TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| Books of The Times: In a Sketchy Hall of Mirrors, Nabokov Jousts With Death and Reality In “The Original of Laura,” fragments of a novel that Nabokov left unfinished at his death, he imagines the death of his protagonist as a sort of Nietzschean act of will. feeds.nytimes.com |
Thoughts on the plight of Borders The booksellerTim Robinson Manager of the independent Muswell Hill Bookshop, north London."I came here from The Bookshop on Islington Green. Our first hit was when a Waterstone's opened opposite us, but somehow we managed to live with that. Then a big Borders opened and that was it – from day one we might as well have locked up."We manage here through keeping a good range, customer loyalty, and we can usually get anything they want very promptly. For the time being, we're doing all right. But I am not sure for how long. Things are changing so fast, and nobody can predict what happens next – just look at the music industry."The publisher Rebecca NicolsonCo-founder of Short Books"I can't say I'm surprised, there have been rumblings in the trade and in the press for some time about Borders, but I think it's sad for anyone interested in books to see a bookseller go to the wall.There does seem to be a problem in the high street of a loss of spontaneity and creativity. It's all becoming slightly homogenous, with everyone chasing a dwindling market by providing what is perceived as the only thing the public wants, ie the next big celebrity biog.It would be nice to think that this might lead to a change. It should be a time when somebody with a unique offer can get a chance."The authorAmit ChaudhuriNovelist, poet and musician, and professor of contemporary literature at the university of East Anglia."Borders was never as depressing as Waterstone's, but it was never quite as interesting as it could and should have been. What the big bookshops have is a sense of a large public space, like an art gallery, where you can wander around, stop for coffee, have a look at different things. Sometimes independent bookshops can feel too small, too precious."What one would really like to see would be a flourishing of smaller, smarter, more interesting, independent bookshopsthat felt like real places, not heritage sites.BordersMaev Kennedyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Derek Walcott appointed professor of poetry - at Essex Nobel laureate Derek Walcott turns his back on Oxford University to take up a poetry professorship at the University of EssexFollowing the most ferocious scandal the poetry world has experienced for years, during which favourite Derek Walcott withdrew from the race for the Oxford poetry professorship, he is next year to be made professor of poetry after all: but at the University of Essex, rather than Oxford.The university announced today that Walcott, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1992, would be visiting the Colchester campus in April 2010 for the first of two visits, during which he will deliver student workshops and a public reading. He last visited the university in 2008, when he was awarded an honorary degree.Walcott had been considered the front runner for the Oxford professorship – British poetry's most prestigious appointment, with a lineage dating back to the 18th century and including the likes of Matthew Arnold, WH Auden and Seamus Heaney – when an anonymous campaign saw some 200 Oxford academics sent photocopied pages from a book detailing a sexual harassment claim made against Walcott by a student at Harvard in 1982.The Nobel laureate resigned from the race on 12 May, and his chief rival Ruth Padel was appointed to the role – but she resigned nine days later, after it emerged that she had alerted two journalists to the allegations, and as yet it remains unfilled.In a statement issued today, the University of Essex said: "We are aware of the allegations made against Professor Walcott in the 1980s which were revived in the media during the election for Oxford University's professor of poetry position earlier in the year, causing him to withdraw his candidacy. However, the university is focused on giving its students and the literary community the rare opportunity to benefit from working with an internationally acclaimed writer."Senior lecturer Dr Maria Cristina Fumagalli, an expert on Walcott's work who had been very keen to persuade him to return to the university, said she had no concerns whatsoever about appointing him to a teaching role: "Not at all. I met Walcott for the first time as a graduate student. He was very inspiring and I wanted that kind of inspiration for my students."The idea for the appointment – which revives a tradition of appointing poetry professors at Essex that had included the likes of Robert Lowell before it was discontinued at the end of the 1970s – had nothing to do with the summer's row in Oxford, Dr Fumagalli insisted. "The idea dates back to his visit to the university in 2008. When he was here, he was very generous with his time talking to students and it was a huge boost for them, and we were very keen to persuade him to return."This is an incredible opportunity, not only for our students but for the general public. Very rarely do people get the chance to learn directly from a writer of this calibre."Walcott, who is due to publish a new collection of poems, White Egrets, in 2010, said: "I am delighted to be professor of poetry at the University of Essex. When I was awarded my honorary doctorate last year I was impressed by the warm atmosphere and intellectual drive of the department of literature, film, and theatre studies which is home to formidable scholars and committed Caribbeanists. While I was there I also had the opportunity to meet talented and enthusiastic students and I am really looking forward to working with this cohort of emerging writers."Author and critic Marina Warner, who is also a professor at the university, added: "It is a marvellous and exciting boon ... The university is approaching its 50th anniversary, and since its foundation under the poet Donald Davie, the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies has hosted international writers and poets. Our strong tradition of research and teaching in creative writing as well as in the literature of the Caribbean is growing vigorously, and Walcott's presence will be an added inspiration."Derek WalcottPoetryOxford professor of poetryLindesay Irvineguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Insight by a Thousand Strokes David Levine’s line came from caricaturists of the past, but he used it to untangle the politics of his day. feeds.nytimes.com |
Titus Groan rises again! Discovered – a fourth Gormenghast novel, written by Mervyn Peake's widowA fourth novel that continues Mervyn Peake's classic fantasy series Gormenghast has been discovered. It was written by Peake's widow, the late Maeve Gilmore, and recounts the further adventures of Titus, the 77th Earl of Groan. Here their son Sebastian Peake tells the story of how it came about.As a boy, I didn't want to read the Gormenghast novels. I first read them when I was 20 and found them shattering. I was mesmerised by having a father who was so eloquent and loquacious and descriptive, but at the same time frightened by it – I couldn't understand the world he described. I read them again, at the age of 27, and he transported me - I fell for his descriptive powers.About 18 months ago, we were getting boxes out of the attic and my daughter found a lot of Peake-related stuff. Not much was done about it. The boxes piled up in my flat. One day I was going through them and had this great eureka moment when I found four 100-page exercise books in my mother's handwriting.My father had died in 1968. He was in and out of hospitals for the last 10 years of his life. As his illness progressed, the standard of his work began to deteriorate. He did carry on trying to write, and in a moment of clarity he wrote one and a half pages of a new novel.My mother was so moved by the tragedy of his early death, that she wanted to pick up the thread of his imagination and art by continuing the story herself. Little by little as the novel moves on, her voice comes through, so that by the end you are reading Maeve Gilmore, not Mervyn Peake.The leitmotif of the whole thing is Titus's search for a final home. He feels he would like to be on an island so he travels across the sea by boat, finally arriving at a harbour, where there is a small girl, who is my sister. Then out run two little boys – my brother and me. We meet Titus, and the three of us walk away while Titus is becoming Mervyn Peake. He metamorphoses. It's highly poignant. Titus has become my mother's husband and has arrived back where he wanted to be.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |