Don’t Forget, I Have That Other Blog

A few people have emailed me to ask if I had anything to say about the online debate concerning the University of Georgia Press’s decision to revoke the prize they awarded Brad Vice and his short story collection, The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, after it was discovered that Vice’s story “Tuscaloosa Nights” had significant unacknowledged borrowings from Carl Carmer’s Stars Fell on Alabama. I’ve actually written about it for Galleycat, the mediabistro.com publishing news/gossip blog I co-write, but here’s a quick summary of my feelings on the matter: Vice should have known better, and it’s news now and worth reporting in that context, but from what I’ve read of his fiction, Vice is a talented writer who deserves the same sort of chance to put this mistake behind him that Doris Kearns Goodwin is currently getting from the press.

Here’s what else I’ve written about there lately:

• authors in the New York City Marathon

• incomplete legwork at NYTBR

• a swell book party for Matt Madden

• the Random House film deal

• …and plenty more every Monday-Friday.

7 November 2005 | uncategorized |

Odds and Ends

• I was somewhat disappointed that book reviewing responsibilities kept me at home this weekend, as I would have greatly enjoyed going into Manhattan to see fellow bookblogger Laila Lalami read from her short story collection, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. If you can make it to the Astor Place B&N tonight, you should go and tell her I said hello—I can’t make it, which means I’m going to have to wait until next February before she comes ’round this way again.

• People might say it’s just because I have it in for Steve Almond, but let’s be honest: Is there anything in his appreciation of Sarah Silverman that wasn’t pointed out by Dana Goodyear—first and better? Almond even quotes most of the same material (although, in all fairness, that could just be because Silverman doesn’t have that much worth quoting).

• It’s enough to make a man homesick for Boston: Haruki Murakami at Tufts and Jonathan Lethem at MIT.

5 November 2005 | uncategorized |