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While the book had the power to captivate us, so did the author. Oscar Wilde, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway – to name a few – were just as bizarre and compelling of characters as the ones they gave life to in print.

So what happened? Where have our eccentric writers gone?

Eccentric authors didn’t just write books. They sold them. When readers purchased a copy of “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” they were never just buying a book. They were buying Hemingway.

If you ever get a chance, watch the hour-long, BBC 1978 documentary on Thompson that appears on the second disc of the Criterion Collection version of the film, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” It follows Thompson as he displays his now-famous brand of eccentric and sometimes dangerous behavior patterns. Not behavior to be endorsed by any means, but it shows how Thompson’s personality gave his work an added dimension. That added dimension is what makes many great works timeless.

Now, don’t take this as a call for today’s major authors to start firing handguns off rooftops while stone drunk. It’s more of a musing as to when the publishing industry decided to replace “personality” with “celebrity.”

Go into a Barnes & Noble nowadays, and there’s an entire section devoted to fictional works written by “celebrity authors” such as actors Steve Martin and Ethan Hawke.

But at least these books are original works.

Buffalo Bills wide receiver Terrell Owens (a character in his own right) already has released two autobiographies (“Catch This: Going Deep with the NFL’s Sharpest Weapon” and “T.O.”), a children’s book (“Little T Learns to Share”) and a fitness book (“T.O.’s Finding Fitness: Making the Mind, Body, and Spirit Connection for Total Health”). He is 35 years old. He released his first autobiography in 2004 and his second in 2006.

Former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin called herself a “lame duck” when stepping down from office – in the middle of her first term. Upon her resignation, the 2008 vice presidential candidate signed a book deal with Harper Collins, who will co-release her memoirs with its subsidiary, Christian publishing house Zondervan. Palin’s rumored asking price for a book she will co-pen? $11 million. She may not get that much, but many analysts expect her to get more than former President George W. Bush received for his memoirs.

“Celebrity” over “personality.” “Style” over “substance.” Call me crazy, but I just don’t see these titles stacking up against “The Catcher in the Rye” or “The Great Gatsby” in the long run.

A side note: If you have a Facebook account, try taking the “Which Crazy Writer Are You” quiz. Post your result on your homepage and here on Delmio.

By Diane Evans, Delmio.com

The beauty of Hollywood is that it’s just that. Hollywood. With full license to create, embellish and pull rank, even great authors find their stories changed when books morph into film scripts.

Milan Kundera had the right idea. He didn’t like the movie adaptation of his “Unbearable Lightness of Being,” so has never allowed another adaptation of his work. His choice.

The running debate, over when Hollywood’s creative liberties go too far, surfaced again over some current films. In one case, “My Sister’s Keeper” author Jodi Picoult indicated that she enjoyed the recent film adaptation of her book while many of her fans did not.

Writing on her Web site, www.jodipicoult.com, Picoult says, “Yes, I know the ending is different. Yes, I know some of you are very upset. I didn’t change it… Please don’t e-mail me asking me why I changed the ending, or ‘let’ Hollywood do that – it wasn’t something I had any control over.”

Her message makes the point: We’re talking two different mediums, producing two different sets of experiences. That’s why, in the credit lines, you see that certain films are “based on” a particular book or real-life experience. It’s as good as saying ideas were borrowed – with creative license.

This is art. It’s not history, biography or documentary. And the art of film, with its immediate and visual impact, creates a separate experience from that of a novel, with a more complex and fully developed storyline. Plus, the bottom line is business, and what sells in books may not sell at the box office.

Still, these artistic debates are refreshing, if only because true artists care about such things. An example is “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder, who after a rough first cut of the film, was told by studio executives to cut two scenes: the Comedian’s funeral, which establishes tone and introduces key characters, and Dr. Manhattan’s reverie on Mars, where he narrates his origin story and muses on the nature of time.

Both were crucial scenes in the graphic novel, so Snyder fought to keep them in the movie. He prevailed, even through he still had to cut 30 minutes from the film.

As consumers of art, it’s good to remind ourselves that if through art we imitate the perfection of the universe, then we need to be satisfied with different methods of imitation to suit different artistic forms. As Brian K. Vaughan, “Y: The Last Man” creator and “Lost” writer, commented in Wired Magazine, regarding the adaptation of “Watchmen” before its release: “It’s like making a stage play of ‘Citizen Kane.’ I guess it could be OK, but why? The medium is the message.”

