bookstore, I instantly wondered how the author came about combining to a classic novel with zombies. Did he have a thing for Jane Austen? Or was this something that just seemed like a good idea? A quick Google search gave me my answer.

I came across this short interview with Seth from Entertainment Weekly. In it, he gives a glimpse as to the inspiration behind his novel:

My editor at Quirk had wanted to do a mash-up of some type for a long time. He had all these lists of public domain titles and lists of modern literary devices. The robot phenomenon. The vampire phenomenon. And zombies. And we arrived at Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because, when you take a look at the original book, it’s almost as if, subconsciously, Jane Austen is laying out the perfect groundwork for an ultraviolent bone-crushing zombie massacre to take place. For instance, there’s a regiment of soldiers camped out near the Bennett household. In the book, they’re just there for characters to flirt with. But it’s not that big a leap to say, Okay, they’re there because the countryside has been overrun with what they call the “unmentionable menace.”

And readers are lapping this up. As I write this the book is currently #28 on Amazon. I also recall that when the book first hit the stores, it was sold out for a while.

Good exercise for aspiring writers

If you are an aspiring writer, taking a classic novel and re-working it might be a good exercise. All the “hard work” has already been done: There’s already a plot, characters, setting, etc. You just have to change things around and add your own personal touch. You can either stay true to the original plot, or go totally off course and try to be original as possible.

It might be a good idea to do this with the classics – works that are in the public domain so you don’t have to worry about copyright infringement. This is especially true if you plan to get your re-working of a classic published.

Of course, you can do this with pretty much any novel or short story if you don’t plan on publishing and just want to do it for your own creative good. In fact there’s a fairly large community that does this for fun. It’s called fan fiction.

What classic piece of literature would you like to see re-written? What element would you add to spice it up? Zombies? Aliens? Robots? Monsters? Leave a comment below with your answers. I really look forward to seeing what you come up with.

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Justice Stevens, who dropped out of graduate study in English to join the Navy in 1941, is an Oxfordian — that is, he believes the works ascribed to William Shakespeare actually were written by the 17th earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.

This old argument is nothing new, even on this blog, where I wrote this post a while back that garnered some interesting comments (worth your time to read!).

The argument that Shakespeare didn’t write any of those plays is based on the idea that he was from a lower class family, did not have the right schooling, etc. In other words, it’s typical class warfare. But Shakespearean scholars and academics alike have pretty much debunked that myth. The fact that this same argument is coming from Justice Stevens, isn’t that surprising according to this article from the NY Daily News:

Like most of those who espouse such foolishness, Justice Stevens’ arguments rely essentially on a kind of snobbish thinking one does not want to acknowledge in a Supreme Court Justice. It assumes writers of genius must be "our kind of people," not a bumpkin from Stratford.

p>Of course, people like Justice Steven will never come right out and say Shakespeare didn’t write all those works. Shakespearean conspiracy theorists typically use other ways to make their point. The WSJ article has a quote from Justice Stevens that proves this point:

"Where are the books? You can’t be a scholar of that depth and not have any books in your home," Justice Stevens says. "He never had any correspondence with his contemporaries, he never was shown to be present at any major event — the coronation of James or any of that stuff. I think the evidence that he was not the author is beyond a reasonable doubt."

This argument that Justice Stevens gives fails because it assumes that the literary world Shakespeare lived in was similar to our own. During his time Shakespeare was never considered a scholar. He was a playwright, an actor, a shareholder in the theater company – in other words, Shakespeare was a working man.

And the argument Justice Stevens gives about there not being any letters Shakespeare wrote to contemporaries is just crazy. Did it ever occur to him that letters might not have survived the last 400 years? Shakespeare was not the literary icon during his day that he is now. Yes, his plays were famous, but he wasn’t. Anyone receiving a letter from him would have little impetus to save and preserve any letter that Shakespeare wrote.

The rebuttals I’m giving are also echoed in the Daily News article. There’s also hundreds, if not thousands, of books devoted to this subject. So it’s not worth it for me to reinvent the wheel and pick apart every argument people like Justice Stevens makes.

Justice Stevens should stick to U.S. law and leave Shakespearean scholarship, well, to the scholars.

