Books | The New York Observer

Heffernan Proposes Self as Sontag of the Internet

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:23:14 -0400

The New York Times’ Virginia Heffernan has a book proposal out to publishers just in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair, via her literary agent, John Brockman. The former Times TV critic wants to write about her second love, the Internet, which she has covered for The Times Magazine since 2007 in a column called the Medium.

In the proposal, a copy of which was obtained by the Transom, Ms. Heffernan’s book...

Koons on Koons, For Sale at Frankfurt

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:37:30 -0400

Jeff Koons and the British curator Norman Rosenthal are working on a book together that the Wylie Agency is currently shopping to publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The book will be called The Confessions of Jeff Koons, and will take the form of an extended conversation between the two longtime friends.

The Wylie Agency hopes to see Confessions published in the fall of 2010, in coordination with the release of a film...

Rushdie, Redford, Ruschka Pick Up Plaques at Cipriani

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:22:49 -0400

British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie was one of the first to arrive at the National Arts Awards at Cipriani 42nd Street on Monday, Oct. 5. Known as a champion of freedom of expression, the author ruminated on the current challenges faced by the world of the arts, and the particular struggle of the written word.

“It’s very tough right now wherever you look with the arts,” he told the Transom, citing Conde Nast’s closing...

Gloves, Gloss and What They Wore at Nora Ephron's Latest Opening

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:19:41 -0400

The unseasonable chill on the night of Thursday, Oct. 1, posed a sartorial challenge for those attending the premiere of Nora and Delia Ephron’s new play, Love, Loss and What I Wore, based on the book by Ilene Beckerman: a paean to sartorial challenges and the life lessons they inspire. “This was not the first all-black outfit I tried on tonight,” the elder Ephron sister (Nora) told the Transom.

The production, which the...

Li'l Lionel Trillings Will Have to Fend for Themselves

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:57:17 -0400

Columbia English professor James Shapiro’s undergraduate seminar, “The Book Review,” which teaches skills necessary for students to make it as freelance literary critics, is on indefinite hiatus.

“There are intellectual reasons to teach the course again,” Professor Shapiro wrote in an email, when the Transom asked if a rumor that he’d discontinued the class was true. “But what’s no longer there is the possibility of training a generation of book reviewers, since, as you...

Designer Wife Rory Tahari Wants to Be Your List Mistress

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:30:58 -0400

A decade ago, Rory Heather Green, a driven 26-year-old television producer from Atlanta with a broadcast journalism degree from Boston University, attended the 46th birthday party of Elie Tahari—a fashion designer known for his tailored lady suits, and a noted bachelor—and fell in love. But before she could marry Tahari the person, she had to agree to work for Tahari the brand.

“He said, ‘My business is my life and my life is my...

Carey and Sharing: Granta Throws Blowout For Its Windy-City Ish

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:34:17 -0400

On Monday, Sept. 22, Chelsea’s 192 Books on 10th Avenue was packed for a party celebrating Granta: 108 Chicago, the London-based quarterly’s issue dedicated to the Windy City, featuring pieces by Don DeLillo, Aleksander Hemon, George Saunders, Sandra Cisneros and Stuart Dybek, among many others. “I feel like Chicago is having its moment right now,” said acting Granta editor John Freeman , surveying the crowd. “The city is moving away from its past. The...

Grace Notes: Is Coddington's $700 Coffee-Table Book Headed for Reprint?

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:58:46 -0400

In the aftermath of the press parade for The September Issue, during which creative director Grace Coddington emerged as the true talent behind Vogue, it is difficult not to speculate how long before she gets a book deal.

Turns out she already did a 400-page illustrated tome titled Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue, published in 2002 by Edition 7L, an imprint, co-owned by Karl Lagerfeld, of the London-based publisher Steidl books, featuring...

Fall Arts Preview 2009

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:42:35 -0400

The best of autumn's art, classical music, opera, jazz, pop, dance, theater, movies, television and...

Art Dealer and Author Richard Polsky Dishes on 2009 Art Market

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:43:27 -0400

The West Coast–based art dealer Richard Polsky has a memoir out this week called I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon), that provides a vivid and detailed portrait of the booming high-end art market as it existed until the economy went to pieces last fall. The book tells the story of the author’s long quest to track down an Andy Warhol Fright Wig painting on behalf of a collector who desperately wants one on his...