Much like our deepest feelings, art just is. One could write a book about this. And it would be very different from the film.

By Diane Evans, Delmio.com

As we approach the Fourth of July weekend, we prepare to celebrate our many precious freedoms – two of those essential ones being freedom of speech and expression.

Freedom, of course, requires tolerance – tolerance to those of different race, creed and belief. However, tolerance doesn’t mean we compromise our values as Americans. A governor or public official that lies and cheats, a financier or corporate executive that commits fraud; all should accountable. Public pressure should side with honesty and honor.

So why is Hyperion Books so casual about author and journalist Chris Anderson using unattributed passages — closely mirroring material from Wikipedia and other sources –in his soon-to-be-released book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.”

Anderson is no novice. He is editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, and his previous book, “The Long Tail,” became influential in business circles. Yet now, in a simple blog post, he has confirmed the use of unattributed material by saying it was his “screwup.” His explanation: That in the “rush” to finish the book, credits were omitted, and that passages in question “were mostly on the margins of the book’s focus, mostly on historical asides.”

For its part, Hyperion said it was satisfied with the explanation – kind of like the teacher satisfied with the lame, “dog ate my homework” excuse.

Hyperion now plans to work with Anderson to make corrections for an electronic version of the book and subsequent hard copies. The 80,000 first-print copies have already been shipped.

Interestingly, Anderson’s new book talks about the wisdom of free products on the Web. He said he depended on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia of free user-contributed articles generally considered “questionable” as a reliable source of information, to describe meanings of phases such as “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The Virginia Quarterly Review discovered the borrowing of text and ideas.

Ironically, the controversy has been noted on Anderson’s Wikipedia page.

At a time when book publishers have been repeatedly called into question for intellectual honesty, Hyperion and Wired, for that matter, made it easy on themselves while protecting a financial investment. In this case, tolerance short-shifted the ethics that are sacred in journalism and publishing.

Anderson now joins a long list of authors called into question for plagiarism, with lawsuits even extending to “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling.

In Anderson’s case, his acknowledgments are on the table. Sure, you can say it’s a small thing, involving information in the margins. But that’s like saying a small lie is acceptable, or perhaps a small incident of fraud.

Tolerance in such cases reduces our collective expectations, and the unwritten standard to which we hold journalists and authors. We all lose when we lower our standards.

At the very least, I would have felt better to hear a serious mea culpa from Anderson and his publisher.

You may not have heard of the next generation of great scientists yet. Here’s your chance to get acquainted: Read What’s Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science. The book’s editor assembled a cast of up-and-coming smart people and asked them to look into their space-time continuum portals for a look to the future of science. Among things they saw is a migration northward as climate change continues, and one doomsday scenario: The extinction of the human race. Homo sapiens exstinctus. The folks at VSL were appropriately terrified.

Publisher Random House says, “This wide-ranging collection of never-before-published essays offers the very latest insights into the daunting scientific questions of our time. Its contributors—some of the most brilliant young scientists working today—provide not only an introduction to their cutting-edge research, but discuss the social, ethical, and philosophical ramifications of their work. With essays covering fields as diverse as astrophysics, paleoanthropology, climatology, and neuroscience, What’s Next? is a lucid and informed guide to the new frontiers of science.”

By Diane Evans, DelMio.com

Looking for something to do this summer? Go to the library.

You might find more than you expect. And the best part is it’s free.

In addition to innovative summer reading programs and other interesting activities, libraries are also a source of free computer access.

This is a big deal for many communities. In one recent survey, more than 70 percent of libraries identified themselves as the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their area, according to the American Library Association (ALA). And, Internet services are escalating rapidly within the nation’s libraries. The ALA also reports that more than 76 percent of all public libraries provide Wi-Fi access, up from 65.9 percent one year ago.

In the national debate over stimulus spending for broadband networks, library proponents make an effective argument that libraries can play a significant role in bridging the digital divide. In a recent conversation, Sari Feldman, president-elect of the Public Library Association (a division of ALA), pointed out that libraries not only provide public access to Internet service, but they also give people needed support – in figuring out how to fill out an online job application, for example. A majority of large retailers, Feldman noted, now require online applications.