What’s my own theory about Shakespeare? I think he did write all those plays and poems. He might have had the help of those he worked with, but I think the works are basically his.

What’s your theory? Did Shakespeare write all those plays, or should credit go to someone else? Give us your opinion in the comments.

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Well today, the Chicago Tribune caught on to his literary musings in this piece, and even seeks to throw in some analysis of the Governor’s taste in poetry:

The governor’s identification with Tennyson’s hero might also raise eyebrows: In Greek mythology, Ulysses was less noted for honor than for craftiness, the ancient equivalent of wink-and-nod politics. Of him, Tennyson wrote: "I mete and dole/unequal laws unto a savage race."

Making such connections, however, is always walking a thin line between inserting our own biases when none may exist, and making a worthy comparison. In this case, I think the writer of the Tribune article made a worthy comparison – just my opinion though.

Presidents and writing

At the other end of the political spectrum, we have President-elect Obama, who represents the exact opposite of Gov. Blagojevich for most people. And Obama’s own literary style can be seen in his writing and in his speeches, representing a return to the tradition of the U.S. President being statesmen – something this country has gone without for a while now.

Even the mostly conservative Wall Street Journal couldn’t help complimenting President-elect Obama on his writing in this article:

In the last year, Obama’s 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father" (though not his later, more conventional campaign book, "The Audacity of Hope") has been discovered by the literary profession as if it were the Comstock Lode: He wrote it himself! Every sentence has its own graceful cadence! He could as easily be a novelist as a politician!

The article then goes on to look at other U.S. Presidents who were great writers – most notable is Abraham Lincoln:

The two-minute speech that Lincoln read at Gettysburg, dedicating the battlefield as a cemetery, is a miracle of verbal compression, so tightly packed with layers of implication that even now historians and critics are still uncovering fresh subtleties in its scant 270 words of text. The Gettysburg Address redefined the purpose and meaning of the nation with such richness and precision, and with such breathtaking economy, that it has become a classic of American literature, at least as great a piece of writing as "Moby-Dick"or the very best poems in "Leaves of Grass."

While it’s not a requirement for any U.S. politician to be eloquent (just look at Sarah Palin!), it certainly helps. It shows a certain thoughtfulness and intellect that can be of great use when being the most powerful person in the world.

I must confess that I have not yet read Dreams from My Father (aff link), but now I’m curious and will add it to my ever-expanding list of books I need to read.

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When the movie was first announced, I wrote about it in this post. Now the movie is gaining a lot more attention, as well as the story itself. I even noticed at my local bookstore there’s a hardbound edition of the story that is fully illustrated and advertises the story being a "Motion Picture" right on the front cover. Yes, the short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

So what’s my problem? Here it is: This was a good story long before Hollywood discovered it! I first read "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" about ten years ago. It was one of my favorite stories by Fitzgerald. And I know there are legions of people out there who have loved this story for decades.

While F. Scott Fitzgerald has been dead since 1940, this is also a figurative "slap" in his face. He tried to succeed in Hollywood in his later years, mostly for financial reason (Fitzgerald wasn’t a fan of Hollywood either), but failed and then died before he could even finish his last novel.

I’ll conclude by saying that it’s kinda sad some of these great works don’t get their proper acclaim until after Hollywood makes a movie out of it, and in the process, totally bungles and distorts the original story. Will I watch the movie? Maybe (just to see what a hack job they did). Will I continue to read and enjoy all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s other works? You betcha!

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The book is written by Dennis Danielson (who is a distinguished Milton academic) and is called Paradise Lost: Parallel Prose Edition (aff link), where the original poem is in the left-hand column and Danielson’s translation is in the right-hand column. Fish notes that Danielson thinks this new edition of the classic poem will pursue more readers to read it:

The value of his edition, he says, is that it "invites more readers than ever before to enjoy the magnificent story — to experience the grandeur, heroism, pathos, beauty and grace of Milton’s inimitable work."

My reaction to this new book is somewhat split. On one hand, this is really no different than all the other study aides, reader guides, commentaries and so forth that already flood the market for students and casual readers alike. On the other hand, however, I always tend to believe that works like Paradise Lost are best read in their original form. The downside to this, of course, is that the original form turns a lot of people off. But with some careful, close reading and a lot of patience, I’ve found even Paradise Lost can be read in it’s original state without the use of translations.

