Frantic, Scattered, Edge-of-Panic Jottings

Posted 28 August, 2007 in Jottings |

• It’s the last week of August, and I’m staring down the first week of September with the kind of foreboding that T.S. Eliot reserved for “the cruellest month,” which he for some reason located at the beginning of spring. See, every year I attend the Toronto International Film Festival, where I engage in the relatively preposterous endeavour of attempting to view twenty-five (or more) films over the course of ten days. This is a peculiar strain of insanity that only dedicated cinephiles could possibly comprehend, but it also means that there’s always a frantic rush in the lead-up to TIFF to clear off my desk all the accumulated detritus of the summer. Which frantic rush begins … now.
• David Halberstam, author and journalist, is unable to tour in support of his new book, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, because he’s, ahem, dead. So, a group of authors, including Joan Didion, Bob Woodward, and Seymour Hersh, are doing his tour for him. I can’t decide whether this is a touching tribute to a departed and much-loved writer, or the apogee of cynical marketing (according to the New York Times article the idea originated with Hyperion, the book’s publisher). In any event, it may symbolize the Boomers’ ultimate conquest: in their quest to remain vital and young, now apparently even death doesn’t stand in their way. I can’t wait for Margaret Atwood to get wind of this. Coming soon: The Really LongPen, which allows authors to sign books from the great beyond. George A. Romero is said to have already optioned the film rights.
• How do you organize your books? Alphabetically? By subject? By height? If all else fails, you could try organizing them the way Callie Miller has: by colour. I’ve been meaning to link to this brilliantly eccentric (read: slightly mad, but nonetheless hilariously attractive) idea for a while now, but it’s somehow slipped through the cracks. Check out the photos on her site: they’re spectacular, in a kind of how-did-she-manage-to-pull-that-off? way. Apparently she received some antagonistic e-mails in response to this project, and she herself admits that it might not have been the most functional way of arranging her library, but man does it look cool!*
• Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, already the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and an Oprah endorsement, has won Britain’s James Tait Black memorial prize.
• The Big Bad Book Blog offers writers six tips on how to conduct a good interview. It’s sad that authors these days are judged more on the cut of their suit than the quality of their writing; it’s even sadder that this observation has been made so frequently that it’s taken on the mantle of a cliché and yet nobody seems to care, presumably because they’re too busy watching E! True Hollywood Story.
• I’m going to go now. I appear to be cranky and stressed.

*[UPDATE: It has just come to my attention that the second linked photo of rainbow books, although appearing on Callie Miller’s site, does not picture Callie Miller’s library. It’s a shot from a Flickr user named chotda. TSR regrets any confusion caused by this error. Appropriate wrists have been slapped.]

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