The Cuyahoga County Public Library in Northeast Ohio, where Feldman is executive director, is an example of a library system with dozens of programs that help level the playing field for those with no Internet access in their homes. People receive help with job searches and applications, for example. In another initiative, college-bound students learn to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

These are ways libraries stand to further elevate their relevance as places where people can go to help improve themselves and seek new opportunities. They can be a place to go, especially for those otherwise shut out of opportunities that require Internet access.

No surprise libraries figure prominently in the debate over how to provide Internet access to those under-served or not served at all.

Yet even in the best-case scenario, one where all public libraries provide public accessibility to high-speed, high-capacity Internet service, that alone isn’t enough to break down economic, social and educational barriers that result from the digital divide.

The other part of the equation: People must take the personal initiative to use the services available to them in order to reap the benefits.

I’m reminded of my 83-year-old dad who not long ago went to the doctor complaining of various aches and pains. He was really complaining of being shut out – of playing golf, for example, or bocce.

“Go to the gym,’’ the doctor kept telling him.

Finally, after hearing it enough times, he went to his version of the gym – the one he set up in his basement. His health improved dramatically.

Looking for a new job? A more effective, efficient ways to learn new skills? How to do better in school? Ways to beat the summer heat?

Go to the library.

By Diane Evans

Mothers teach — sometimes without even knowing it.

Ever take a packed lunch to school as a child? Ever look inside to find a small note from mom next to your pudding snack?

In that instance, mom taught that the written word sends a message — no matter how brief.

Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday. But if your sentiment simply won’t fit on a note or greeting card, try a book.

You can pick a book to send almost any message you’d like to your mother (or to the woman in your life who most fits your ideal of a mother). Motherhood is one of those subjects that literature has conferred blanket coverage — on par with love, heartbreak, war and peace.

As children, we learn about Old Mother Hubbard, who sets the stage for the extent to which mothers fuss. Old Mother Hubbard goes everywhere — to the baker’s, the tavern, the tailor’s and so on — and that’s just to pamper the dog.

As we grow, literature breaks the news to us (in case we missed the point in real life) that a mother’s role can get a lot more complicated.

In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, for example, Ma Joad shows how a mother’s courage and wisdom can keep a family going in the really tough times.

Or take the figure of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Karenina shows that even when a mother’s personal life goes really astray — to the point of desertion — her connection to her child can transcend even the worst behavior.

Most of us probably have mothers somewhere in the spectrum between Ma Joad and Anna Karenina. (Hopefully closer to Ma Joad.) Regardless of where a mother’s virtue lies, Mother’s Day is an occasion to put her under the spotlight.

If you are looking for a book to give your mom, to express warm feelings or to make her laugh, here are a few titles on display at the Chautauqua Book Store inside the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in western New York: (While summer programming doesn’t open until June 27, the bookstore stays open year round.)

—Dear Mom: Thank You For Everything or The Incredible Truth About Mothers, both by Bradley Trevor Greive. Both titles feature nature photography with captions reflecting thoughts you might expect from a mother. For example, next to a sleeping polar bear cub, a caption reads, “A child’s dreams are tomorrow’s reality.”

—Thoughts with Love for Mother, by Anne Geddes. This is a little book of sayings, such as this one by Cecilia Lasbury: “There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children. One of these is roots. The other, wings.”

—Zelda’s Moments with Mom, part of the Zelda Wisdom series by Carol Gardner and Shane Young. Again, photos with captions, such as “Being a mother also means enthusiastically sharing dreams, however unrealistic as in, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a cowboy.’”

—Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice, by James Lileks. It’s a humorous look at parents who figure things out for themselves and do just fine.

Chances are, if you’ve lived away from mom and dad for any length of time,  you either a) had a roommate from hell or b) were the roommate from hell.

Maybe you shared an apartment with a roomie whose laundry took on a smelly life form of its own or who never heard of washing dishes. Or perhaps you spotted the tell-tale hashmarks of a fork having scraped the contents of your peanut butter jar.

I Lick My Cheese: And Other Real Notes from the Roommate Frontlines by Oonagh O’Hagan is a compilation of real-life notes posted by roommates or “flatmates” as the original U.K. version termed them. They range from cute and fun to sarcastic to angry rants to really disgusting re-creations of certain, um, transgressions allegedly perpetrated by a room- er, flatmate.

