Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

I am about to pick my jaw up from the floor, but here's the summary of a press release Random House CEO Markus Dohle just sent out:

• The Random House Publishing Group, under the leadership of President and Publisher Gina Centrello, will expand to include the imprints of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, including The Dial Press, along with Doubleday’s Spiegel & Grau.
• The Knopf Publishing Group, led by Chairman Sonny Mehta, will expand to include the Doubleday and Nan A. Talese imprints from the Doubleday Publishing Group.
• The Crown Publishing Group, under the direction of President and Publisher Jenny Frost, will expand to include the other imprints from the Doubleday Publishing Group—Broadway, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion and WaterBrook Multnomah.
• As a result of the reorganization, Bantam Dell publisher Irwyn Appelbaum and Doubleday publisher Steve Rubin are leaving the company. Appelbaum leaves immediately while Rubin is in discussions with Dohle about "creating a new role for him in the company."

Wow. Just wow. And that publishing imprint report card? Presto, obsolete.

And after a glorious week away, the news is all doomy and gloomy! Well not all, but a whole lot of it, alas.

After the publishing news heard round the world, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publisher Becky Saletan quits, effective December 10.

Can a 26 year old hedge funder based in India save the publishing industry?

The Daily Telegraph's literary editor, Sam Leith, has been let go, and it looks like Sunday Telegraph literary editor Michael Prodger will follow suit.

Thomas Nelson will lay off 10% of its staff, too.

Things are looking increasingly crappy at Woolworths, which is going into administration, but wholesaler Bertrams may be saved and sold to another company.

Connie Briscoe wins the libel case launched against her by her mother for the way she was depicted in Briscoe's misery memoir UGLY. 

Hannah Tinti wins the John Sargent Prize for debut fiction. 

Patricia Cornwell gets very personal in this USA TODAY profile, inviting Carol Memmott into her Concord, Mass. house to talk about her newest novel SCARPETTA.

Patrick Anderson revisits Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels.

Josh Glenn kicks off a new series on vintage science fiction over at io9. 

Dwight Garner waxes eloquent about Alison Bechdel's wonderful comic strip compendium THE ESSENTIAL DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR.

The Millions kicks off its Year in Reading for 2008. 

New York picks its favorite indie bookstores, but where's the mystery bookstore love?

Bleak House will offer most of its catalog free for the holidays.

And finally, the secret ingredient in 7-UP way back when.

Okay, so a while back I wondered whether it was such a good idea to place James Wood on a pedestal, and that knowing what he thinks on or does with things that have nothing whatsoever to do with literature would be good. This is a welcome start, but Guitar Hero is so clearly next on the to-do list...

Vacation, btw, is more or less done. More soon.

(via)

Here's to good food and cheer to distract from stormy economic times. And when Black Friday rolls around, how about hitting up your nearest independent shop and buying a book or few for friends and loved ones for their holiday gifts?

Confessions will be on holiday until Monday, December 1. See you then.

It's the news heard 'round the publishing world (so of course, it happened while I was traveling.) There's lots of panic and teeth-gnashing, but Colleen Lindsay also advises some necessary caution on the whole Chicken Little atmosphere, since this sort of thing has been happening all the time, just without the fanfare:

And if the rumor's true that this moratorium will be lifted after the first of the year, perhaps panicking is overrated.

Except that let's be honest: if there was an acquisition freeze on at, say, Wiley or Rodale, there wouldn't be nearly as much chatter (consider that Rodale's layoffs hardly registered on the book front, more as a footnote to the ongoing magazine die-off.) But Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt merging meant squashing together two houses of literary merit with authors whose names are recognized by common people and literati alike. They already went through some brutal rounds of layoffs and presented a cheery face just last month, both publicly and in private conversation. So the freeze sends a bad symbolic signal, even if it probably only means taking stock of what's already in play for the next year.

So no, we're not in panic mode, not yet. But as long as Riverdeep, HMH's parent company, continues to take a bath and the economy stays moribund (or worsens in the first quarter of '09), the gloom feels rather warranted, even if it's only a metaphorical sign of what may well come in other places.

Over at his blog, Art & Literature, Art Taylor talks with Charles Ardai about his new and charmingly clever novel FIFTY-TO-ONE, the first under his real name and #50 published by Hard Case Crime. A lot of ground is covered but what struck me most was Ardai's answer about the milestone aspect of the book:

Ardai: Well, I’ve read a larger fraction of all the books published in the field — both new and old — since starting the line, and inevitably if you do that you start to see patterns emerge and get a sense for the broader shape of the field and the life’s work of some of the authors in it.  It hasn’t changed my perception of the field a great deal, but what it has done is give me a heightened appreciation for just how hard it is to write a great crime novel, one that really leaves your heart racing, your breath short, and your mind forcibly expanded like a wingtip on a shoe-stretcher.  Even the writers who are able to do it once are rarely able to do it again, and most writers toil their entire careers without
ever achieving that goal.  And the competition is so very fierce, there are so many books….

But the very best still stand out, still have a big impact, and the chance to add to the tally of the very best is part of what drives me to keep going.  We don’t hit that mark every time out — no one could, not twelve times a year — but every so often we do, and it feels great.

I’ve also come to appreciate just how much we’re on the cusp of the passing of an era.  Since we launched the series, we’ve lost five of our authors: Donald Hamilton, Ed McBain, Richard Prather, Mickey Spillane, and most recently John Lange [one of Michael Crichton's pseudonyms].  David Dodge’s daughter, Kendall, who wrote a touching afterword for The Last Match, just died, and so did Ellie Bloch, Robert Bloch’s widow.  Three of our authors are in their 90s and, god bless them, going strong, but… the paperback era is dying, and its last representatives are few and dwindling.  This is the last chance to work with them while they’re still around, and I feel honored to have gotten the chance to work with so many.  I’m glad I didn’t start the line a few years later; I’m only sorry I didn’t think to start it a few sooner.

Ain't that the truth.

Because at this rate, it might be the only way to iron this mess out...

NYTBR: George Packer on the V.S. Naipaul biography;  Charles Taylor digs the new short story collection from Stephen King; Kevin Kelly examines the way screens are changing the printed word; and Matt Weiland remembers the long-forgotten THE CHICAGOAN (although, this being a New York publication, why not fond memories of, say, CUE?)

