I’m going to be honest, I never really thought about this issue much until I came across this article in the Guardian Unlimited. The issue: contemporary fiction authors ignoring the explosive political climate America finds itself in. There aren’t many authors speaking out against the current administration, not to mention all the injustices done by way of eroding civil rights.

Instead, a majority of criticism has come from, of all other people, a former sports broadcaster! Keith Olbermann takes constant jabs at our government on his daily, primetime show, Countdown, asks questions and raises issues that few dare to bring up. I watch the show whenever I get a chance and must admit he does an incredible job pointing out the blunders of the Bush administration (not that it’s very hard to begin with).

Yet, in the United States, intellectuals (ie. authors) are usually thrown into the background and regarded as sideshow entertainment, listened to but not taken too seriously. And novelists just haven’t been that vocal in the American political scene, especially since 9/11:

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If you have kept up with all the hype associated with the Harry Potter books, you might think that the popular series is getting more children hooked on reading. But according to an article in the New York Times, this might be an illusion.

I have written about this before, applauding the Potter series for getting children to read. And in general, I still think this is true. But the long-term effects of Harry Potter on children’s reading habits might be a little  exaggerated:

But in keeping with the intricately plotted novels themselves, the truth about Harry Potter and reading is not quite so straightforward a success story. Indeed, as the series draws to a much-lamented close, federal statistics show that the percentage of youngsters who read for fun continues to drop significantly as children get older, at almost exactly the same rate as before Harry Potter came along.

When talking about reading habits, it’s the long-term that’s really important. Kids can read all the Harry Potter books they want, but if they don’t continue expanding their reading lists and replacing television or the internet with a paperback, the future of the publishing industry itself is looking pretty grim. After all, as future consumers of books, kids are the future of the publishing world.

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What do the words "hoodie", "Gitmo", "muffin top" and "wag" all have in common? Give up? They are all words that have been added to the just-published Collin’s English Dictionary 9th Edition.

Each year, when new editions of dictionaries are published, a long list of new words is always added. The words evolve from pop culture, technology, government and just about anywhere else you can think of. Even fast food giant McDonalds has unwillingly contributed to the English language with words such as Mcjob and McMansion (a large modern house that is mass produced).

This goes to show that language is alive and constantly evolving. Words that were slang or jargon are now everyday, common, household terms that  we use without even thinking twice. I remember a time when words like "internet" and "worldwide web" were unheard of and email and cell phones were reserved for the geekish techies who lived far ahead of their time. I’m sure many older readers out there can remember back even further when more techno-jargon was still a thing of the future.

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I’m very happy to announce that my internet is back online and working great! I don’t know all the technical details of what went wrong, but from what I gathered, it was a complicated problem that involved a lot more than just the local DSL network around where I live. Fortunatley though, a tech that came out today to look at the problem is the one who got it figured out, and managed to get some strings pulled to get us back online today. If it wasn’t for him, we’d be waiting until sometime next week to get our internet back.

But this whole experience of not having any internet service for an entire week got me thinking. It wasn’t too long ago that the internet was in its infancy and people were communicating the "old fashioned way" (ie. telephone, snail mail). In fact, I remember in my younger days dialing into these bulletin boards (called bbs) that people would run from their home. Once logged on, you could exchange messages with others. How exciting! There were no fancy web pages. No fancy email. And no high speed connection. But that was okay, because everything was text-based and I couldn’t stay logged on for very long because I was tying up the phone line.

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Do innovative sales and marketing ideas for dvds translate well for books?

I guess we’ll find out. Most people are familiar with Netflix: you pick your favorite movies on their website and they send you the dvds via snail mail. After you watch the movie, you send it back and get the next dvd on your list. It turned out to be one of those million-dollar ideas (probably a lot more than that) and has been so wildly successfull it almost brought brick-and-mortar Blockbuster to its knees.

Well now two young and idealistic entrepreneurs are going to bring the Netflix concept to books. It’s called Bookswim. The idea is the same in that for a small monthly fee ($15 to $20) you pick out five books you want to read, they send them to you, you read them and then send the books back in the pre-paid package.

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A lot of the music I listen to is called "jam band" music (ie. Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers Band, etc) and a large part of the jam band scene is letting regular concert-goers record their concerts – free of charge (they still buy a ticket, however). In fact, the Grateful Dead, probably one of the most well known jam bands, even set up an area just for "tapers" as their called, to make recording more easy and accessible.

This type of free recording and exchanging of music helped bands like the Grateful Dead achieve cult status with an enormous following.

What in the heck does this have to do with writing or literature? Good question!

In my most recent issue of "Poets and Writers" Magazine (aff link), there’s an article entitled "Creative Copyrighting". The article details how Jonathan Lethem, a best-selling novelist, is approaching the copyrights of his books and how the exclusive movie adaptation rights to one of his books will be awarded. It won’t be to whatever Hollywood blowhard offers him the most money.

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I don’t know if this story is simply the knee-jerk fallout from the recent Virginia Tech shootings, or if this student would have been arrested anyway. But it appears that an Illinois student was arrested for writing an essay as part of a creative writing assignment, in which all students were told not to censor what they write.

Here’s an excerpt from cnn.com:

According to the complaint, Lee’s essay reads in part, "Blood, sex and booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s…t…a…b…puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did."

Disturbing? Depends on how you look at it. As in exercise in creative writing, where one just lets the thoughts flow, it looks like exactly that, the writer let the thoughts flow and this is what came out. Certainly I have written some things in my day that people might find "disturbing" and I have never gotten arrested.

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The violent massacre at Virginia Tech is, no doubt, a national tragedy. And it hits close to home for the writing and literary community – especially those of us who are English Majors. I’m going to assume that over the next several months, much of Cho Seung-Hui’s own writings will come under increasing scrutiny as people try to find anything that might have given a clue to his impending violent outburst.

Looking to his fictional works is the wrong place to look. Violence is nothing new in literature. Shakespeare had plenty of violence in his plays, and even some of his contemporaries wrote sinister plays dealing with everything from rape to necrophilia and, you guessed it, murder. Even Spenser’s magnum opus The Faerie Queene has its moments. Lots of writers include violence in their writing, hardly any of them go on shooting sprees in college classrooms. In other words, Cho is definitely an exception, not the rule.

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I’m sure everyone has heard of Disney Land, and even Disney World. But what about DIckens World? No, it’s not some fly-by-night roadside attraction meant to milk money from wary travellers, rather, it’s a real theme park in the UK based on the works of the immortal Victorian novelist Charles Dickens!

But to appreciate Dickens World, one must understand how Dickens himself was viewed in his own time, while he was still alive:

With his long hair, bushy beard and fancy waistcoats, Dickens was the closest the 19th century had to a pop star. There were more than 200 different images of the author in circulation while he was alive, making him instantly recognisable. He was a celebrity, says Paul Schlicke, author of Dickens and Popular Entertainment. "When he first went to America in 1842 he was greeted that way. His trip there was rather like the Beatles going to New York more than a century later."

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There’s nothing new about fictional characters sitting down and chomping down on some good food during the course of a novel. Indeed, the "communion" of characters sitting down to eat, one of the primal desires we all share, is a fundamental pattern throughout the history of fiction. However, the evolution of food in novels is a little more interesting.

I recently ran across this article in The New Yorker. It’s about the varying degrees with which food appears in works of literature. For example, in the nineteenth century, the food is basic fare,  often  describing the meals of the working class (I’m thinking of the novels of Charles Dickens here). Perhaps the point of this elementary cuisine is to show the everydayness these characters dwell in.

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