• Living in one of "America's Most Literate Cities"? Put your hand down if you live in NYC.
  (Perhaps NY would have fared better if the NY Times didn't call lit journals "farm teams.")
  
  
• A woman sells her poems on eBay to afford adoption fees. Alas, poetry's no money-maker:

  Bidding starts at 50 cents, but so far there have been no takers, no bids, on either of the first two poems.
  
  Others have had better luck on eBay, including an Indiana family that made $65,000 on a cane, after claiming it belonged to a dead man who was haunting a grandson.

• Return of the Reluctant lists the most wish-listed books on Amazon. Book No. 14 is hot.
  
  
• In case you forgot the value of being well-connected, even via leash: Dean Koontz's dog Trixie debuts in the self-help genre.
  
  
• Your parents were right; an English degree won't get you a job. And, according to this article's photo caption, it can also leave you homeless.
  
  

When it comes to obituary writing, the challenge and wordcount of each assignment are inversely proportional. Obituary headlines are more difficult, still -- relying on only several words to note a life and death. And so, it's easy to wonder: what do headlines, with their clear and conscious emphases, say about the newspapers that print them?

Here's how various newspapers and media outlets chose to represent the passing of Susan Sontag:

Susan Sontag, writer, political activist and anti-Bush campaigner, dies at 71, The Independent
Susan Sontag dies at 71, Telegraph
US author Susan Sontag dies at 71, BBC News
Susan Sontag, Leading Intellectual, Dies at 71, New York Times
Ardent Author, Activist, Critic Dies at 71, Los Angeles Times
Author-activist Susan Sontag dies of leukemia, Tuscon Citizen
Lesbian Writer Susan Sontag Dies, 365gay.com
Literary rebel with a cause dies, South Australia Advertiser
Susan Sontag: Remembering an intellectual hero, Slate
'Intellectual' was no stigma to writer, Houston Chronicle
A celebrity intellectual who provoked, inspired, Philadelphia Inquirer
Zealot with a beautiful mind, Edmonton Sun
A Rigorous Intellectual Dressed in Glamour, New York Times (Books)
Writer was never shy about speaking her mind, Baltimore Sun
Sontag juggled contradictions in life and work, Kansas City Star
Leukemia claims Susan Sontag, 71, Pioneer Press

Related:

EdRants and wood s lot assemble two memorials out of links.

Alan Cheuse remembers writers who died this year on NPR's All Things Considered.

# 12/29/2004 06:28:55 PM

More notable than Martin Literary Management's "notable clients" -- which include "27-year old gay psychic Dougall Fraser and stand-up comic Wendy Kamenoff" -- is its founder Sharlene Martin's take on publicists, as relayed by mediabistro.com's Jill Singer in the current installment of "Pitching an Agent":

[Martin] frequently asks her writers to hire a publicist for a period of 90 days around the launch of their book. It's not a mandatory part of her basic contract, but she feels that it's a selling point with publishers and often results in a larger advance. "I say, 'My client is willing to commit to a minimum of three months if you'll meet this advance.' And in almost every case, they do. They see that the author is willing to invest their own money in the success of the book and they know that this an author that is really serious. Money talks."

["Pitching an Agent: Martin Literary Management," mediabistro.com - sub. req'd]

"Enter Citizen Girl to the rescue."

We are a) as screwed as corks on New Year's, b) screwed like Toni Bentley on a bender, c) screwed as thoroughly as lightbulbs in a MIT dormroom, d) really, really screwed.