WaPo Book World: Yehudah Mirsky looks at books on the revival of Modern Hebrew; Michael Dirda reads a newly discovered WWII diary; Steven Moore jumps on the "2666 is a masterpiece" bandwagon; and Ron Charles is bowled over by Stewart O'Nan's latest tome.  

LA Times: Heller McAlpin ponders death as a hot literary topic; Nick Owchar returns with a new, Merlin-themed Siren's Call column; and Carolyn Kellogg has some give and take with Salvatore Scibona's THE END.

G&M: Mary Roach is fascinated by the memoir of a gravedigger; Cynthia McDonald has her say on THE GIVEN DAY; and yup, another Bolano rave.

Guardian Review: Maya Jaggi meets Nobel winner Jose Saramago; David Lodge pays tribute to his friend Simon Gray;  and Laura Wilson reviews new crime fiction by Inger Ash Wolfe, David Roberts, Nick Brownlee and Jean-Francois Parot.

Observer: Robert McCrum wonders how Obama will change the literary landscape; Robert Collins enjoys the George Pelecanos-edited BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES; and Ian Rankin describes his fantasy life as a rock star.

The Times: Tom Gatti meets up with Art Spiegelman; Ian Stewart plays the numbers game; Lucy Atkins is unsettled by Ruth Rendell's latest; and Patrick Heren is gobsmacked by the extraordinary life of Wanda Jablonski.

The Scotsman: Gerald Martin on a new biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Susan Mansfield gets in the trenches with Kate Adie; and Marion Sauvebois is frustrated with the last MORIARTY book by John Gardner.

The Rest:

Oline Cogdill has the details on Margaret Maron's recent award by the state of North Carolina and also reviews Bob Morris's new crime novel.

The Columbus Dispatch talks with P.F. Kluge about his academia-set mystery GONE TOMORROW.

Jeff Johnson at the Chicago Sun-Times has his say on Michael Black and Julie Hyzy's mystery collaboration DEAD RINGER.

Leonard Cassuto sings the praises of STRANGERS ON THE TRAIN in the Wall Street Journal.

Joanne McNeil reviews Malcolm Gladwell's OUTLIERS in the Washington Times.

Everything that touches Charles Sohbraj ends up being really strange and weird.

And finally, well, WTF.

My newest column at the Los Angeles Times has a missing persons themes running throughout, looking at new and recent books by Stewart O'Nan, Jennifer McMahon and Johan Theorin. Here's how it opens:

Read on for the rest.

For the first time since 1978, Mystery Writers of America will have two Grand Masters for 2009: James Lee Burke and Sue Grafton. From the release that went out today:

Both Grafton and Burke will get the official honor on April 30 at the Edgar Awards Banquet. Very cool news indeed!

At the 2007 London Book Fair, UK literary agent Ali Gunn was shopping around a book proposal with the tag "What PRIMARY COLORS was to Capitol Hill, EGO will be to the media world." For a few days, buzz abounded about the project because its authors were pseudonymous: an agent working both sides of the Atlantic and "an international author published in 17 countries." It was fun to guess who those authors might be, and who the real-life publishing counterparts to various bitchy characters might be. Gunn even promised that the correct guesser would win dinner at the Ivy, so I gave it my best shot on the fiction-writing part of the team. But the buzz turned negative, and the book didn't sell around the world, or even the UK. Instead St. Martin's picked up world rights and everybody moved on to the next round of book news.

But then a funny thing happened last week: an advance copy landed in my mailbox. The new title is THE AGENCY, it's coming out in February, and the pseudonymous duo has the pen name of Ally O'Brien. The accompanying email pitch claims the book "has become an in-house favorite here" and poses what's supposed to be the big hook: "Who are the actual authors? Who are they writing about? Would you like to know."

Turns out the answer to the first question is alarmingly easy. All I had to do was look at the copyright page and find that - OMG! - the authors are Brian Freeman (whose thrillers under his real name are also published by St. Martin's) and Ali Gunn. Ally O'Brien, get it? In other words, I was right about the author way back when, and it would make sense for an agent to try to obfuscate her own project by adding some fake hook to it. Looks like that dinner's about as likely as John Sutherland currying his proof copy of THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE and eating it. 

As for the book itself, it's probably better than the original 30,000-word proposal the anonymous editor read and groused about to Gawker last year, but that's more to do with basic narrative competence than substantive value. It's also fairly clear to me that there's more than a whiff of revenge in the air from Gunn with regards to her former employer Curtis Brown. As for playing the game of who's really who, the supporting players seem more like composites than anyone in particular - and if there are real-life parallels, they are mostly on the UK side so American readers won't care.

Which is the problem, in a nutshell: are people going to care about a fictional expose of the inner workings of a literary agency when insidery books like BECAUSE SHE CAN more or less tanked? The hook now seems more a generic "boss from hell" and readers of Perez Hilton and Jezebel are the marketing targets, but even that seems to be a stretch for potential success. The whole project from inception to completion smacks of pandering to the reader, and we're in a time when it's a far better bet to play it smart. Otherwise, it's just ego-tastic...

For all your National Book Awards recap needs, including links to other stories and the view from the press corps, check out my twitter feed. Ed Champion provided live podcasts and Jason Boog got video.

Maureen Corrigan names NPR's five best mysteries of 2008, proving further how huge a fan she is of Dave Zeltserman's SMALL CRIMES.

Ross Miller is nowhere near finished on his Philip Roth biography. (via)

Amanda Craig on the uptick of violence in children's fiction.

The Google Life Historical Archive is amazing, amazing stuff. See what the National Book Awards was like 50 years ago or how mystery writers celebrated the Edgars in the early 1960s. (thanks, Duane)

R.I.P., Clive Barnes. More from Terry. 

PC Magazine will be online only as of January! Goddamn, that feels like a changing of the guard...

And finally, This guy really, really loves hedgehogs.

George Chesbro, the author of the "Mongo the Magnificent" series of detective novels (as well as many other works of crime fiction) died yesterday after a short illness. He was 68. His official site, Dangerous Dwarf, contains a brief tribute from its webmaster as well as the death notice:

NEW BALTIMORE - George Clark Chesbro, 68, of New Baltimore, died Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at St. Peter's Hospital.

