The Life and Times of a Navy Husband

What a fine list to be on, the list of most shoplifted authors: Jack Kerouac, Bill Burroughs, Charlie Bukowski, and Paul Auster. That’s cult status. From an article in Columbia College Today.
An occasional shoplifting problem has made some booksellers keep Auster’s works behind the counter
…
and a bookstore manager commented on NPR that [...]

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If Part 1 is true, here’s the scenario: I send my query letters out, they arrive at agents’ offices and sit in the slushpile. One of the following things happens next:
1) It arrives when the agent is on vacation and accumulates with all the other queries until the agent returns and has to sift through [...]

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So, word on the street is that it’s not the best time of year to query lit agents. There’s a lot of stuff out there about the relatively relaxed atmosphere of the publishing community. In the summer (so it’s said) editors at the big houses work four and a half days during the week and [...]

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OK, so this is kind of lame, but also kind of fun, if you’re a nerd:

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On Beauty by Zadie Smith is an astoundingly good book. It’s more controlled than the excellent White Teeth and just as funny. It’s modelled after Howard’s End, so you have to give her the benefit of the doubt for a couple pages as she begins ‘with Jerome’s e-mails to his father,’ but once the story [...]

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Thanks to The Elegant Variation for the Lisa Williams link.

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Will it ever stop?
I keep coming across parts of the story that need more development. My wordcount has swelled by 3000 words over the last two weeks. By the time I’m ‘done’ it will probably be close to 75,000. I’ve imposed a deadline for myself of June 29 so I can bring a copy to [...]

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In an interview over at 3:AM Magazine Lisa Williams offers this:
It’s getting harder and harder to publish serious literature and when it is published,the problem is to get it noticed. As a result we see fewer writers out there tackling…themes of memory and the importance of the past.
Is it really getting harder to publish serious [...]

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Why do dormitories all smell the same? Why do they all have such crappy furniture? Why, when I briefly attended seminary, were the mattresses sheathed in plastic? Were they worried about bedwetters? I mean, sure, some of the guys were a little awkward, but bedwetting?
OK, maybe I’m thinking about it too much.
Anyway, the bed I [...]

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I’ll be out of town for the weekend so I might not be able to post until Monday. It all hinges on whether or not the place I’m staying at has WiFi or not.
In the meantime, read a book. Something literary, please.

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