"Burning Down My Masters' House" Indeed! Jayson Blair, noted fraud and liar, is about to be liquidated along with all of the other titles in New Millenium's catalog. The publisher of such quality books as "Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted" by Faye Resnick and "Burning Down My Master's House" by Jayson "Truth? We Don't Need No Stinking Truth" Blair.
Its not known if Blair's memoir had a specific hand in the demise of the publishing house but it couldn't have helped.
Selling a whopping 1,386 copies through March 18th.
Is there such a thing as the Anti-Midas Touch? Wherein, everything you touch turns from gold to lead or dust?
Continuing
these threads to their karmic conclusion.
posted by fenriq
on May 13, 2004 -
13 comments
Snark. In the newest issue of
Bookforum, critic Sven Birkerts ruminates on what he considers to be the regrettable rise of the snarky book review, taking as his starting example
Dale Peck's hatchet job on Rick Moody, written in 2002. "Psychologically [the literary] landscape [is one that is] subtly demoralized by the slash-and-burn of bottom-line economics; the modernist/humanist assumption of art and social criticism marching forward, leading the way, has not recovered from the wholesale flight of academia into theory; the publishing world remains tyrannized in acquisition, marketing, and sales by the mentality of the blockbuster; the confident authority of print journalism has been challenged by the proliferation of online alternatives. [...] All of this leads, and not all that circuitously, to the question of snark, the spirit of negativity, the personal animus pushing ahead of the intellectual or critical agenda. Snark is, I believe, prompted by the terrible vacuum feeling of not mattering, not connecting, not being heard; it is fueled by rage at the same."
posted by Prospero
on Apr 4, 2004 -
27 comments
Conde Nast to shutter Mademoiselle. The "deteriorating advertising environment" is blamed for the closing of the 66-year-old title, where Sylvia Plath first
cut her teeth on the journalistic life. While Mlle's recent content has devolved into
Cosmo-like treatises on how to please your man in bed and where to buy the clothing that will lure him in that general direction, it is more than a bit upsetting (particularly to someone who's trying to eke out a living as a writer) to see yet another Conde Nast-owned title (
Details and
Women's Sports & Fitness; Fairchild bought
Details out and launched a revamped version) fall victim to the great advertising contraction of the past 12 months.
posted by maura
on Oct 1, 2001 -
12 comments
Fictionline sounds like a scam but isn't: pay a small reading fee and win a thousand bucks if they publish your story. The plain design seems aimed more at writers than readers, but it's an exciting new concept in the
glut of online lit mags.
posted by muckster
on Aug 30, 2001 -
11 comments