Born in Washington, D.C. on June 4, 1940, he was the son of the late George W. and Maxine (Sharpe) Chesbro.  An author of over 25 novels and nearly 100 short stories, George was a recipient of an Ellery Queen Award and had served as president of the Mystery Writers Association of America.  Earlier in his career, George had worked as a special education teacher at Pearl River and at the Rockland Psychiatric Center where he worked with emotionally troubled teens.

Survivors include his wife, Robin N. Chesbro; a son, Mark Chesbro;, a daughter Michelle Chesbro; two stepdaughters, Rachael  and Leah  Gass; a sister, Judith (Richard) Ragone and many nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews.

Services are private at the convenience of the family.

In lieu of flowers, those who wish may send a remembrance in his name to the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society, 3 Oakland Ave., Menands, NY  12204.

For further reading, see Jon Jordan's interview of Chesbro as well as Clayton Moore's Bookslut feature.

The newest podcast at CRIMEWAV features "Blooming", a short story of mine that appeared in A HELL OF A WOMAN.

Is Barack Obama the new Oprah?

Val McDermid will now be a children's author, too.

Mario Puzo's "long-lost" novel will be republished under his own name next spring by Quercus in the UK.

Janet Maslin generally likes P.F. Kluge's new novel GONE TOMORROW, an interesting coincidence in that I just finished reading Kluge's fantastic earlier novel EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS.

Patrick Anderson enjoys the WWII intrigue of John Lawton's SECOND VIOLIN.

In Reference to Murder has the scoop on the new owners of the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood.

Stephen King is a Robert Goddard fan.

Author faces off with mother in court over UGLY memoir.

Much linked, but the NYT Mag profile of Lewis Hyde is well worth reading.

Jane Cleland and her husband show off their East Side apartment.

Leon Neyfakh gets Dan Strone to talk about those seven-figure celebrity deals he's brokering of late.

The NYRB at 45. (via)

Vampires: still hot in publishing circles.

And finally, I'd say this is a tad extreme.

And it's an abbreviated one this week, so bear with:

Marilyn Stasio gives the business on recent crime fiction by Reginald Hill, Christopher Fowler, Pablo De Santis and Jeffery Deaver, not to mention PARIS NOIR.

Maureen Corrigan rounds up recent noir and thrillers by Dave Zeltserman, Arnaldur Indridason, Ann Cleeves and Linwood Barclay for the Washington Post.

Tom & Enid Schantz have their say on new mysteries by Christopher Fowler, John Lawton and Serena Macksey at the Denver Post.

The Chicago Tribune's Paul Goat Allen looks at recent crime offerings by J.T. Ellison, Ken Bruen & Jason Starr, Craig McDonald and Lori Andrews.

Andrew Pyper raves about Kate Atkinson in the G&M, which also includes Margaret Cannon's latest crime fiction roundup of recent releases by Laura Joh Rowland, Marcia Muller, Ken Bruen, Ted Bell, Frank Tallis, James Doss and Sandra Ruttan.

Jack Batten is underwhelmed by recent offerings from P.D. James and Ian Rankin.

James gets the Q&A treatment from the WSJ's Lauren Mechling. The paper also reviews Pablo De Santis's excellent historical pastiche THE PARIS ENIGMA.

Dick Holland pays tribute to James Crumley in the Texas Observer.

Both Mark Athitakis and Ed Champion are in this weekend's Chicago Sun-Times reviewing new books by Kirsten Menger-Anderson and Tony Vigorito, respectively.

I feel like the solution to Joe Queenan's "dilemma" about over-enthusiastic book reviews is to stop reading them. And then to stop writing them.

R.I.P. Paco Ignacio Taibo I (father of crime writing legend Paco Ignacio Taibo II.)

Obama won't have his Blackberry to be addicted to anymore, it looks like.

And finally, I know a number of people who will geek out over this. Enjoy.

Jesus, this is horrible:

Life was imitating art when crime novelist Laura Caldwell lay face down on a Lincoln Park street holding pieces of her shattered teeth in her bloody palm.

Her upcoming book, Red Hot Lies, portrays a red-headed female lawyer walking at night through the Old Town neighborhood, feeling increasingly uncomfortable as she realizes she is being followed.

On Thursday, Caldwell, a red-headed attorney who in 2005 successfully defended a man who spent five years in jail awaiting trial for murder, was jogging at Seminary and Altgeld in Lincoln Park when she saw two men -- one with a hood pulled over his cap and the other who was lifting his jacket over his head.

Nervous, Caldwell felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. Suddenly, one of the men kicked her from behind, and she fell onto the street.

"They smashed my mouth into the pavement and kicked me a few times," she said. "They screamed about money, but I said, 'Guys, I am jogging and I don't have any money.' They took my iPod and ran off."

Caldwell's attack was part of a series of muggings in Lincoln Park of late. I'm glad to hear she wasn't injured further but still...

At NPR, Martha Woodroof reports on how the global success of Stieg Larsson's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO translated very well in the United States:

Knopf Editor-in-Chief Sonny Mehta, who snapped up the rights to [Larsson's] thrillers, says he was attracted to the "absolute ambition" of the trilogy.

"It's a multigeneration family saga. It's a story of corporate corruption, of religious fanaticism. It's about the darker elements in contemporary society," says Mehta. "And then, at its basic level, it's a kind of a classic locked-room mystery."

Still, the fact that the trilogy's author is dead complicated things. Knopf publicity director Paul Bogaards began the marketing effort by romancing booksellers months before publication with a flood of advance reading copies.

"The retail channel was key," says Bogaards. "In the absence of bookseller enthusiasm you might, as a publisher, have a problem."

Woodroof also interviewed me for the piece with regards to the buzz that built on various blogs like mine and The Rap Sheet about Larsson's work, and why Larsson's sense of empathy for his characters made DRAGON TATTOO stand out.

Speaking of The Rap Sheet, Ali Karim has been tracking all things Larsson-related of late, including UK publisher Quercus's grand plans for THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE upon its publication in January, and another accolade coming from South Africa.

