Yesterday I received my new copy of Poets & Writers Magazine (aff link), something I look forward to 6 times per year. As I was flipping through the pages, I noticed something that had grabbed my attention before – a majority of the ads appear to be from various MFA programs around the country.

Yes, there are a few ads by small presses and a few writing services sprinkled in those pages, but MFA programs dominate a lot of the magazine’s ad space. And, along with the magazine, I received a solicitation to donate to Poets & Writers. As I understand it, the donations help to support the various programs that PW offers to fledgling writers.

What’s my point?

While everyone is hurting nowadays because of the crummy economy, literary magazines have always struggled. PW appears to do well compared to some of the smaller publications that rely soley on subscribers to make ends meet. Even then, very few are lucky to break even and most just stay in the red.

If MFA programs are the only ones advertising in the larger magazines, then that well probably dries up pretty fast. There’s very little fresh blood keeping the literary magazines going in terms of revenue streams.

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Today I found this interesting editorial in the New York Times by Stanley Fish (who, I might add is the dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at my alma mater, University of Illinois at Chicago). In his piece, he writes about a new "translation" of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which basically turns the poem into everyday-English prose.

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:

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2008 is nearing an end with rapid speed. For those of you who love lists, then the New York Times has a good one for you! They published their annual 100 Notable Books of 2008 list recently. I browsed through the list and was happy to see that I have read a handful of book that they picked. But I also felt embarrassed because I didn’t read as many as I thought I would have. There are so many books I want to read, but there’s never enough time!

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This morning, as I was recklessly surfing the internet, a new website caught my attention. The site is called BookTrib and claims to be all about books! Hey, they got my attention. Here’s a short excerpt from their About page:

BookTrib is a full service portal dedicated to bringing all the news, blog, sites, and information about books, writers, and readers under one link. One place to stay up-to-date about the world of books and everything related to them. If it’s about books, it’s on BookTrib.

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Even as the death of author Michael Crichton is still fresh in our minds, another giant in the world of literature has been taken to that enormous bookstore in the sky: John Leonard, author and critic, has died at the age of 69 from lung cancer.

While John Leonard himself may not be a household name, you will probably be familiar with a few of the authors he helped propel to literary stardom, most notably Grabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison. I came across this interesting article from the Washington Post, which says in part:

Mr. Leonard was a steadfast promoter of many literary friends, including Morrison. He also was credited with launching Márquez’s reputation among American readers after the Colombian writer received mixed reviews in France for his masterwork, "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

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This morning after I woke up, I turned the television on and caught the last few minutes of Mad Men. During the commercial break, however, there was a trailer for a movie I had originally wrote about in this post. The movie will be released soon and is an adaptation of a short story called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Originally written by early twentieth century author F. Scott Fitzgerald, this was a story I can remember reading in my younger years and really enjoying. So naturally, I’m very intrigued that it has been made into a movie.

Of course, what’s more intriguing is that it’s a short story. No movies in recent memory have been based off of short fiction, as Hollywood has a penchant for taking novels in the pop fiction genre and totally twisting them around until the movie barely resembles anything in the book.

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Brad’s Note: One new feature I’ll be implementing on this site, starting with this post, is posting reviews of books I have recently read. While some books I review may have been out for a while, I will also try to review some new releases as well.

Before I start, I have to admit something: I was reluctant to read this book. Why? Probably because it was released when I was in my last year of college and I was completely engrossed in my classes at the time. Not much of an excuse, I know, but better late than never, right?

Also, I should point out that this post probably does not qualify as a review. It’s more of a few general thoughts about the book I had. I just don’t want to be too misleading in the title of this post.

The Road (aff link) written by Cormac McCarthy, is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about a post-apocalyptic world where a man and his son are trying to get to the coast because the man thinks they have a better chance for survival there.

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I recently finished reading The Alchemist (aff link) for a book club I belong to. I must admit, at first the book didn’t excite me very much. Even the first chapter or two dragged. But after that, I became engrossed in the story and I ended up liking the book enough to recommend here. That is hardly the point of this post, however.

The Alchemist was originally written in Portuguese, and then translated into many languages, including English. It’s probably one of those rare gems in the US publishing industry that a translated book becomes such a big hit. I have never been averse to reading translated works of literature (maybe with the exception of poetry, but that’s another post for another day). But I often wonder what has been lost in the translation process. Perhaps many Americans feel this way, which is why we (as a country) don’t read that many translated books. Maybe the issue is much more complicated than that.

On Sunday, while reading the New York Times (online, of course), I came across this article about the lack of translated books from foreign authors in the American publishing industry. It’s actually a deficit that is hurting Americans more and more as the world becomes more connected through travel and technology. Yes, there are world-class authors right here in the United States and world-class books are being published, in English, every year. But we (Americans) are still missing out on the larger picture of world literary discourse.

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Today I was thrilled to get in the mail my copy of Poets & Writers Magazine (aff link), as it is one of the very few print subscriptions I have maintained over the years. I usually read the articles over a period of a week or two. But tonight, being a lazy Saturday night, I decided to dive in early.

One article in particular caught my eye – an article about travel writing. I was intrigued because I love to write (obviously), and I also love to travel. While I have never combined the two and written articles about my travels, it remains one of those elusive dreams to get paid as a globe-trotting writer.

The article makes a few really good points. The first point that jumped out is that travel writing is not the same thing as writing guidebooks (ie. those destination guides you pick up at the newsstand at your airport). Rather, travel writing provides a narrative of your journey and contains all the elements of a story (beginning, middle, end, etc).

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The same group that helped in the defense of Roger Rapoport, who was sued after trying to publish The Harry Potter Lexicon (read more about the case here), will become an official tax-exempt organization to help writers with issues on fair use and first amendment rights. I came across this article on Publishers Weekly, which describes the goals of the new organization that will…

…help support other creative artists faced with legal threats or lawsuits.

Additionally, the Right to Write will also collect and help spread information regarding intellectual property issues:

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