The author’s Web site, roommatesanonymous.com, has a substantial collection of posted photos of said notes. The best of these are immortalized in hardcover in the recent U.S. book or its 2007 U.K. predecessor, I Lick My Cheese and Other Notes: From the Frontline of Flatsharing. You can log in and add your own stories from the “Frontline” at the Web site. Or just read in horror and be grateful your situation wasn’t that awful. Was it?

Can’t get enough of Dan Brown?

Fans will soon feast this year, as the film adaptation of Angels and Demons hits the big screen next week, and another book featuring the Robert Langdon character, The Lost Symbol, will be published in September.

Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was a smash hit in 2003 and the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard movie was a hit (though not necessarily with critics) in 2006.

Brown’s latest book compresses the action into 12 hours. Doubleday is excited about  the prospects of another blockbuster, and the publisher plans a first printing of 5 millions copies – the largest first print in Random House Inc. history, says www.danbrown.com.

“This novel has been a strange and wonderful journey,” said Brown at his Web site. “Weaving five years of research into the story’s twelve-hour timeframe was an exhilarating challenge. Robert Langdon’s life clearly moves a lot faster than mine.”

Need a refresher on The Da Vinci Code? Start here.

Sports Illustrated writer Selena Roberts has made a career out of reporting on Alex Rodriguez and his reported use of steroids.

A-Rod reveals new details, including allegations that A-Rod, also dubbed A-Roid  (he has several less-flattering nicknames among fellow New York Yankees), starting dabbling with performance-enhancing drugs in high school and continued in New York after he left the Texas Rangers, contradicting his admissions of drug use to date.

In a public statement about his steroid use, Rodriguez said he felt the pressure as baseball’s highest-paid player (not to mention the pressure-packed New York media cauldron) to do anything to be the best player possible.

A flurry of accusations, denials, admissions and so on preceded and followed baseball’s Mitchell Report on steroids, and no doubt more will come.

Names that pop up in the book include Madonna, trainer Angel Presinal, former Major Leaguers Kevin Brown and Jose Canseco (himself author of controversial books) and former coaches – even high school teammates. And, to quote the New York Daily News, ”dalliances with out-of-town floozies.”

Adding insult to injury, Roberts reports he was unpopular at Hooters, where baseball’s richest player tipped the minimum 15 percent.

A-Rod is set for May 12 publication by HarperCollins.

Other DelMio posts on baseball:

Veeck as in Wreck.

Three baseball must-reads.

Yankee Doodle not always dandy.

Baby's got a gun

Tor.com, purveyor of sci-fi and fantasy lit, gives away a fair amount of its properties no doubt in hopes of luring dollars from grateful readers.

This can present some risk. What if readers don’t like it? Or worse: What if they just go on reading the freebies, sponging all these books and short stories without ever spending a dime?

Well, it must work on some level, because Tor keeps doing it. A recent endeavor is a whacky short story by Terry Bisson, TVA Baby.

TVA Baby starts out in the skies over the Tennessee Valley, or the Mississippi River, depending on who’s right, and things (literally) take a rapid descent from there. It’s a bumpy ride, narrated with a unique point of view. Some comments by readers that followed found the occasional lapses in logic and continuity annoying, which might  miss the point. See for yourself.

Or if you prefer, hear for yourself.

And if you’d like to get a virtually limitless stream of free stuff from Tor, sign up here.

Aspiring writers receive lots of advice, often conflicting advice.

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers,” Dorothy Parker once wrote, “the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of ‘The Elements of Style.’ The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

Strunk & White have long found themselves on the bookshelves of many writers, nestled next to the dictionary, thesaurus, AP Stylebook and a few other select titles (We would include William Zinsser’s On Writing Well and James Kilpatrick’s The Writer’s Art). Last week, it turned 50, or 90-something, depending on your perspective.

Happy birthday, The Elements of Style.

The Elements of Style rose to prominence in 1959 when E.B. White revised William Strunk’s original text four decades after Strunk first self-published the book while an English professor at Cornell (White was his student in 1919). It got some free press from White in The New Yorker and a boffo review in the
New York Times.