First up, The Gumshoe Site reports that the Mystery Writers of America  chose The Edgar Allan Poe Society and The Poe House in Baltimore, Maryland, as the 2009 recipients of the Raven Award for "outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing." They'll get the official honor on April 30 at the annual Edgar Awards Banquet.

Also, the deadline to submit your work for Edgar consideration is November 30, and coming up fast. So if your book is not on the submissions list, let your publisher know to send copies on to the appropriate judges.

At the fifth annual Tony Hillerman Writers Conference, Roy Chaney was awarded the Tony Hillerman Prize (sponsored by WordHarvest and Thomas Dunne Books/Minotaur Books) for the best unpublished mystery set in the Southwest written by a first-time author. THE RAGGED END OF NOWHERE will be published in Fall 2009 by Minotaur Books.

As one of the 2666 skeptics, it is only fair I judge the book on its merits, which I hope to do now that a copy has landed in my mailbox. But Levi Stahl has worthy commentary on the reviews so far. (via)

Leonard Cassuto - whose new book of cultural criticism HARD-BOILED SENTIMENTALITY is a must-read, and who along with S.J. Rozan entertained a lively and intellectually curious crowd at Book Culture last night - looks at Harold Schechter's TRUE CRIME compendium for the B&N Review.

Patrick Anderson is generally favorable towards Ken Bruen's ONCE WERE COPS, but recognizes it's " designed to appeal to readers with less refined sensibilities," at least compared to the book he reviewed last week.

Joseph Boyden has won the Giller Prize.

Clea Simon: not a huge fan of THE FIRE.

Allen Barra on James Bond in books and film.

Art Winslow pays tribute to John Leonard, who is also memorialized in moving fashion by his son, Andrew.

Amazon UK launches a Literature in Translation store. Wouldn't it be nice if the US store did the same thing? 

Nam Le wins the Dylan Thomas Prize.

The FBI file on Norman Mailer. (via)

So that doom and gloom in publishing quarters? It's probably going to get worse.

OTOH, this is almost a slam-dunk.

And Obama's memoirs might save Canongate from financial ruin.

And finally, Arthur Shawcross passes on. I'd say "RIP" is about the last term I'd use here.

As reported this morning over at BookBrunch:

Val McDermid has left HarperCollins after 17 years and gone to David Shelley at Sphere/Little, Brown. The two-book deal, for an undisclosed sum, ends the author's long working relationship with the much-admired Julia Wisdom, whom she followed from Gollancz to what was then Collins.

McDermid's agent, Jane Gregory, emphasised to BookBrunch that she and McDermid had no complaints about Wisdom, "who is fantastic". But Gregory felt that the HarperCollins structure was not always helpful in achieving the best possible sales. She said that she had spoken to HC CEO Victoria Barnsley about her views.

Observers have suggested that HC does not fully exploit Trade MD Amanda Ridout's experience of running sales departments.

"This is a discussion we've been having for about three years," Gregory continued. "Val's numbers aren't where they should be - she's always winning prizes and she's all over television." It appears that HCUK pushed to conclude a new contract in the early summer, but Gregory delayed until its performance with McDermid's latest novel, A Darker Domain, could be assessed. Clearly that has disappointed, and in a move that Gregory admits is "very hard for Val" she is leaving HCUK for pastures new "[but] we feel that Little, Brown will make her the bestseller she deserves to be."

Ironically, McDermid left her US publisher St. Martin's after many years to join up with HarperCollins, starting in February with the American publication of A DARKER DOMAIN. The new UK deal (for UK/Commonwealth) starts next year with a new Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novel.

....well, I'll just quote Ruth Jordan, who buried the lead in her report on Murder and Mayhem in Muskego over the weekend:

And at the end of the day, in a fabulous interview by Michael Koryta of Dennis Lehane, we heard the news that Patrick and Angie are getting off the island. They have indeed knocked on Dennis's door again. It looks like his next book may not be a sequel to THE GIVEN DAY after all. Are we ready for another Patrick and Angie Book? Yeah , I know.... stupid question..... stupid, stupid question.

Chalk that up to asking a question rhetorically....

NYTBR: Jonathan Lethem spent ecstatic days with Roberto Bolano's 2666 and pretty much declares it the novel to read; Richard Parker looks at the Great Depression and what it might mean for today's economic crisis; Motoko Rich examines the improbable hit that is "Hip Hop Speaks to Children"; The Fall 2008 Children's Book Pages;  A.O. Scott remembers John Leonard as critic and a regular person; and David Allan travels to Ian Fleming's Jamaica.

WaPo Book World: Ron Charles has his say on Toni Morrison's new novel; Jonathan Yardley goes on a walking excursion; and Peter Behrens is taken with Anne Enright's recent short story collection.

LA Times: Ben Eherenreich on the current literary book of the moment, 2666; Beau Friedlander looks at the links between reading books and the Internet; Richard Rayner revisits Michael Chabon's debut novel; and Carolyn Kellogg examines Jeffrey Ford's new short story collection. 

G&M: Placing bets on who will win the Giller Prize on Tuesday; Elizabeth Renzetti remembers Barbara Cartland; and Nora Gold is haunted by Edeet Ravel's Holocaust-themed new novel.

Guardian Review: Seamus Heaney compares and contrasts public and private personae; Carmen Callil is moved by the journal of Helene Berr; Alfred Hickling ponders the genre switch by Tim Binding into TJ Middleton; and Wyatt Mason on the charms of Tennessee Williams.

Observer: Felicity Dahl recalls her times with her late husband Roald; William Leith finds the punchlines in Jim Holt's history of jokes; and Shena McKay talks up her literary life with Rachel Cooke.

The Times: Douglas Kennedy gives the Kerouac/Burroughs collaboration a spin, as does Nick Rennison; Simon Callow declares his love for the London library; the inevitable Le Clezio backlash in France; and Marcel Berlins rounds up new crime fiction by Ruth Rendell, Robert B. Parker and Aly Monroe.

The Scotsman: Neil Gaiman talks of graveyards and spooky stories; ten late-flowering debut novelists;and Claire Prentice tries to make sense of Anne Rice's further explorations of Christianity.

