A Different Stripe

The Best of the Booker: The Siege of Krishnapur

As we mentioned last month, the second "Best of the Booker" award will be given out this summer. Now the shortlist has been announced, and J.G. Farrell's Siege of Krishanpur (a creative retelling about seemingly hapless Brits during the Sepoy rebellion of 1857) is indeed one of the six finalists. Farrell is not as well known over here as some of the other names on the list (Rushdie, Gordimer, Carey, Coetzee, Barker), but his inclusion on the shortlist points to the importance of his "Empire Trilogy"—which also comprises Troubles (about Ireland) and The Singapore Grip.

Vote for The Siege of Krishnapur at themanbookerprize.com.

 Though the bookies aren't setting great odds for Farrell's book to win, its underdog status has brought out reevalutions from many intelligent fans.

One of the best discussions of The Siege comes from Sam Jordison at The Guardian books blog. He manages to touch on the book's humor, its pathos, why it isn't "guilty of 'cultural imbalance,'" and the debate still going on about the significance of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (for more on the rebellion—or mutiny, or "first war of independence"—see William Dalrympole's history The Last Mughal.)

Sam Jordison also reminds us what a tough-ass Farrell was: "At the ceremony he pointedly remarked that he was going to use the money they'd give him to research 'commercial exploitation' and noted that: 'Every year, the Booker brothers see their prize wash up a monster more horrid than the last.'" (Now where is our copy of Lavinia Greacen's Farrell biography so we can read more about this episode?)

Also rooting for Farrell is James Higgs, who writes about the book at the Telegraph.com, and also at his blog, 26 Books:

Farrell’s prose has a wonderful sense of place, and the disintegration of the community and its values is subtly conveyed by the writing. It is also wonderfully funny, with almost no character escaping Farrell’s scorn and ridicule.

The author of the Fleetofworlds blog remarks,

If I had to choose one book to take to a Desert Island it would be The Siege of Krishnapur. It is a work of genius. If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you do so. It is funny, heartbreaking, horrifying and touching, and essentially British - a damning critique of Empire which never resorts to mere Empire-bashing.

Tom at Omnivoracious, admitting to having read none of the books on the shortlist, nevertheless sends us some love, as do Eric Forbs at Goodbooksguide and the bookdwarf.

Oakley Hall, 1920–2008

We learned today that Oakley Hall, author of Warlock, has died. Warlock was among Oakley Hall's most famous books, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, became a film starring Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn, and struck the fancy of a young Thomas Pynchon. Warlock''s dark vision of the wild west and its allusions to the paranoia and strife surrounding the McCarthy hearings led us to describe it as a postmodern Western—though Oakley didn't warm to the designation.

Like Elaine Dundy, Oakley Hall was active and vibrant up until the end. Last September he appeared on a double bill with his namesake, the band Oakley Hall, and only last month he wrote in to ask for some copies of his book and to request a copy of Rex Warner's Men and Gods. We hear that he was working on another book when he died.

There's no point in giving all the details of Hall's life here, when he does it himself at his own website, housed by the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, which Oakley Hall founded nearly forty years ago.

Elaine Dundy in the Telegraph

The Telegraph has printed an obituary for Elaine Dundy. It's quite long, and, in the great British obit tradition, does not shy away from the unsavory. In this case that means devoting an undue amount of space focusing on her sex-life with husband Kenneth Tynan.

Elaine Dundy, 1921–2008

We were deeply saddened to learn of the sudden death on Thursday of Elaine Dundy, author of The Dud Avocado. Elaine never lost her fight, and even as she entered her eighties, she could still crack you up or make you blush with her salty anecdotes. And she was possibly the only person I knew who could utter a sentence that began, "One day, Errol Flynn said to me..."

Elaine was a tireless advocate, not only for her own books, but also for the writing of others, including Daphne du Maurier and Jilly Cooper. As her eyesight worsened as a result of macular degeneration, she reached out to others who suffered from the same condition, letting them know about a miraculous device that enlarged text so that she could continue to read (see the entertaining "Out of the Darkness," which was published in The Guardian in 2006).  Having spent so many hours listening to the books on tape provided by the Library of Congress, it was her wish that The Dud Avocado be part of that program, and happily, the editors there agreed.

Elaine was overjoyed to learn that we'd be publishing her follow-up to The Dud Avocado, The Old Man and Me. I only wish that she had been able to see it happen.

Both Terry Teachout and the blog Quiet Bubble have written tributes to Elaine Dundy.

Correction: Elaine Dundy was born in 1921, not 1927, as previously reported on this post.

Robert Walser event (secret) ticket discount

Did you catch mention of a 30% discount on Walser tickets on yesterday's post? Have another look.

Instead of the regular price of $15 for the event, you'll be charged the very reasonable PEN-member price of $10.

Buy tickets here.