Elements has been revised several times since then, although it still can seem a tad quaint at times. And not all writers or “experts” appreciate Strunk & White’s “little book” of rules for writers. Then again, rules were made to be broken, no?

German novelist Hans Fallada wrote his World War II-era novel, Every Man Dies Alone, based on the real-life resistance movement started by a middle-aged couple in circa 1940 Germany. The couple distributed anti-Nazi messages on handwritten postcards all around Berlin.

Fallada, a successful novelist before the war, never saw the book go to print. He suffered from mental illness and died of a morphine overdose in 1947 just months before it was published, reports veryshortlist.com.

But now the story is being published in English.

Otto and Anna Quangel started their campaign after learning that their only son had been killed during Germany’s invasion of France.

“Mother! The Fuhrer has murdered my son,”  read the first postcard Otto wrote and left to be seen in public.

Famous Holocaust survivor Primo Levi calls Every Man Dies Alone “the greatest book ever written about the German resistance to the Nazis.”

Resistance is not always futile.

The newspaper columnist who “discovered” the musician who became the subject of columns, then book, and now movie tells how his encounter with Nathaniel Ayers led to this series of events, culminating – for now – in the movie being released amid a ton of buzz starring Jamie Foxx and  Robert Downey Jr.

Steve Lopez talked to NPR a year ago about how this unlikely friendship grew: “Lopez says his friendship with Ayers has ‘always been a two-way street, it’s not just me doing for him.’ The writer explains that the musician re-ignited his passion for journalism and gave him a sense of well-being: ‘You know, there’s this humility, there’s this good feeling I have from giving something,’ Lopez says.”
The story is pretty well-known at this point, of how Ayers had been a promising violinist at the prestigious Juilliard School who dropped out as he struggled with schizophrenia. He moved to L.A. and landed on the streets there.
As Lopez wrote about Ayers in the Los Angeles Times, readers sent instruments to Lopez on behalf of Ayers. One thing led to another, Ayers got off the street and into an apartment and treatment for his mental illness.

Hear excerpts from the movie and from Lopez on radio before the movie was released: “It was the violin that turned my head,” he told NPR, then he noticed the player was in rags and the violin had only two strings.

The book is  The Soloist: A Lost Dream, and Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music.

It’s early in the new century; societal upheaval seems everywhere; new industries are being born as older ones die; and news seems to travel instantaneously.

Welcome to 1911.

Vanished Smile by R.A. Scotti takes a look at an event that occurred nearly 100 years ago and triggered one of the biggest sensations of its day: Crime of the century! Media frenzy! Scandal! Celebrity suspects! International Public outcry and huge, public displays of grief.

She truly is a woman of international mystery.

Mona Lisa has long been the subject of song and mystery, and continues to intrigue us still.
In this fictionalized mystery based on very real events, Scotti’s story unfolds like this: “The prime suspects were as shocking as the crime: Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, young provocateurs of a new art. As French detectives using the latest methods of criminology, including fingerprinting, tried to trace the thieves, a burgeoning international media hyped news of the heist.”

In reality, the painting was stolen by a former Louvre worker, Vincenzo Peruggia, who reportedly hid inside the museum on Aug. 20, 1911, and made off with the famous painting. He kept it in his Paris apartment for two years before returning to Italy with it. Apparently Peruggia expected to be rewarded for returning the Mona Lisa to Leonardo Da Vinci’s homeland, Italy.

He was rewarded with a trip to jail.

The painting was returned to Le Louvre in 1914.

Peruggia (his name is usually spelled Perugia, reports Wikipedia) was released from jail after a short time and served in the Italian army during World War I.

In an interview, author Scotti talks about the mystique of the Mona Lisa that attracted her to the story and how she was not even aware that the Mona Lisa had once been stolen (that makes at least two of us). But once she started investigating the theft, many conspiracy theories came to light.

“There is no question that Peruggia—aka ‘Leonardo’—performed the actual theft. He left his calling card. The left thumbprint on the frame was his, and examinations by French and Italian experts proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the Mona Lisa he returned was the same painting that he stole. But the idea that Peruggia was the lone thief is implausible. Although I don’t believe he acted alone, I could not crack the case. Who was behind the theft and, even more puzzling, why, remains a baffling mystery that will probably never be solved.

Speaking of Da Vinci mysteries, one of this century’s most popular books still grabs attention: The Da Vinci Code.