The Rest:

So. Bolano. 2666 is the literary book of the moment. I bailed on the launch party Friday night but evidently it was so crowded as to make conversation just about impossible. New York should just re-commemorate November 11 as Bolano Day. The Complete Review, which doesn't praise books lightly, calls it "the first great book of the twenty-first century." Even O writes it up favorably! So what I'm about to say may come across as harshing on something without having read it, but based on my recent reading of THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES, I do wonder if the collective nerdgasm about Bolano has less to do with the work and more to do with how Bolano portrayed a certain type of masculinity that's present in his fictional world of writers and almost wholly absent from New York's real world of writers and other literary types.

Oline Cogdill applauds Kate Atkinson's latest novel featuring Jackson Brodie.

Adam Woog looks at new releases by P.D. James, Christopher Fowler and Charles Ardai in his Scene of the Crime column.

Eddie Muller reads Kent Harrington's THE GOOD PHYSICIAN and raves bigtime. Also in the SF Chron is Michael Berry's appreciation of Michael Crichton as a genre writer.

Dennis Lehane visits with NECN's Book Club to talk about THE GIVEN DAY (via)

The Sydney Morning Herald chats with Richard Flanagan about his new historical novel, WAITING.

Of course everyone is sniffing around Sarah Palin for book and TV deals and the like, but come on, don't you think Bob Barnett has this locked up already?

Ellen Jordan on kicking the dreaded coffee addiction.

Hunting a female serial killer in Germany whose crimes are wide and strange.

And finally, I can't wait to see how this fully shakes out. Wow.

Kyle Minor is the author of In the Devil’s Territory, a collection of stories available this week from Dzanc Books. His recent work appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2008, Random House’s Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers, The Southern Review, Surreal South, and Plots with Guns. A native of Florida, he now lives in Ohio, where he teaches writing and literature at the University of Toledo.

I did not set out to be a mystery writer or a crime writer, nor am I sure I am one now. That’s not to say that I don’t admire the genres, because I do. If forced to trade, I’ll take one Dennis Lehane, one Richard Price, one George Pelecanos, one James M. Cain, one Big Jim Thompson or Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett—any one of them, any day—over any ten “literary” writers. I mean it. Because all of these writers do all of the things to which literature ought to aspire—vivid evocation of character, an intelligent reckoning with thematic material that matters, an acquaintance with the music language can make—while, at the same time, giving us a sock-in-the-gut story in a time and place of consequence. 

(I also ought to mention, while we’re speaking of it, that contemporary crime and mystery writers are lately doing another thing that literature used to do more often, which is to work out intractable social problems on a big canvas and consider the workings of groups and systems as worthy as the individual of their attentions. I might argue, in fact, that the closest thing we have to Dostoevsky, Dickens, and Dos Passos these days is HBO’s The Wire, a television show helmed by nonfiction crime writer David Simon, with episodes penned by Lehane, Price, and Pelecanos. But that’s an argument for another day, another essay.)

But, hey, I’m no David Simon, I’m no Richard Price, I’m no Dennis Lehane. All I’ve been trying to do for the last five years is write some modest stories about people not unlike people I know and knew in my childhood, which is to say working class people from Palm Beach County, Florida, whose backgrounds are long on Christian fundamentalism and short in patience for intellectual bric-a-brac. I’ve wanted to go deep into their inner lives at the moments in which fate and circumstance have intervened. And I’ve tried to be brave enough to choose the most fateful of intersections. So I’ve written about the young man who gets caught up in the spate of bum bashing that swept the local high school in the middle-1980’s, and culminated in the death of an Ojibwe Indian under an Interstate 95 overpass. And about the fifth grade schoolteacher, the one-time Cold War hero who swam the frigid Spree River three times under cover of night, each time with an elderly relative on her back, so she could make her way to West Palm Beach, Florida, and “ruin the lives of fifth grade boys.”

What I started to find, as I stretched out into this material, is that each of us has something that keeps us up at night, some fundamental mystery of our own lives that won’t resolve itself, and which we can’t, despite our best efforts and intentions, make sense of, or shake. And also, in many cases, there is some act of violence, external or psychological or both, that is at the core of these mysteries. 

I have written many times about my grandfather, a good man for all my childhood, and a good man made from the ashes of a violent, bitter alcoholic who spent the years of his prime terrorizing his wife and children in various ways. My fondest memories of him revolve around the days I feigned illness so I could spend the day with him in his trailer instead of at school, and we would watch war movies, and, at the end of the day, walk the back alleys with wooden sticks (to stave off the Dobermans that ran wild) and buy some candy from the convenience store at the other end. I remember, too, how when he died, his wife, my grandmother, didn’t want him to have his false teeth, because she knew he would use them to flirt with the VA hospital nurses.

It is easy to write about such a man, but harder to write about the kind of woman who would stay with him steadfastly through the bad and violent years and then spend the good years making him pay for all he had put her through in her youth. My inability to write a character like my grandmother was, in effect, a failure of empathy, and one I meant to address by writing an alternative history for her, one in which her life’s great trauma came in childhood rather than adulthood, and in which her good years were spent with a man who loved and protected her.

I worked all of this out by way of a self-consciously literary tale told in multiple points of view, about a senile woman who dies in a bathtub, thinking that it is her cousin, the escaped rapist-murderer of her childhood, who has returned to bathe her in her dotage, rather than her son, a Baptist minister who has been delegated the duty because his wife, the primary caregiver, is out on an errand. I called it “A Day Meant to Do Less,” and I suspected it would never be published, because it was a 71-page story that began in ended in a bathtub and covered a span of over fifty years in a nonlinear chronology.

Imagine, then, my surprise, when the Gettysburg Review called to say that they’d like to publish it. And, a year and a half later, imagine my greater surprise when Otto Penzler, dean of the American mystery writing community, wrote to say that he and George Pelecanos had chosen it for Best American Mystery Stories 2008. (What would I have said if he had called instead of written? “This is a mystery story?”)

In the aftermath, I have published several mystery stories, in my book In the Devil’s Territory (out this week!), and in pleasingly tawdry places like Plots with Guns. I’ve done murder, Stockholm Syndrome, and extortion. I’m working on two novels, one of which wraps itself around a kidnapping, and the other beginning with a race riot and ending with the bombing of an abortion clinic. Along the way, I’ve not really changed my method much from when I thought of myself as more of a literary writer. Instead, I’ve come to think of literary writing as, fundamentally, an exercise in plumbing the mysteries of human existence, character by character, and turning them outward and outward, so that, by story’s end, we’re all of us implicated.