Robert Walser event and other PEN World Voices goings-on

On Saturday, May 3rd, come find out why Jeffrey Eugenides, Deborah Eisenberg, Michael Krüger, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Susan Bernofsky find miniaturist and microsciptologist  Robert Walser one of the most compelling of 20th-century writers.

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Get a taste of Walser's brand of sad-sack humor at N+1

The New Novel
translated by Damion Searls

"Exceptionally estimable, good, nice, dear people they all were but they all, unluckily, kept asking me about the new novel, and that was excruciating.

"Whenever I met an estimable friend on the street, he said and asked: 'How's your new novel coming? Countless avid readers are rejoicing in advance and are already eager to see your new novel. You were nice enough to let on that you're writing a new novel, were you not? I hope it'll be out soon, the new novel.' " [more]

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Other NYRB Classics contributors at the festival

Edwin Frank  (NYRB Classics editorial director)
Francisco Goldman (introduction to The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll)
A.M. Homes (introduction to The Diary of a Rapist)
Fanny Howe (introductions to Mouchette and the forthcoming Rock Crystal)
Janet Malcolm (author of In the Freud Archives)
Albert Mobilio (introduction to The Wine-Dark Sea)
Michael Ondaatje (introduction to Paris Stories)
Francine Prose (introductions to A High Wind in Jamaica and A House and Its Head)
Charles Simic (author of Dime-Store Alchemy and introduction to The Late Mattia Pascal)
Matt Weiland (introduction to the soon-to-be-released Names on the Land)

The Booker of Bookers

2009 will  be the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize (the first awardee was P.H. Newby's Something to Answer For). To drum up interest in the award, and because the only thing better that a best-of list is a best-of-the-best list, there will be a "Best of the Booker" prize given to one of the 41 former winners. As the Man Booker site notes, this isn't the first time such a prize has been distributed, in 1993 Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children was deemed the best by a panel of judges.

Democracy has swept the world, and what worked 1993 surely won't work for the Web 2.0 generation, so this time, the panel of experts is selecting only the six finalists for the "Best of the Booker" prize. The public will be making the final choice.

ABE.com is holding its very own, early poll. So if you'd like to vote for NYRB's lone Booker winner, head over to its Booker page, and put your support behind J.G. Farrell's Siege of Krishnapur.

Fairly used

Alasdair Gray is perhaps not as well known in the US as he should be, though not for lack of Gavin Grant's trying, nor, for that matter his own enlightened beliefs about disseminating excerpts of his work:

About authors' property rights I am a Socialist who thinks nobody should pay for quoting less than 200 words. Nearly everyone who wants to use my illustrations and words — sometimes whole stories — is allowed to have them free if they are not a financially successful publishing firm. I think it a pity that the law has extended dead authors' copyrights from 50 to 70 years. I thought of adding a clause to my will making the copyrights of my books free for all, but my wife is much younger than me and depends on my income, so I did not do it. [link to the post from which this is taken]

We frequently receive requests for permission to quote from books we publish—often in non-commercial publications or scholarly works. Since we do not control such reproduction rights, we cannot deny or grant permission. Instead I sometimes try to sketch out a brief description of the doctrine of fair use: a doctrine that seems to be in danger of dying out from disuse.   It's not something made up by Lawrence Lessig and his pals at Stanford, you can read about it at the US Copyright Office. The University of Texas site also includes a helpful discussion.

"A surging novel of torment and desire"

Those of you who have read Paul Theroux's essay on The Widow by Georges Simenon—either as the introduction to the NYRB edition of the book, or when it appeared in the TLS—might have wished that it had come with a visual footnote to this sentence:

[The Widow] was even resurrected as a 1950s pulp fiction paperback with a come-on tag line (“A surging novel of torment and desire”) and a lurid cover: busty peasant girl pouting in a barn, her skirt hiked over her knees, while a hunky guy lurks at the door – price twenty-five cents.

Well, here you have it. And as a bonus, we bring you the back cover's illustrated dramatis personae: "THE PEASANT WOMAN, THE EX-CONVICT, THE TEEN-AGE GIRL" and the plot synopsis that, while not strictly misrepresenting the facts of the book, gets its tone all wrong: "...Tati knew that only the most devious devices could hold a man with fatally twisted emotions"!

The TLS article bore the title "The existential hack"—which doesn't seem to have been snapped up yet as the title of a freelance writer's blog, register it while you can.

Freeman. Dyson.

Radiolab's bioengineering episode (So Called) Life mentioned New York Review of Books contributor and "frog prince of physics" Freeman Dyson numerous times . . . and in a stern voice reminiscent of action movie trailers, or perhaps, a headlining heavy metal band (if you download the epsiode, fast forward to 33:45). Such intonations seem entirely appropriate for the author of The Scientist as Rebel.

Update: Here is the sound clip . . . Download freeman_dyson.mp3

Update the II: Here is a remix of the sound clip Download freeman_dyson_remix.mp3 . . .