Freywatch: last trickling gasps

By Sarah on January 23, 2006 8:37 AM

Yeah I know, you’re all sick of this story and so am I, but somehow the New York Times isn’t and assigns technology reporter Tom Zeller to go a-hunting for anything remotely related to A MILLION LITTLE PIECES. What does he find? Oh, a whole lot of “anonymous posters” who took issue with the book years before The Smoking Gun’s expose. No kidding.

Meanwhile, it can’t really be a literary controversy unless Steve Almond gets to comment, and he finally did so in Sunday’s Globe where he comes to the oh-so-shocking conclusion that publishers don’t care what a book is, as long as it sells:

The bottom line is that publishers aren’t really that interested in literature anymore. There’s just not enough profit there. They like the idea of literature. They like feeling that they are engaged in the pursuit of elevating the human spirit. Like Oprah and many readers, they embrace the convenient, self-congratulatory aspects of literature.

But that’s not the same as embracing its deepest virtues: the ability to make us see our world and ourselves anew, to expose our delusions, to engage our most unbearable feelings.

There’s also the bit about how he kind of kicks himself for not rewriting his first short story collection as a memoir to “make us rich” which makes one wonder about usage of “the royal us”, I suppose…

And Bookninja further reports that Frey has canceled his Toronto appearance at the Elgin Winter Garden, originally slated for January 28. No word on whether it will be rescheduled, if at all.

Ron here, with one more commentator getting a shot in as fast as he can, as cartoonist Bill Amend pushes comic strip turnaround time to its limits in this week’s Fox Trot. If you click on the panel at left (reproduced strictly for its newsworthiness!), you’ll see all of Monday’s strip…and knowing Jason, the hijinx can only get wackier. But will Amend be brave enough to throw a JT LeRoy reference onto the family funnies?