Might I close with a digression, a list of mystery stories that belong in the literary canon, and a list of canonical works of literature that are, at their core, mysteries? If it matters, I’ll let you decide which is which:

American Pastoral, by Philip Roth

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Atonement, by Ian McEwan

Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollock

As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat

The Bright Forever, by Lee Martin

In the Lake of the Woods, by Tim O’Brien

And:

The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain

Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane

The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler

The Night Gardener, by George Pelecanos

Lush Life, by Richard Price

Pop. 1280, by Jim Thompson

The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy

Get Shorty, by Elmore Leonard

I have lost count how many talented, brilliant, notable people have died this year. But goddamn, losing John Leonard hurts. Critics are a hard group to love, but Leonard's writing made it easy. He was erudite and playful, opinionated but disdainful of the hatchet. He wrote about books and TV and pretty much anything of cultural note in a career that spanned more than 40 years. And a few novels, too, though I suspect he didn't like to think about them much. He edited the New York Times Book Review and The Nation at various points of his career, and lately called the pages of New York and Harper's home. He thought that "the literary blogs would save us" and even gave voice to a blogger in one of the most memorable literary events I ever attended. And I am hard pressed to think of how he can possibly be replaced.

Critical Mass links to the pertinent pages; Ed Champion, Emily Gordon, Hillary Frey, Mark Lotto and Scott McLemee pay tribute, with many more to come. He was 69 years old and died of complications from lung cancer.

UPDATE: Back when Critical Mass ran a bunch of tributes to Leonard in the wake of his being given the Ivan Sandrof Award in early 2007, Studs Terkel had this to say: "He is a good journalist -- he speaks truth to power with a style that is all his own -- Leonardian. He is a throwback to a great tradition. He has been a literary critic in the noblest sense of the word, where you didn’t determine whether a book was 'good or bad' but wrote with a point of view of how you should read the book." And now both of them are gone within days of each other.

A few folks have wondered if I had anything of substance to say about Michael Crichton. And the truth is, not being nearly as familiar with his work as I should, it didn't seem right. What interests me more, anyway, is what it was like to work with Crichton, and that answer can be found in Larisa MacFarquhar's  interview and oral history of Robert Gottlieb, the legendary editor at Knopf, former editor-in-chief of the New Yorker and current dance critic at the New York Observer who really ought to finish his memoirs and publish them so that an audience of one (me!) can read them. A different excerpt of this interview, which ran in The Paris Review in 1994,appears on TPR's website, but here's another excerpt from that long piece in which we hear from Gottlieb and Crichton on the process of bringing THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN to publication - and breakout success:

CRICHTON: Bob became my editor just after he moved to Knopf from Simon & Schuster in 1968. Lynn Nesbit was my agent. She recommended Bob because she thought I'd like him and partly because he was an overnight person. I was being driven mad by the usual publishing business of waiting a month for manuscripts to be read, because in those days I was in medical school and medicine is so fast. To send a manuscript to New York and wait a month -- well, you might as well wait for your next reincarnation.

When I sent Bob a draft of THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN - the first book I did for him - in 1968 he said he would publish it if I would agree to completely rewrite it. I gulped and said OK. He gave me his feelings about what had to happen on the phone, in about twenty minutes. He was very quick. Anyway, I rewrote it completely. He called me up and said, Well this is good, now you only have to rewrite half of it. Again, he told me what needed to happen - for the book to begin in what was then the middle, and fill in the material from the beginning sometime later on.

Finally we had the manuscript in some kind of shape. I was just completely exhausted. He said to me, Dear boy, you've got this ending backwards. (He's married to an actress, and he has a very theatrical manner. He calls me "dear boy," like an English actor might do.) I don't remember exactly the way it was, but I had it so that one of the characters was supposed to turn on a nuclear device, and there was suspense about whether or not that would happen. Bob said, no, no, the switch has to turn itself on automatically, and the character has to turn it off. He was absolutely right. That was the first time I understood that when there is something wrong in writing, the chances are that there is either too much of it, too little of it, or that it is in some way backwards.

GOTTLIEB: When Michael wrote THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN he assumed he had to fill out the characters of all those scientists and make them real people, as in a conventional novel. But that wasn't where his interest lay, and so he had only done it at the surface level. Somehow it occurred to me that instead of trying to flesh out the characters further and make the novel more conventional, we ought to strip that stuff out completely and make it a documentary, only a fictional one.

CRICHTON: What Bob actually said to me was that he thought the manuscript should be factually persuasive, like a New Yorker piece. I thought that was a very interesting idea, but I couldn't see how to do it. I couldn't take his suggestion literally, because in those days the signature of New Yorker writers like Lillian Ross was that they were using fictional storytelling techniques in their nonfiction, and my problem was that I had to get away from fictional techniques. Finally I began to think about what I would do if the story were real. Suppose this had actually happened and I were a reporter, what would my book look like? There was a book on my shelf at the time by Walter Sullivan called WE ARE NOT ALONE. I started thumbing through it, noticing the vocabulary, the cadences of nonfiction and how the structure of the sentences conveys a sense of reality that is not found in fiction.

As soon as I began to do that, it became clear to me that the author of a nonfiction account would not have the access to the characters' innermost thoughts in the way that you assume for fiction. So I began to take all that stuff out and make the book colder and more impersonal - but I didn't do it completely. Bob read it and said, Look this book can either go this way or that way, and you'll have to decide what you want to do. Ultimately he thought I should just take all the novelistic passages out. He thought the characters shouldn't have any relationships with each other, and that all the dialogue should advance the plot.

He took a much more radical step than I would have dared. It was never again as it was with THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, mostly because I think in the process of working on it Bob taught me a tremendous amount about editing. I never again sent him a manuscript in such a mess. A part of me became Bob, or acted like Bob, and as I was writing I would sit there and think, This is what he's going to say, and I'd go fix it. Before THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN I didn't really know the extent to which you could write a draft and not accept it but rather tear it all apart, move things around, rework them, and then put it all back together. I had never gone through that process in my previous writing, and Bob put me through it. Occasionally Bob has said to me, The new book doesn't work. Forget it. Which I have done. That has happened a few times. But it was in part a result of my method of working, which is to go off and tell nobody what I'm doing and write something; sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. I guess because of my youth it didn't seem so devastating. I just thought, Oh well, that didn't work, I'll go do something else. I don't work that way anymore - I'm too old.

