A gentle reminder

To all writers sending manuscripts to Random House; if you are using Fedex, prepare to exercise patience punctuated by episodes of extreme violence.

Summer reading

Via Teach.com and USC Rossier Online

Trends in E-Reading

Mapping literature: UK division

Map of Literary Britain and Northern Ireland  by Geoff Sawers

The most read books of the past 50 years

Your guide to the Hugo Awards

Stephen Fry on language

The book tour

Yearning for the day when your novel is published?  Be careful what you wish for.

Very careful.

Double spacing

Give up double-spacing after the end of sentences?

Great.  Why don't we just abandon civilisation altogether and be done with it?

Bulwer-Lytton 2011

The winners of the annual Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest.

Not as bad as Vogon poetry, but pretty darn close, so be warned.

Great moments in editing

Yes, there have been a few.

Rejection slip

So nice to have a system

We're back

Blogger has finally come back on line, but too late for today's entries.

Anyone up for a spot of torches and pitchforks?

Conservatism in American Fiction

Fifty books to avoid

Ever see one of those "50 books you should read before you die" lists?  Michael Gove takes a more practical approach and lists the 50 books you should die before reading.

Making a book–predigital edition

When 'Omer Smote 'Is Bloomin' Lyre

When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took–the same as me!


The market-girls an' fishermen,
The shepherds an' the sailors, too,
They 'eard old songs turn up again,
But kep' it quiet–same as you!


They knew 'e stole; 'e knew they knowed.
They didn't tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at 'Omer down the road,
An' 'e winked back–the same as us!

Rudyard Kipling

Postmodern Generator

With the Postmodernism Generator you can produce a complete work of "scholarship" with the click of a mouse.  Imagine submitting gems like this:

In the works of Pynchon, a predominant concept is the concept of structuralist consciousness. But Bataille uses the term ‘postcultural narrative’ to denote the common ground between sexual identity and society. The primary theme of the works of Pynchon is the role of the reader as participant.

It could be said that the example of socialist realism prevalent in Pynchon’s Vineland is also evident in Gravity’s Rainbow. The subject is contextualised into a postcultural narrative that includes narrativity as a totality.

Thus, Lyotard uses the term ‘textual precultural theory’ to denote the difference between class and truth. The subject is interpolated into a postcultural narrative that includes sexuality as a paradox. 

Not good enough?  Then just refresh the page and behold a brand new bit of brilliance appears as if by magic.  Spouting opaque nonsense has never been easier.

Are you ready to publish your novel?

10 of the best

The Guardian looks at the 10 best fictional hangovers and one cure.

My favourite is from Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim:

Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.

 He must have been on the Champagne and Guinness again.