After reports came in of Stephen Hawking being gravely ill, family members said the author of A Brief History of Time was expected to make a full recovery.

Hawking, who has been in a wheelchair for years and communicates via a voice synthesizer, was touring the United States when he contracted a chest  infection. His condition worsened back at Cambridge and he was rushed to a hospital Monday for tests and treatment.

Wednesday, he was reportedly doing better.

He developed symptoms of motor neurone disease at the age of 21 and was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), the most common form of motor neurone disease. He has defied the odds by living more than 40 years with the disease, which typically kills patients in five years or less.

The Cambridge University professor is widely regarded as the best-known living scientist. In 1988, he published A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes.
In 2004 he announced he had solved the Black Hole paradox, admitting that black holes may allow some information to escape them. He had argued in a friendly bet with other scientists that black holes destroy everything that falls into them.

By Diane Evans

Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader continues to give rise to speculation on how we will digest books in the future. In a guest viewpoint in this week’s Wall Street Journal, for example, author Steven Johnson looked at how the “digital-books revolution” might change the very way we read and write.

Johnson talked about having an “aha” moment relating to the “great promise and opportunity” in the transformation to digital formats.

As someone with two daughters in college, I’ve just had my own “aha” moment: Why aren’t we seeing more digital textbooks?

Once, my older daughter asked me to stand in a line at her school, where students go to “sell back” their books. I walked in with about $500 worth of textbooks and walked out with about with $16 cash. The alternatives: Haul the books home knowing they would never be opened again, or simply throw them away.

Sometimes I wonder where all these used books go. While information does constantly change, does the 7th edition of some textbooks really differ that much from the 8th edition?

It doesn’t matter whether you choose to use a Kindle or some other e- reading device. What it should come down to is this: What is the best deal for students?

The university press, in particular, can make a difference. College textbooks are the products of both commercial publishing houses and university press operations.

Recently, in announcing a move to almost all digital publishing, the University of Michigan Press pointed out that digital books of the future would emphasize interactive components including hot links, graphics, 3D animation and video. U-M Press held out the promise for students to get more, as authors communicate subtleties through various multimedia options.

It’s hard to say where the future of the novel is going. Some of us still like to curl up on a chair with printed pages we can touch and turn.

Textbooks aren’t like that. Most universities now have digital processes and products in place.

So what are we waiting for?

___

A note on author J.G. Ballard, who died Sunday at age 78 after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer:

Ballard was best known for “Empire of the Sun” and “The Kindness of Women,” both fictionalized autobiographies. “Empire of the Sun,” an international best seller, related to his childhood in a Japanese internment camp outside Shanghai. Director Steven Spielberg later made it into a film.

Great Britain’s Telegraph described Ballard as having an “uncanny feel for the dark undercurrents of modern life,” and on a personal level, being as kind and generous as his fiction was eerie and hostile.

HarperCollins canceled plans to publish Ballard’s most recent project, “Conversations,” when it became clear the author was too ill to continue. The book was to reflect Ballard’s conversations with British oncologist Jonathan Waxman.

Diane Evans is founder and president of DelMio.com.

JG Ballard, author of Crash and Empire of the Sun among others, died Sunday after a long illness.
The BBC said Ballard had suffered from cancer for some time.

He grew up in Shanghai, China. During World War II he was interned for three years in a camp run by the Japanese along with his parents and younger sister. That experience informed Empire of the Sun, a fictionalized account of life in a prison camp.

Ballard’s first published book was The Drowned World, published in 1962.

Ballard was mostly known as a writer of science fiction, although he referred to his books as “picturing the psychology of the future.”
Empire of the Sun was made into a Steven Spielberg movie and, more recently, Crash caused quite a buzz when it went onto the silver screen.

HarperCollins canceled plans to publish Ballard’s most recent project, Conversations, when it became clear that Ballard was too ill to continue. The book project was following Ballard’s conversations with oncologist Jonathan Waxman.

Read more here.

Maybe we should call it Fahrenheit 72 – as in room temperature, as opposed to the much warmer fate the author of The Original of Laura once meant for it.

Vladimir Nabokov’s unfinished manuscript for The Original of Laura will be published in November, more than 30 years after the great author died.
The author’s son Dimitri decided to publish the book in spite of his father’s wishes that the manuscript be destroyed.