Even now, when Bob first calls me back about a manuscript, I panic. But I'll tell you, I think every writer should have tattooed backwards on his forehead, like AMBULANCE on ambulances, the words everybody needs an editor.

Later, in one of my favorite passages, Crichton calls Gottlieb up and dares to critique his editing acumen:

Once I called Bob because I'd read a book he had edited and had found it redundant. I called him up and said, Boy, that book wasn't very well edited. There was a very snarky silence because he did not take criticism well at all. There was this long silence. Then he said, Dear boy! I think you should consider, when you read a book that seems to you to be not well-edited, that perhaps it has already been incredibly edited. And of course that was probably true.

The full interview is available in The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1 (Picador, 2007).

The bestsellling author is dead at the age of 66 following a long and private battle with cancer. Wow.

UPDATE: Obits from HarperCollins Canada, Wired News, Phoenix New Times, AP, NYT, National Post, TIME, and io9.

Tributes from David Montgomery, John Scalzi, Frank Wilson, Marjorie Kehe, Chip McGrath, and a statement from Steven Spielberg. Here's Crichton spending an entire hour on Charlie Rose. Jaime Weinman also sums up what made Crichton work well in TV:

You can fault him for a lot of things...but he had a real gift for imaginative concepts that people would respond to. Not just premises, but concepts; ER and Jurassic Park and Westworld don’t necessarily have the most original premises in the world, but they’re thought out conceptually in ways that makes them feel new. ER in particular showed how the stale concept of the medical drama could become fresh if fleshed out with more specific details and a greater sense of intensity than previous, more leisurely-paced (and less jargon-filled) doctor shows.

UPDATE TWO: Before Crichton broke out with THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and while still a medical student, he wrote several pulp novels under the pseudonyms John Lange and Jeffery Hudson. Two of the Lange novels, GRAVE DESCEND and ZERO COOL, were reissued by Hard Case Crime in the last couple of years, and HCC publisher Charles Ardai had this to say by email earlier this afternoon:

I did hear earlier today about John Lange's death (perversely on the very same day Michael Crichton passed away -- a double tragedy for fans of great genre fiction).  Lange was a very generous man and deeply involved with every step of the process on both of the books we did together, even to the point of writing new bookend chapters for our edition of ZERO COOL.  He worked with us on the cover art, the cover text, revising the books line by line to polish old imperfections...he was a consummate pro and a real joy to work with.  He even signed our 50-copy limited edition of FIFTY-TO-ONE just a few weeks ago, along with nearly all our other living authors.  And we were talking with him about possibly bringing out a third of his books.  Who knows whether we'll do it now...but even if we do, it won't be the same.  I miss him already.  (Michael, too.  I miss them both.)

So now we know. And yes, it isn't perfect (Prop 8 WTF? And same to you, AZ) but it's damn good to feel hopeful instead of nervous, optimistic instead of fearful. Plus I can play this all day! (via)

Leon Neyfakh tries to get a handle on the Doubleday layoffs.

Things aren't looking so hot at Barnes & Noble.

Lots going on with the new issue of Bookslut, (like an interview with the proprietor of Idlewild Books, which I just recommended a visiting friend check out yesterday) but check especially the new Mystery Strumpet column by Clayton Moore.

Charles McGrath interviews Carolyn Chute about her "no-wing" militia in Maine.

Seven writers, including Helen Oyeyemi and Naomi Alderman, will be participating in a close read of Doris Lessing's THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK.

Tod Goldberg has some reservations about Larry Beinhart's SALVATION BOULEVARD, though he admires the ideas behind the book.

Sam Jordison grudgingly recomends AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS. More at the Independent.

And finally, I'm not sure if I want to visit this or not, but damn is it fascinating.

Today's the day. If there ever was an election I wished I could vote in, this was it. Even getting free ice cream and coffee isn't enough to overcome this wish. So don't let rain or anything else deter you if you haven't gone out - GO VOTE! And do so with your head. Here's to a decisive outcome that offers some hope amidst the necessary pragmatism.

The Barnes & Noble Review runs a long and a short piece of mine this week. The long piece is a review of Louis Bayard's historical thriller THE BLACK TOWER:

Writers of historical fiction are often faced with a problem: if they include real-life people, how do they ensure that their make-believe world isn't dwarfed by truth? The question loomed large as I began reading The Black Tower, Louis Bayard's third foray into historical fiction and fifth novel overall. He had already pulled off the conceit of recasting Timothy Cratchit from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol as a Victorian-era sleuth in Mr. Timothy (2003), and succeeded in depicting Edgar Allan Poe as a young, petulant West Point attendee in The Pale Blue Eye  (2006), justly nominated for Poe's namesake award. So learning that The Black Tower revolves in large part around the exploits of Eugene Francois Vidocq (1757-1856) increased my already high expectations, not to mention commensurate worries.

For Vidocq, the high-flying, outsized founder of the Sûreté Nationale, arguably the first formal police service, is a slippery figure. His transformation from petty criminal to detective grew out of a need to escape a life on the run and inform on other criminals. His contributions to detection are legion, from making plaster casts of shoe impressions to ballistics examination, contrasting his philandering nature and enigmatic personality. Vidocq came off so larger-than-life in his 1827 autobiography (helped by the embellishments of his ghost writer) that it's little wonder he served as the inspiration for Poe's landmark detective protagonist C. Auguste Dupin -- and possibly warded off writers aspiring to make something of his exploits....

The short review is of a long-lost collaboration between the young Jack Keruoac and William S. Burroughs, AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS, that's finally seeing the light of day. It's more curiosity than standout achievement but "diehard Kerouac and Burroughs fans, however, should seek this volume out for its insight into what these brash young talents would later become."