Amy Sohn, Social Satirist of Brownstone Brooklyn, Celebrates Her New Novel in ... SoHo

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:52:57 -0400

The book party for Amy Sohn's new novel Prospect Park West (Simon & Schuster), held on the evening of Wednesday, September 16th, was not a place for children. Although the novel narrates the lives of four Park Slope women with dysfunctions galore and young children with names like Orion, Mance, and Darby, the Ochre Store on Broome Street may be the least baby-proof shop in Manhattan. The massive chandeliers, $4,000 tables, and and collection...

Waiting for Mehta to Exhale at Dan Brown's Big Book Party

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:59:20 -0400

A little after 8 o’clock on Monday, Sept. 14, Knopf Doubleday chairman Sonny Mehta walked outside Gotham Hall, where he was hosting a book party for Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, for a smoke.

The Transom asked Mr. Mehta, who was wearing an expertly tailored dark blue suit and carrying his thin wooden cane, what was the longest wait he’d ever had for something in his life. Mr. Brown took forever to finish The Lost...

Poet Jim Carroll Left Behind Sad Punk Compatriots, Unfinished Novel

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:25:25 -0400

Jim Carroll, the legendary Manhattan poet and punk rocker, died of a heart attack on Friday, Sept. 12, at the age of 60.

On Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 15, the day before a private funeral service for family and friends, some New Yorkers who knew Carroll shared their memories of him with the Transom.

“Jim was a true poet in anything he did,” said Lenny Kaye, guitarist and longtime collaborator of singer Patti Smith,...

Nick Cave Shaves! Rock Snob Reads Raunchy Passage From New Novel

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:19:38 -0400

If there is one man in the rock-snob canon who can rattle off a series of filthy expletives without sounding anything less than utterly eloquent and polite, it is Nick Cave.

On the evening of Monday, Sept. 14, the 51-year-old Mr. Cave, best known for his role as the sinister singer-songwriter of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, was sitting crossed-legged on a small stage on the fourth floor of the Union Square Barnes...

The Jim Carroll Diaries

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:07:47 -0400

The poet and musician Jim Carroll died Friday of a heart attack. He was 60.

A New York Times obituary charts his formative years across the city: Catholic school on the Lower East Side, a basketball scholarship to Trinity, poetry in the East Village, hustling in Times Square. He left in 1973 “to escape drugs” but returned intermittently, and remained a quintessential New York denizen: hobnobbing with Beat poets, hanging...

Bright Lights, Big Brooklyn Book Party

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:13:41 -0400

On Saturday night, at the Brooklyn Book Festival's Gala Mingle, literary stars from Francine Prose to Colson Whitehead sipped white wine and chatted politely with one another about each other's work, under the harsh glare of flourescent lights.

Indeed, where past years’ galas have been held in elegant digs at the historic Dime Savings Bank and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Saturday’s festivities took place in a...

Oxford UP Goes All Out as Harper's Books Man Moser Brings Clarice Lispector to the U.S.

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:26:37 -0400

“When I met Ben many, many years ago, the first thing he told me was about Clarice,” said Dutch novelist Arthur Japin. “I don’t know if it was our first date, but it might have been.”

Mr. Japin was talking about his partner Benjamin Moser, the “New Books” columnist for Harper’s and the author of Why This World, a new biography of the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. The publication of Mr. Moser’s book...

Graydon Carter Throws Big Bash-ket for Lebron at Monkey Bar

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:54:48 -0400

At 6 feet 8 inches, basketball player Lebron James was obviously the tallest guy at his book party at Monkey Bar last night. One surprising thing, though, was that young literary agent/musician Luke Janklow is almost as tall.

Mr. Janklow, wearing a very clutch necktie and a bulging messenger bag, spent much of the evening talking to his former colleague Eric Simonoff, the agent who represented Mr. James and his co-writer, Buzz Bissinger, on their...

Daily Beast Hires 24-Year-Old Books Editor

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:55:27 -0400

The Daily Beast has hired a new books editor, and he’s a 24-year-old who spent most of the last two years working as an editorial assistant at the publishing house W. W. Norton. He had been promoted to assistant editor shortly before he left for the Daily Beast.

Lucas Wittmann's hire comes about two months after the abrupt departure of the site’s first books editor, Alexis Gelber, who had been a managing editor...

'All Sorts of Delicious Letters': Food Writer M.F.K. Fisher's Grand-Nephew to Write Book About Her, Child, Beard

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:59:11 -0400

Luke Barr, the grand-nephew of the late food writer M. F. K. Fisher, has sold a book about her and her pals James Beard and Julia Child to Clarkson Potter, the food-centric imprint of Random House’s Crown division.

According to Clarkson editorial director Doris Cooper, the book will tell the story of a milestone winter in 1970 when Fisher, Child, and Beard—along with cooking teacher Simone Beck and food writer Richard...

