America’s great literary hope, Jonathan Franzen, has once again made the shortlist for another award. Franzen has been added to the Bad Sex in Fiction shortlist for his newest novel Freedom (aff link). The award is sponsored by British magazine Literary Review, and given to the author who, well, writes really bad sex scenes.

According to this Huffington Post article, Franzen is on the shortlist because:

The scene in Freedom that attracted the judges’ attention was a phone sex encounter between two characters. While the passage is over-the-top in context, it becomes downright garish when excerpted — so much so, in fact, that I couldn’t bring myself to reprint even a sentence of it here. My favorite part, however, is Franzen’s wonderfully descriptive phrase, “protruding pencil of tenderness.” Use your imagination.

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Jonathan Franzen, the literary author who famously snubbed Oprah’s Book Club a few years back, has agreed to let his newest literary opus

Literature doesn’t have to be just words on a page (or screen). One literary publication is taking literature out of the confines of words and turning it into visual art. Electric Literature, a website I have already profiled here, does just that. They not only publish short fiction in both print and digital form, they visualize the literature they produce.

One of my favorite parts of what Electric Literature does is taking a single sentence from a short story they publish, and then animating it. The result is an illuminating visual interpretation of that one sentence. In a way, the short cartoons (often less than a minute long) represent how one’s imagination would perceive a particular literary “bit.”

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First they said that big-box book retailers like Borders, Barnes & Noble and even Amazon will be the death of the independent bookstore. And to some extent, the prediction has come true. A lot of the indie booksellers have closed shop over the last decade or so.

Now they’re saying that ebooks will be the death of bookstores altogether. After all, who needs to actually go to a physical store when you can just buy an ebook with the click of your mouse?

If Jason Rovito has his way, the indie bookstore could make a comeback not just as a bookstore, but as a collective of booksellers, writers, publishers and writing and reading groups. When indie bookstores were closing down all around, Jason did the unthinkable, he opened up his own store, called Of Swallows, Their Deeds and The Winter Below.

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Amazon has announced a new publishing imprint called AmazonCrossing. The goal of this imprint is to publish foreign titles that will be translated into English. Readers in the US have a history of being weary of translated titles, which make up only a small percentage of overall book sales in this country.

The online retailer began its first imprint, AmazonEncore, as a way to give exposure to great writers who are more-than-worthy of being published. AmazonCrossing has the same goal, only at the international level. Jeff Belle, VP of Books, says in an Amazon press release:

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Looks like the Bard might have written more than his already prolific canon of plays. A Shakespeare scholar from the University of Nottingham is fairly certain of the confirmation a new play was written by Shakespeare. According this article from the AP via Yahoo! News:

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.

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Ebooks are only a part of the digital revolution we are seeing in the world. Everything is becoming digitized; from literature to music and video. Computers are the new entertainment centers. Access to vast amounts of information is now at our fingertips and it’s only going to increase over time.

There’s one new literary magazine start-up that is helping take literature into the future. The quarterly publication is called Electric Literature Magazine. They are using more than just ebooks to help sell literature to a wider and more diverse audience.

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Today I had the privilege of giving an interview on the radio show Conversations LIVE with Cyrus Webb. I was contacted a few weeks ago by Mr. Webb as a result of a blog post I wrote (Author sells self-published book one copy at a time) about Christopher Herz who hand sells his book on the street to individuals. My interview focused on that and more.

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When I first began studying literature in college, I thought of literature as something pure – far removed from the superficial world of pop culture. I had read a lot of popular fiction in my life, but all that went out the window when I began dissecting literature at the college level. Looking back now I realize that I was a tad bit too idealistic in my thinking and I now realize that yes, even literature is subject to the whims of pop culture.

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I’m no fan of JD Salinger. I’m talking about the man, not his writing. You can read my reasoning in this earlier post What do authors owe their readers. Mr. Salinger is not helping his case in an ongoing legal battle where he wants to prevent publication of a ‘sequel’ to his infamous novel Catcher in the Rye.

You might recall that on July 1, an injunction was ordered by a judge that prevented the publication of the sequel by Swedish author Fredrik Colting called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. Since that ruling, groups ranging from free speech advocates, librarians, the Associated Press and others have been filing briefs with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to get the injunction lifted. The appeals court will start hearing arguments on September 3.

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