In John Jeremiah Sullivan‘s new essay collection, Pulphead, the journalist gives readers a deep introduction into the esoteric world of blues musicians and blues music collectors.

While reading “Unknown Bards” in the book, this GalleyCat editor built a Spotify playlist with eight hours of blues music by forgotten musicians that Sullivan celebrated in his book. If you want to read the original essay, you can find it at Harper’s Magazine.

Follow this link to listen to the list on Spotify. Once you have an account, check out our Haruki Murakami Spotify playlist, our Patti Smith Spotify playlist, our Geoff Dyer Spotify playlist and our new James Ellroy Spotify playlist.

Read more

Former Jackson 5 member Jermaine Jackson will pen a memoir about his late brother, Michael Jackson. Entitled You Are Not Alone: Michael Through a Brother’s Eyes, Jackson aims to write “the most authoritative account from inside the Jackson music dynasty illuminating the private man, the son, the father, and the brother.”

The video embedded above features both Jermaine and Michael (as well as Tito, Jackie, and Marlon) performing their 70′s hit, “ABC.” Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone will release the memoir in fall 2011. Publisher Stacy Creamer negotiated the deal with Curtis Brown literary agent Gordon Wise.

Creamer had this quote in the release: “Jermaine’s book will offer a unique view of the real Michael Jackson, a perspective only a very few people could possibly have. As his brother and close confidante since they were children, Jermaine can explain Michael in a way that, in life, Michael was never able to articulate himself.”

Although book tour dates have yet to be announced, former President George W. Bush will be interviewed by Matt Lauer and Oprah Winfrey when his memoir arrives next month.

Lauer will air his interview November 8th. Winfrey will air her interview on November 9th, the day of the book’s release. The regular hardcover will cost $35, but 1,000 copies of it will be signed and specially cloth-bound with a $350 price-tag.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair received a reception of shoes, eggs, and protests during his book tour this year. Would you go to a book signing by former President Bush? Let us know in the comments section.

Read more

The great Michael Jackson once offered to make a Harry Potter musical for J.K. Rowling. The story came out during a recent Oprah Winfrey interview special with the bestselling author.

“Were you reluctant to increase the empire?” asked Winfrey in the video embedded above.  Rowling replied: “It could be so much worse. Michael Jackson wanted to do a musical … I said no to a lot of things. For me, I love the films, I love the books, and there’s elements that I love around it.”

Winfrey called it “one of the most fascinating interviews I’ve ever conducted.” The women spoke at Edinburgh’s Balmora Hotel, the place where Rowling finished Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows. Rowling mentioned that if she wanted, she could write more Harry Potter books. She explained: “I definitely could write an eighth, ninth, tenth book. I could, easily.”

Read more

Today is the one year anniversary of Michael Jackson‘s death, and we picked out some literary links to remember the great pop star.

Check out these posts about the books written by Jackson during his lifetime, Jackson’s favorite bookstore, the The Little Prince’s role at his memorial service, and finally, Maya Angelou’s poem about Michael Jackson (read by Queen Latifah in the video embedded above).

eBookNewser pointed us to a new digital book about the pop icon. FastPencil is publishing an eBook version of What Really Happened to Michael Jackson, the King of Pop: The Evil Side of the Entertainment Industry by Leonard Rowe.

Here’s more about the eBook: “Rowe is a concert promoter and long time friend of the Jacksons. He was working with Jackson on “This Is It,” the tour that Jackson was preparing for before he died. The book chronicles Jackson’s rise to fame, his challenges with tabloids, the corruption within the music industry and postulates a conspiracy that Jackson was murdered.”

As the eBook revolution begins, some of literature’s most respected writers are joining the great experiment. Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was critically acclaimed novelist Paul Theroux–discussing his new novel, A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta.

Over his long career, Theroux (pictured, via Yingyong Un-anongrak) has written many novels and travel books, including The Mosquito Coast, Dark Star Safari, and The Great Railway Bazaar. During the interview, he pondered digital books, his recent Kindle-only Atlantic story, and his surreal adventures while visiting Michael Jackson‘s home.