Thebookseller.com notes that Nabokov also once intended to burn his best-known work, Lolita (“the book by Nabokov” noted in Don’t Stand so Close to Me by The Police and the inspiration for countless movies and a particularly high-profile attempted murder case in Long Island).

Penguin plans to reproduce the index cards Nabokov wrote the manuscript on (as he did with all his novels). Nabokov fans will also notice an ongoing theme of nostalgia (obsession?) for young love in The Original of Laura.

Penguin Classics will publish it in U.K. and Knopf will publish it in the United States. Editor Alexis Kirschbaum of Penguin Classics also bought rights to other Nabokov works, some unpublished, including love letters to his wife, Vera. They will roll out over the next couple of years.

A year ago, Dimitri Nabokov said his father came to him in a vision to give his blessings to publish. And now the vision is taking shape.

What’s old is new, and just in time for summer is a Depression-era book about American cuisine that sprang out of the Federal Writers’ Project. Before the original project could be finished, World War II came along, and the manuscripts generated by the likes of Eudora Welty languished in the Library of Congress until writer Karl Kurlansky unearthed them.

The Very Short List, recent nominees for a Webby Award, describes the book: “The result, The Food of a Younger Land, is less a history than an especially well annotated cookbook. You’ll find Eudora Welty’s recipes for barbecue sauce and gumbo, Nelson Algren’s notes on the eating habits of Sioux and Chippewa Indians, and odes to Florida hush puppies, Maine clambakes, and ‘a Los Angeles sandwich called a taco.’ Most of the entries have aged well, and some look like they may be due for a comeback: Skip to page 316 to see the recipe for a butterless, eggless creation known as Depression Cake.”

If things don’t get better soon, maybe the current administration will take a cue from FDR and revive the writer’s project as part of the new stimulus. (Mr. President, DelMio is ready to serve!)

The Food of a Younger Land is scheduled for release on May 14.

Previously mentioned at DelMio.com.

By Diane Evans

A young co-worker has been trying hard to turn me into a reader of the graphic novel.

Now with the film release of Watchmen, it’s time at least to get up to speed. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is the only graphic novel to appear on Time Magazine’s “100 Best Novels from 1923 to the Present.”

Other indicators, too, point to the emergence of graphic novels as a legitimate literary form. Visit any number of public libraries and see the prominent displays of graphic novels. Librarians I know not only respect this genre, but also see it as a means to engage younger audiences in reading.

I began reading a graphic novel for the first time recently – titled Kabuki: Circle of Blood, by David Mack. I’m not hooked on the graphic novel style, but I do recognize the artistic value.

So here are some of the things I’m learning from my co-worker, who is in the die-hard fan category: We as readers (read: over age 40) need to grow up and move past the misconception that comic books and graphic novels are nothing more than pseudo-literary fodder for children and “nerds.” Within the past 20 years, the comic book industry has seen individual publishers move into self-censorship, doing away with the more restrictive rules of the Comics Code Authority. As a result, graphic novels have grown up, their pages filled with more psychologically complicated characters and mature themes.

The form isn’t limited to stereotyped spandex-clad heroes fighting super-powered battles on fictional planets anymore. Characters now deal with serious moral, ethical and social issues.

In the first volume of Mack’s Kabuki, you’ll find a physically powerful and beautiful Japanese woman so deeply affected by a painful past that she can only relate to her present world through the safety of a kabuki mask. Her quest throughout the book forces her to come to terms with her family, history, culture and mother’s death while coming into direct conflict with the powers she serves.

Here are some of my co-workers recommendations, in addition to Watchmen and Kabuki: Circle of Blood:

Danger Girl: The Ultimate Collection, by J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell – This fast-paced novel reads and feels exactly like an action movie, with artwork just as gripping as the storyline. Danger Girl follows adventuress Abbey Chase as her life dramatically changes once intertwined with a black-ops team. Imagine Indiana Jones meeting James Bond.

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, by Art Speigelman – One of the premier nonfiction graphic novels, Maus recounts the struggle of Spiegelman’s father to survive the Holocaust as a Polish Jew and draws largely on those personal experiences. The book also follows Spiegelman’s troubled relationship with his father and the effects of war as it reverberated through generations of a family.