A few things from me to kick off this Weekend Update after we turned the clocks back. My new column at the Baltimore Sun looks at new mysteries and thrillers by P.D. James, Christopher Fowler and Jon Fasman; in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers, I interviewed Jayne Anne Phillips about starting a new MFA program at Rutgers-Newark and opined at length about book trailers; and as an experiment, I'll be syndicating some of my Picks of the Week over at Flavorwire, the new culture blog from Flavorpill, as "The Weekly Reader," which will appear there every Friday. 

Now to the links:

NYTBR: Jon Fasman explores Saul Bellow's Chicago; Tom de Haven travels cross-country with THE FLYING TROUTMANS; Jon Meacham on reading like a president; and Marilyn Stasio reviews crime fiction by Karen Maitland, Ken Bruen, Christine Barber, Ruth Brandon and Aimee & David Thurlo.

WaPo Book World: David Thomson's herculean movie-related task goes over well with Charles Matthews; Ron Charles digs Miriam Toews' new novel; and Meryle Secrest is impressed with the breadth and scope of the new Chagall bio.

LA Times: Ed Park on the glory of the science fiction short story; Ericka Schickel chats with Sarah Vowell about THE WORDY SHIPMATES; and David Ulin revisits the non-fiction work of George Orwell.

G&M: Andrew Taylor looks at the new Inspector Banks novel by Peter Robinson; Claire Berlinski makes the case for Anton Chekhov's stories; Jeffrey Miller examines THE BRASS VERDICT; and Margaret Cannon rounds up new crime novels by Fred Vargas, Louise Penny, Jonathan Kellerman, Sharon Kaye and M.C. Beaton.

Guardian Review: the broadsheet publishes a new short story by Lorrie Moore; Josh Gleen and Mark Kingwell's delightful THE IDLER'S GLOSSARY gets some well-deserved ink; and Matthew Lewin rounds up new thrillers by R.J. Ellory, Peter Leonard, Michael Connelly and Michael Dobbs.

Observer: Leading American novelists ponder the legacy of George W. Bush; James Purdon likes "the low growl of violence" in the just-published Kerouac/Burroughs collaboration; and Stephen Bayley watches QUANTUM OF SOLACE and is perturbed by product placement.

The Times: Amanda Craig profiles Neil Gaiman; Matt Rudd is not impressed with Jonathan Ross's book of leftovers; John Burnside extols the virtues of a writer's retreat; Alan Sillitoe, the original Angry Young Man, explains his continued need to write; and Lisa Tuttle engages in Halloween reading.

The Scotsman: Michel Faber tries his hand at the Gospel; Stuart Kelly hears Neil Gaiman read; and Jim Gilchrist pores through old dusty Scottish tomes with G. Ross Roy.

The Rest:

Oline Cogdill's already in a holiday mood, reviewing new themed mysteries by Donna Andrews and Elaine Viets.

Tom Nolan has his say about Arnaldur Indridason's THE DRAINING LAKE in the Wall Street Journal.

The Boston Globe's Anna Mundow talks with John Barth about his new work THE DEVELOPMENT.

Is this to be Lucifer Box's final case? His creator Mark Gatiss tips his hand to the Independent on Sunday's Suzi Feay.

The SF Chronicle asks authors to analyze the presidential candidates' choices of reading material.

At the Independent, John Freeman polls various writers on the current American election.

Nicholas Davidoff wonders about the current direction of memoir in the WSJ. Also, Richard Woodward reads the translated works of current Nobel laureate Jean Marie-Gustave Le Clezio.

City Pages has a lengthy profile of Graywolf Press, the indie publisher riding high with sales and critical acclaim.

The Age talks with Richard Flanagan about his new novel, WAITING.

26 years after it was commissioned, Jill Roe's biography of Miles Franklin has finally arrived.

Neal Stephenson is on the Bat Segundo Show.

And finally, if you spent any time in Montreal, especially if you spent way too much time laughing when the Mix 96 DJs would call up and say "Hello, Depanneur" over and over again, this should not surprise you.

The legend has passed. He was 96 and packed zillions of lives into a single one by reaching out to people of all stripes - rich and poor, black and white, male and female, old and young, conservative and liberal - all in a bid to understand the greater human condition, to hear this country sing in all its voices. He was curious and keen, insightful and kind, and if you haven't read WORKING, you are doing yourself a grave disservice.

Watch. Listen. Think.

What a goddamn loss.

Happy Halloween, everybody. A few choice links on this candy-filled day:

At the WSJ, Laura Miller dissects the still-burgeoning appeal of vampires.

Kelly Link picks five spooky books for Halloween.

Leslie Klinger is on the road promoting THE ANNOTATED DRACULA and talks with Marc Weingarten about all things Stoker. And at Jacket Copy, Carolyn assembles a list of potential literary Halloween costumes. (More here)

Generate your own Halloween costume.

Another Stoker expert, Elizabeth Miller, talks with the Sun's Alan Parker.

Ron Charles goes on a literary Halloween tour.

Tonight McNally Jackson hosts a literary Halloween party.

The murky side of Dublin through its history books.

Christopher Borrelli on the Tale of Sleepy Hollow.

Christopher Walken reads "The Raven".

The Boss has a Halloween treat for his fans.

Operation Boo is in effect.

And finally, watch out for that octopus! (via)

The cover story of this week's Metro Times features Loren Estleman, billed as "MIchigan's Other Crime Writer":

On a drive through Indiana two years ago, Michigan-based author Loren Estleman and his wife, Deborah Morgan, discovered a weathered water tower painted with the words "GAS CITY" in large letters. The sight immediately gave Estleman an idea: What about a lawless city in the Midwest?

The writer had lots of ideas motoring around in his brain, like the short stories of a film archivist-turned-sleuth, or the Western about a hanging judge, or the further adventures of Detroit P.I. Amos Walker.

See, Estleman's able to transfer nebulous thoughts into novels — and here's what's crazy: The guy can pump out three, sometimes four worthy books in a 12-month stretch. This year alone, the 56-year-old Estleman published one book of photography, three novels and slews of short fiction. He's certainly prolific. In fact, only one novelist more prolific springs to mind — Belgian-born writer Georges Simenon — who, at one point, wrote a book a week.

Well, I can think of a few others who are just as prolific, generally of the same generation, but sure, I can go with that line of reasoning. But it's a very good piece whose writer, Odell Walker, also reviews that new book of photography, AMOS WALKER'S DETROIT.

Laura Wilson ha