Massive Times Mag Katrina Piece Could Be Book

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:49:44 -0400

The week before Labor Day tends to be a quiet one for book publishing, as agents and editors head for the hills in preparation for the rush of big-ticket book proposals that inevitably come flooding in during the weeks leading up to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Sometimes it pays to get a jump on the action, though—or at least that’s what Janklow & Nesbit agent Tina Bennett seems to have figured when she sent...

After Times Kennedy Leak, Hachette Hires Private Dick

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:47:25 -0400

All hell broke loose at the Hachette Book Group building last week when The New York Times published a story detailing some of the most newsworthy bits contained in the late Ted Kennedy’s forthcoming memoir, True Compass. A spokeswoman for the paper said Times reporters had purchased multiple copies of the book at a bookstore the day before, and, much to the chagrin of Twelve publisher Jonathan Karp and his publicity director, Cary Goldstein,...

Another Wronged Wife Wants to Write About It

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:02:38 -0400

Jenny Sanford, wife of Mark Sanford, the emotionally complex governor of South Carolina, is apparently looking for a book deal.

Following a glowing profile by Rebecca Johnson in the September Vogue, in which Mrs. Sanford was portrayed as an “unlikely heroine” who responded to recent revelations of her husband’s infidelity with stoicism and grace, the first lady put together a book proposal with the help of literary agent Joy Tutela of the David Black Agency.

According...

Naomi Wolf to Write History of the Vagina

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:21:39 -0400

Naomi Wolf is going back to her roots. The journalist and author, who has seemingly been on a break for the past couple of years from writing books on the kinds of feminist themes that made her famous in the early 1990s, has signed on with the Ecco Press for a project tentatively titled A Cultural History of the Vagina.

Ms. Wolf was represented by lit agent John Brockman. Neither was not available for comment....

Seven Months After Collins Collapse, Gillian Blake Joins Henry Holt

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:21:37 -0400

Gillian Blake has been named executive editor at Henry Holt, replacing the recently departed Webb Younce at the Macmillan imprint. Ms. Blake's hiring comes about seven months after severe cutbacks at HarperCollins left her out of work. Her appointment at Holt is just one of several green shoots to have sprouted in the publishing industry in recent months, as a handful of other big-name editors who lost their jobs in the course of last...

How The Times and Andrea Mitchell Made Today Difficult For Jonathan Karp and Cary Goldstein

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:03:00 -0400

People at the Hachette Book Group building winced this morning as the New York Times published a highlight reel from the embargoed Ted Kennedy memoir that Jonathan Karp will be publishing through his Twelve imprint on September 14th. The Times story, which was posted online last night, was picked up widely, and by this afternoon Andrea Mitchell was on NBC proudly holding up a copy of True Compass of her very own and reading...

Simon & Schuster Laid Off at Least Three Last Week

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:20:06 -0400

Two editors at Pocket Books and an editorial assistant at Simon Spotlight Entertainment were laid off in a small round of cuts carried out at Simon & Schuster last week.

Maggie Crawford, the editorial director of Pocket Books, had been with the company for more than eight years, and developed a reputation in the field of women’s fiction. Margaret Clark, who edited books in the Star Trek franchise as part of Simon Spotlight’s...

Scholastic HQ Is Sprayed For Bedbugs, As Infestation Worries Quiet at Penguin

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:45:14 -0400

Scholastic became the second New York publishing house in a week to suffer a bedbug scare this past Friday afternoon, as employees were told to put whatever belongings they needed over the weekend into plastic bags and asked to go home. As was widely reported at the time, a similar scene had taken place at Penguin’s offices in Hudson Square just days earlier.

According to Scholastic corporate spokeswoman Kyle Good, a sniffing...

Stephen Valentine's Cyronics Book Celebrated at Southampton's Pink Elephant

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:57:10 -0400

The other day, the Transom discovered the last remaining bargain in real estate east of the Shinnecock Canal: For about $800, one can own an adult-sized plot of dirt in Sag Harbor’s tranquil and historic Oakland Cemetery. We were ready to write out a check when an invitation arrived that obliged us to reconsider the whole business of death.

The Pink Elephant at the Capri Hotel, in Southampton, was holding a book party...

Ramblin' Tamblyn, Actress-Poet and David Cross's Girlfriend, Preserves Her Words in Amber

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:46:52 -0400

The image on actress Amber Tamblyn's new collection of poetry, Bang Ditto, (out September 1 from Manic D Press) was not Photoshopped. In the photo, taken by her friend, photographer Matt Wignall, who does photography for the Cold War Kids, Ms. Tamblyn's face and body are split down the middle. In one half, her hair is down and she wears no makeup; in the other, her hair is in a curled updo and she...

Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree Has Book Proposal on Gates Arrest, Which Suggests Skip Will Skip His

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:03:57 -0400

Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree is looking to write a book centered on what happened when his client, friend, and colleague Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. was arrested in his home on charges of disorderly conduct last month, an incident that turned the nation's attention to the issue of racial profiling. Several sources confirmed that Mr. Ogletree has a book proposal out to a number of the major New York publishers, and is...

Twin Cities: Portfolio Cover Photo Goes Gloomy for Lethem Jacket

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:09:48 -0400

If the eerie aerial photograph of Manhattan that graces the cover of Jonathan Lethem’s new novel Chronic City reminds you of something when Doubleday publishes it this October, do not second-guess yourself. It is indeed the same shot that was used on the cover of the first issue of Condé Nast’s Portfolio when that magazine—now dead—premiered in April 2007.

The eye-catching photo, taken from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building...

McGinniss Hops Agents (Again), So What's He Working On?

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:05:14 -0400

Author Joe McGinniss has a new literary agent, having signed on with Dave Larabell of the David Black Agency after parting company with David Vigliano last spring.

According to several sources, Mr. Larabell has spoken with publishers about a book Mr. McGinnis has been wanting to write about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the subject of a cover story he wrote for an issue of the now-defunct Portfolio back in March. Mr. Larabell declined...

David Gergen Writing Book on Presidential Transitions For Simon & Schuster

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:35:19 -0400

David Gergen is working on a book about the Obama administration, according to Alice Mayhew, his editor at Simon & Schuster.

Ms. Mayhew declined to go into detail about Mr. Gergen’s project, but characterized it as as being about “watching an administration take hold.”

“It’s early days,” Ms. Mayhew said by phone this afternoon. “He’s writing about this administration and how it takes office, but he’s writing from the perspective...

Bedbugs at the Penguin Building: What Will Become of All Their Books?

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:50:45 -0400

The Penguin building has a bedbug infestation, as Gawker reported earlier this afternoon. Management sent a memo out to staff yesterday warning them of “an insect issue in certain areas” on several floors. Staff were instructed to vacate the building by 1 p.m. today and not return until Monday while pest control goes in and takes care of business.

The obvious question to ask here is: what will become of all the...

Native Son

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:38:32 -0400

Allan, Burning
By Donald Everett Axinn
237 pages.
Arcade Publishing

In 1940, an interfaith or inter-culture couple was a completely taboo thing. Today, it is almost trendy to cross the streams of culture and religion, producing a new generation of individuals who are more ethnically diverse—yet sometimes, perhaps, unable to hold on to one particular thing and say, “Mine.”

Donald Everett Axinn’s newest novel, Allan, Burning, centers on one example of this trend. Allan Daniels...

Hyperion's Barbara Jones: 'I Am the Wind of Change in the Book Industry'

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:43:13 -0400

For this week's paper, Pub Crawl interviewed a number of publishing people who started their careers in magazines, and got them talking about what they expected when they got into books and what surprised them once they got there. One of the people we spoke to was Barbara Jones, the former deputy editor of More magazine, who has been working at Disney Hyperion since the spring of 2008. Ms. Jones had a long career...

Notes for Andy Ward, on the Eve of His Move to Random House

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:28:36 -0400

Random House surprised the publishing industry Monday with the hiring of GQ executive editor Andy Ward, who will be joining the editorial staff of the house’s flagship imprint in mid-September. Though Mr. Ward began his career in letters as an editorial assistant at Little, Brown, he has spent the past 13 years working in magazines—the most recent six at GQ, and the seven before that at Esquire. Mr. Ward is just one of several...

Damn, Hoover Was Important!

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:09:27 -0400

Wylie Agency director Scott Moyers has sold a highly sought-after biography of J. Edgar Hoover by Yale history professor Beverly Gage. The book, which Ms. Gage plans to research and write in about four years, was acquired by Wendy Wolf at Viking for several hundred thousand dollars after about two weeks after Mr. Moyers first submitted it to editors. According to people who saw Ms. Gage’s proposal, the book will demonstrate that Hoover’s influence...

Monkey See, Monkey You

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:06:15 -0400

Last week, Tina Bennett of Janklow & Nesbit sold a book called Zoobiquity, about heretofore unrecognized similarities between animal and human pathologies, by UCLA cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers. The prevailing bidder on the book was Knopf, where it will be edited by Jordan Pavlin. According to Ms. Pavlin, the project came out of Ms. Natterson Horowitz’s work at the Los Angeles Zoo, where she served as a consultant in an effort to...