The one big downside to books like Danielson’s is that you are basically reading one person’s interpretation of the poem. This often limits readers in their own reading and interpretation of a work and, in a sense, places blinders on the reader.

But in reading this editorial, it sounds like Danielson doesn’t want to interject his own interpretation onto the reader, as Fish points out:

It is from this strenuous and often frustrating labor that Danielson wants to free the reader, who, once liberated, will be able to go with the flow and enjoy the pleasures of a powerful narrative.

Sounds like a noble cause, right? The problem is, the reader becomes dependent on such interpretive works, and uses them as a crutch. While Danielson might be freeing the reader to enjoy Milton’s work without actually having to do the "work" of reading, he’s still giving you a one-sided idea of what Paradise Lost is all about. Stanley Fish gives a great example of this. I’m not going to re-hash his argument, I’ll let you, the reader, read it and come to your own conclusion.

What do you think about Danielson’s work? Is he doing the reader a favor, or simply providing just another crutch for the reader to use to avoid actually having to read the original writing? Why or why not? Let us know your opinion below. Don’t be shy, I promise not to bite!

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In case you haven’t read the article yet, here’s the lowdown: Currently, Poe is buried in Baltimore, MD where he died back in 1849. But another city, Philadelphia, PA, also lays claim to Poe’s body, since that is the city where the author wrote many of his most famous works.

The story doesn’t stop there, however. A Philadelphia Poe scholar named Edward Petit is the one fighting for the rights to bury the author in his city. This is what he said in a recent interview:

"So, Philadelphians, let’s hop in our cars, drive down I-95 and appropriate a body from a certain Baltimore cemetery," Mr. Pettit wrote in an article for the Philadelphia City Paper in October. "I’ll bring the shovel."

While he’s obviously joking about robbing the grave (or is he?), I can’t help but think this is exactly the type of thing Poe would love.

Seriously though, Baltimore won’t take this sitting down. The curator for the Poe House in the city, Jeff Jerome, won’t let the dead writer go anywhere – at least not on his watch.

"Philadelphia can keep its broken bell and its cheese steak, but Poe’s body isn’t going anywhere," said Jeff Jerome, the curator of the Poe House in Baltimore and Mr. Pettit’s opponent in the debate.

That’s right, Mr. Petit and Mr. Jerome will be having a debate over the proper burial city for Poe, which will take place on January 13 at the Philadelphia Free Library. The prize for the winner of the debate? I’d like to say the winner will get to have Poe buried in their respective town, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. At the very least, this has created some tension between the two cities:

Mr. Jerome and Mr. Pettit both say there is little chance Poe’s body will leave Baltimore. Their argument, which even prompted the mayor of Baltimore to tell Philadelphia to back off, is good publicity for one of the country’s greatest writers, they say.

Debates and grave robbing aside, the article does make a good point that this is great publicity for Poe. In an age where television, the internet and fancy video games capture the attention of today’s youth, maybe this will at least get a few new people interested in the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe, a writer I have admired since my days in high school.

It should be noted for the record, however, that as the article points out, there are many US cities that can lay claim to Poe’s body. He didn’t stay in one place for very long. So anything less than dividing his corpse up among all those cities will probably leave a few people (and cities) disappointed.

My personal opinion: Leave him where he is. Why? The exact reason I gave above. He moved around a lot, so this can easily turn into a never-ending debate about the proper burial place for Poe.

What US city do you think should have the honor of having Poe buried there and why?

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Then, this evening as I was blindly surfing the web, I came across a list of books Palin wanted removed from the public library. I emphasize the word "public" because that’s what is important – a public library that is supposed to serve the public, including people of all beliefs and creeds. If a book is found offensive by a person, then don’t check that book out!

You can read more on Palin’s views on this post from librarian.net. But the real meat is the actual list. Now, I have no way to verify that these are really the books she wanted banned. They are the "usual suspects" though, that is, books that always appear to be targeted for the chopping block by one person or another.

I should mention that the list comes from a commenter on the blog, so it’s very hard to verify the validity of the list of books that Palin wanted banned. I’m going to do some more research and see if I can find trustworthy source to see if the list can be verified. More to come as events warrant…

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