Bookninja

On resurrecting an obscure author.

The Dragon Waiting is an unfolding cabinet of wonders. Three years ago, over breakfast, my friend Helen handed me a novel about a quest that, unknown to both of us, would set me off on a quest of my own. The book was called The Dragon Waiting, and it was written by the late science fiction and fantasy author John M. Ford. Helen placed the mass-market paperback with its garish cover in my hands, her eyes aglow with evangelical fervor, telling me I would love it. I would soon learn that, owing to Ford’s obscurity, his fans do things like this all the time. Soon, I would become one of them.

Over a decade before George R.R. Martin wrote A Song of Ice and Fire, Ford created an alternate-history retelling of the Wars of the Roses, filled with palace intrigue, dark magic, and more Shakespeare references than are dreamt of in our philosophy. The Dragon Waiting provokes that rare thrill that one gets from the work of Gene Wolfe, or John Crowley, or Ursula Le Guin. A dazzling intellect ensorcells the reader, entertaining with one hand, opening new doors with another.

Sweden has given a freedom of the press type prize to a jailed Swedish/Chinese author and China is getting all riled up about it. China is really just leaning in to this totalitarian dystopia thing, isn’t it?

Sweden’s culture minister on Friday awarded the annual Tucholsky literary prize to a Chinese author despite a threat from the Chinese ambassador to ban her from entering the country.

Author Gui Minhai, a naturalized Swede and co-owner of a Hong Kong store that sold gossipy books about Chinese leaders, was detained by police in eastern China in 2018 while in the company of two Swedish diplomats with whom he was traveling to Beijing.

Not a Calvino book, but a designation by UNESCO. Aren’t they the ones that collect pennies at Halloween? Nevermind. What does it mean to become a city of literature? My guess is that there’s probably fewer seats at the coffee shop and the avocado toast is on seedy bread. But don’t listen to me, kids! Everyone’s got a book in them… Follow your dreams! (Spoiler: the destination is the welfare office.)

The nomination criteria for Cities of Literature include the quality, quantity, and diversity of editorial initiatives and publishing houses; the quality and quantity of educational programs focusing on domestic or foreign literature in schools, including universities; an urban environment in which literature plays an integral role; experience in hosting literary events and festivals promoting domestic and foreign literature; the existence of libraries, bookstores, and cultural centers that can promote and disseminate domestic and foreign literature; an active effort by the publishing sector to translate literary works; and involvement by the media, including new media, in promoting literature and strengthening the market. Cities of Literature nominated thus far have included Norwich, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Dublin, Iowa City, Reykjavik, Baghdad, Quebec City, and Krakow.

How linguists are using the Urban Dictionary (which sounds like it should be rebranded as the Urban Dicktionary, but I digress.) Mostly I use it to decipher my kids’ texts.

With its crowdsourced definitions and high speed of coinage, Urban Dictionary is very much a product of the internet age. But it also continues a long history of recording low-brow language: dictionaries of English slang have been around in some form for centuries. The slang dictionaries of the seventeenth century were considered useful for clueing readers into the language of thieves and cheats, which itself was part of an older tradition of exoticizing the language of the poor and criminal. By 1785, Francis Grose’s Classic Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue extended the slang lexicon beyond the middle-class conception, adding terms such as bum fodder (for toilet paper).

Someone has been hoarding a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal in which Charlie himself added an extra verse to an “erotic” poem within. The book is now on auction, so let’s just spread it wide open under some bright lights to bring it into line with what the 21st century considers “erotic”. We’ll probably need a razor and spray tan, too.

Baudelaire wrote the additional verse into a first edition of the book, sending it to his friend, the journalist and literary critic Gaston de Saint-Valry, as a “testimony of friendship”. According to auction house Drouot, the verse was only previously reported by Baudelaire expert Yves Le Dantec in 1928, who tried and failed to persuade the book’s former owners to make it public. Due for sale on 22 November, its estimated price is €60,000-€80,000 (£51,000-68,000).

No, not the weird guy who was looking at porn and is now trying to get you to take your earbuds out so he can explain how he’s being discriminated against because he’s white and straight–bed bugs. I’m down with it.

Trustees said they wanted to take care in being sensitive to families who have pests like bed bugs for reasons out of their control. One trustee raised whether they should alert other libraries when people found with pests have moved there. Trustee Deborah Knowlton said that would constitute “the Old Testament’s leprosy policy.” Assistant Director Stacy Mazur told trustees that laws prevented the library from sharing such information anyway.

I generally like this artist’s comics.

Okay, it’s just that time of year and I don’t have it in me to do separate posts for each damn thing, so here are a few links to some awards news:

• Bookninja favourite Heather O’Neill wins Writers Trust Fellowship for Awesomeness*
• France’s “Oscar Season” for books
• Five poets land on the CBC Poetry Prize shortlist (I have some unpopular thoughts here that I’ll let marinate for a while before deciding whether to bring them up)
• That one-sentence novel everyone is gaga for won something

Until the winner is announced, it’s going to be daily fluff on the Giller shortlist. But some of it is still fun to read. Today’s investigative gem is on the tired, festival-stage question of what “place” means to the author. Where the books themselves are like fine wine, these quasi-articles are like boxed plonk. Tastes of laziness and cookie-cutter plastic, but it’ll still get you drunk! Enjoy. (Go team, Newfoundland!)

A lot of the bigwigs behind PEN, including The Peg and Rushhour, are putting their weight into this issue with the British/India author stripped of his citizenship because he was being “un-Indian”. I have to say, I’ve let my PEN membership lapse over the years in part because I find a lot of their activism lacks nuance and can occasionally work against social progress by clinging to outdated absolutes around expression and freedom of speech, but I can support this.

Rushdie, Pamuk and Atwood were joined by 260 other writers, journalists, artists, academics and activists, along with PEN America, English PEN, and PEN International, expressing their “grave concern” in a letter to Modi about the move. They are calling for the Indian government to reconsider and “ensure that Aatish Taseer has access to his childhood home and family, and that other writers are not similarly targeted”.