Random House Hires GQ Editor Andy Ward

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:59:00 -0400

Random House just announced the hiring of Andy Ward, a longtime magazine editor who has spent the past six years at GQ. Mr. Ward, who will serve as an executive editor at Random House's flagship imprint under editor-in-chief Susan Kamil, leaves behind Condé Nast at a time when the company is playing host to a team of consultants from McKinsey who are scrutinizing its operations and figuring out what costs can be cut and...

Remember the Grunge Hoax?

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:11:58 -0400

Earlier this week, The New Yorker revealed that a Talk of the Town item from 1996 was “largely untrue,” and had gotten into the magazine as a result of a prank played on its author by his sources. The item was about Thomas Pynchon, and quoted members of the now defunct indie rock band Lotion as saying that the famously reclusive author had started following them around on tour in the capacity of a...

Three Cups of Tea Authors Mortenson and Relin Part Ways; Latter Sells Next Book to Random House

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:56:00 -0400

David Oliver Relin, the journalist who co-wrote the 2006 bestseller Three Cups of Tea with mountain-climber-turned-humanitarian Greg Mortenson, has left Viking Penguin and signed with Random House for his next book. Tentatively titled See How They Shine, Mr. Relin’s book will follow two doctors on a mission around the world to cure blindness. Susan Kamil, the editor in chief of Random’s flagship imprint, preempted world rights to the book from Jin Auh at the...

The Curious Case of the Missing Naipaul

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:14:08 -0400

Late last week, a funny thing happened on Andrew Wylie’s Web site: V. S. Naipaul, one of the most distinguished authors the lit agent has signed up in recent memory, had disappeared from his online client list.

For a little while there, it was easy to let your imagination run wild. Honeymoon cut short as famously difficult author splits from new agent after just mere months! Wylie loses prized catch!...

The Book That Took 29 Years to Publish

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:58:50 -0400

Morris Dickstein spent 29 years on Dancing in the Dark, his new book about the movies, books, theater and music that came out of the Great Depression. The book is being published on Sept. 14 by W. W. Norton, where it was edited by Robert Weil. Mr. Weil sees a big future for Mr. Dickstein’s book, which came to him through the author’s longtime agent, Georges Borchardt, during the summer of 2008. Mr. Weil...

Janet Silver Snares Big Book Deal For 24-Year-Old A.I. Buff From Brown

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:44:18 -0400

Janet Silver’s rookie season as a literary agent with Zachary Shuster Harmsworth continues, as the former editor and publisher has sold a book to Doubleday about artificial intelligence and the human mind by 24-year-old Brown grad Brian Christian.

The book will follow Mr. Christian’s efforts to “train” for the 2009 Loebner Prize, an annual competition to be held in September that aims to instantiate the Turing Test by asking judges...

At East Hampton Authors' Night, Baldwin Says Literary Theme of His Life is 'Something Dickensian'

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:02:54 -0400

On Saturday, Aug. 8, East Hampton's Main Street was packed with people making their way to the Fifth Annual Authors Night at the East Hampton Library. So long was the line of parked cars that one of the presenting authors, Allen Planz, an elderly poet and charter captain, sprawled himself out on the sidewalk, shoe in hand, taking a rest before continuing on to the event. The library party was comprised of a large...

A Magical Evening: Lev Grossman's Book Party Made Adults Feel Like Kids

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:26:57 -0400

The invitation to the party for Lev Grossman’s The Magicians read “Apartment #0004,” which seemed about as plausible as “Platform 9 ¾.”

In fact, the party was on the second floor. Fortunately there was a man waiting outside to direct guests upstairs, as well as (more whimsically) a map of the novel's fictional world posted alongside the elevator.

The third novel from the Time book critic, The Magicians follows the journey of a 17-year-old...

Note to Authors: Make Your Deadlines!

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:17:09 -0400

There was a time not so long ago when authors never had to worry about handing in their manuscripts on time. Deadlines back then were a formality—something publishers took about as seriously in the course of contractual negotiations as they did the profit-and-loss statements they used to justify their acquisitions. If an author hit their delivery date, great! But if they didn’t, that was O.K., too.

For the most part, that is...

What's In a Name? Lots, Says Literary Consultant

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:59:20 -0400

Brett Peterson wants to name your book. The Michigan native recently finished the international relations graduate program at George Washington University, and has started a business helping authors, publishers, and literary agents come up with titles for their books. The company is called Novel Title, and this is their Web site. Below, a short Q&A—edited and condensed for your benefit—about what Mr. Peterson’s up to.