Book News, In Brief

And they say the Jews are stingy. "They" obviously didn't know about the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, valued at $100,000 and recently awarded to Lucette Lagnado for The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World. Truth be told, I'd never heard of it either. And I'm circumcised.

Lest you money-hungry Gentiles start downloading copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, keep in mind that y'all are still eligible for the Kingsley Tufts Award, a $100,000 prize given to a poet "who is past the very beginning but has not yet reached the acknowledged pinnacle of his or her career." This year's winner? Tom Sleigh and his book, Space Walk.

Ah, but all is not dollar signs and harmless racist jokes in the world of words. Remember those Mohammed cartoons that had the Muslim world in an uproar? Danish authorities just arrested three people who were allegedly planning to assassinate one of the offending cartoonists. A heck of a lot of good $100,000 does when your d-e-a-d.

Bonus News Item That I Had No Way Of Tying Into This Loosely Themed Thread:

The Comics Journal has just posted their 1978 interview with Steve Gerber. It was the first(?) interview Gerber gave after being sh*t-canned from Marvel Comics for asserting his creator's rights to the character Howard the Duck, and Gerber pulled no punches.

(One more Gerber related item: a eulogy of sorts, care of The Savage Critics. Oh, and the eulogy actually ties back into the first news item, so voila -- connections made!)