Press play on the embedded player below to listen. The show will be archived around the mediabistro.com network as well.

Here’s an excerpt: “I think it’s a very, very strange thing. I can’t say it’s good or bad. The big danger is copyright infringement. Stealing books and sharing books without paying for them. What could happen to the publishing industry is what happened to the music industry. It was destroyed. Absolutely destroyed. People don’t buy cd’s anymore, they share [MP3s], they swap them, and they steal them. That could happen with books. The upside is that … my [Atlantic piece] is a 17,000 word story. You could open the New Yorker and you won’t find a 17,000 word story. That’s a big, it’s more than twice as long as the longest story … The technological part is great, but the legal part, the copyright part, I don’t know what will happen.”

Celebrity book deals have always stoked passionate opinions among GalleyCat readers and one magazine has taken a special look at a particular sub-genre of this polarizing literary trend: celebrity poetry.

Over at Details magazine, a short poetry quiz urges discerning readers to connect celebrities with their enigmatic verses. The wide-range of styles includes work by popular poets like Jewel (pictured, via), Michael Jackson, Suzanne Somers, and William Butler Yeats.

Here’s more from the site: “Celebrity Poetry [is] a much-maligned and misunderstood American literary genre that’s enjoying a bit of extra attention right now, thanks to the rediscovered cosmic versifications of Michael Jackson. (Alas, yes, ’twas the late King of Pop who composed sweetly sublime lines such as “Planet Earth, my home, my place/ A capricious anomaly in the sea of space.”) Lyrical musings have put MJ in the company of poetic luminaries like Leonard Cohen, Rosie O’Donnell, Billy Corgan, Jewel, Mr. Spock, and Suzanne Somers. But how well, dear scholar, do you really know their work?”

Over the weekend, the gossip site TMZ erroneously reported that Maya Angelou had been sent to the hospital, spawning an avalanche of Twitter posts.

Since then, TMZ has retracted the report, noting that the poet is “alive and well in St. Louis.” The site blames event organizers for telling a photographer that the poet had been hospitalized. This is Angelou’s second bad experience with Twitter this year–in February she exposed a fake Angelou Twitter page with thousands of followers.

A Reuters‘ report gleefully listed all the celebrity missteps created by online journalists: “TMZ got the worldwide scoop on the death of Michael Jackson in June, but wrongly reported the following month that former UFC superstar Kimo Leopoldo had died. Last month, gossip columnist Perez Hilton claimed that former Charlie’s Angels star Jaclyn Smith had tried to commit suicide. It appeared to be a case of mistaken identity. Hilton also suggested in 2007 that Fidel Castro had died.”

As Thomas Pynchon fans count the days until the August 4th release of “Inherent Vice,” Entertainment Weekly dusted off an artist’s time-aged drawing of the reclusive and practically un-photographed novelist.

Click here to see the drawing by Stephen Mancusi–a sketch artist who has completed image modification illustrations of many celebrities, including Michael Jackson to David Letterman. In addition, the magazine’s critic gave the private detective novel high marks.

Here’s more from the article: “His drawing was based on Pynchon’s 1955 high school yearbook photo, one of the last known snapshots of the Gravity’s Rainbow scribe … Yes, the artist’s Pynchon looks a little like John Ratzenberger from Cheers.”

In her tribute to Michael Jackson this afternoon at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Brooke Shields explained that she saw the singer like the titular character in “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Her tearful speech generated a stream of spontaneous tributes to the book and Jackson. “What moves me so deeply about this sleeping prince is his loyalty to a flower,” explained the actress, telling the audience to remember Jackson not as the king of pop, but the little prince. In the book, the prince lives on a barren asteroid, caring for a little rose.

Shields quoted one famous line about the fragile, beautiful side of life we often overlook, taken here from Wikiquote: “Here is my secret. It is very simple: one sees well only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.”