Out Tomorrow:

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond
Issue 1 of 2
Written by Grant Morrison, art by Doug Mahnke
From the DC Comics sales pitch:
To save the woman he loves, the greatest hero of all time becomes the pawn of ultra-dimensional forces when a wounded emissary from a world of doomed super gods comes to Earth on the eve of the Final Crisis. His mission: To recruit Superman's help against an epic, reality-spanning menace that originated in the Crisis on Infinite Earths!

Join the Man of Steel and his alternate-earth counterparts for a mind-blowing voyage to the edge of the DC Universe — and beyond! Can these super champions overcome their differences to beat the clock, find the ultimate treasure and save all existence from extinction?

Writer Grant Morrison and artist Doug Mahnke take you on an unforgettable, hyperdelic journey from the streets of Metropolis, through the 52 worlds of the multiverse, to the haunted court of the King of Limbo, in part one of this 2-issue Superman adventure!

With a unique 3-D section, eye-popping visuals and mind-boggling glimpses into the mysteries behind Final Crisis, Superman Beyond takes the Man of Tomorrow to new dimensions of action and excitement! This issue comes with a pair of 3-D glasses!

Does this sound rad or what!

Blog-Jacking: The Guardian UK

Children are swearing already, so why can't Jacqueline Wilson?
Written by Michael Rosen
Originally posted on August 22, 2008

The squeamishness that has forced the word 'twat' out of her novel My Sister Jodie is deaf to both current usage, and to the words children know already

First things first, the word "twat" has an interesting derivation. It's probably linked to the suffix "thwaite" that appears on the end of place-names. Somewhere in the mists of Germanic linguistic time, it had the sense of being a piece of land that had been delineated by humans, cut off from the uncultivated land surrounding it. At some point, this was also used familiarly to describe some or all parts of a woman's part, if you get me. (Yes, I know I'm being euphemistic here).

Feminist criticism could have a ball here on interpreting this metaphorical use as a piece of male ideology whether that's because there's something "cut off" about female genitalia, or that it's a place that is to be ploughed and settled on.

Then, as with many other sexual parts, male and female, it became a word of insult. And then, in time (and this is crucial for the Jacqueline Wilson case) the word is used without people knowing that it's linked to the sexual part. Robert Browning famously used the word in a poem, clearly not knowing either of these meanings, while Henry Miller used it over and over again in the sexual sense only. Jacqueline has some interesting precedents.

Anxiety about the possibility that children will be corrupted if they hear rude words has been around for a long time. Some readers will remember Robert Westall's magnificent The Machine Gunners. This is one of the best "war" novels for children, exploring the underground world of boys in the space left them by absent parents. There are parallels in world fiction, including one by Nobel prize-winning Kenzaburo Oe's Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids and I think Westall's matches them all for power and story. However, a good deal of critical noise was made over the fact that Westall dared to use the word "bloody" in the book - several times!

To finish this article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

This just in! A bad economy effects bookstores! And libraries! Only differently! (Wait. Why am I yelling? This is just common sense disguised as news.)

You know what they say: 'Behind every good woman, there's a fey, bi-curious poet.' But did Percy Shelley really co-author Frankenstein with wife Mary, or did he just help with the adjectives? (Cries of sexism begin...now.)

With rival film studios battling over the multi-million dollar movie rights to Watchmen, the IHT has decided to take a look at The Murky Side of Movie Rights. (This is a must-read article for unpublished authors with delusions of grandeur.)

Not sick of Hollywood's insanity yet? The Los Angeles Times has an autobiographical piece from a 'serious author' writing tie-in novels for TV shows. In it, said 'serious author' talks to the folks writing this summer's biggest film novelizations, as well as a guy who wrote the novelization of a screenplay that was based upon his comic book. (Let me break that last part down for you: Author 1 wrote a comic book. Author 2 then wrote a screenplay which was based on author 1's comic book. Author 1 then wrote a novelization based on author 2's adaptation of author 1's comic book. Exhale.)

Book News, In Brief

An unpublished novelist asks: How do you believe in your own writing? Salon attempts to answer.

Rock 'n' roll photographer Barry Feinstein has found a decades old collection of poems written by Bob Dylan. Surprise, surprise -- he plans to publish.

Who needs James Frey when we've got Salman Rushide and his Controversy of the Day Club? Today the pendulum swings back in Rushdie's favor. Via The Guardian UK: "The authors of a book which claimed that Salman Rushdie was nicknamed "Scruffy" by his police protection officers have admitted there were falsehoods in the manuscript and have made amendments accordingly."

It's not a kiss and tell. More like a shelve and share. Via MichiganLive.com: "A library employee in this Lake Michigan resort community has been fired for writing a book that describes a range of unpleasant patrons, from the merely unpleasant to online sex fiends, in a town she calls "Denialville." Using the pen name Ann Miketa, Sally Stern-Hamilton wrote Library Diaries, which she describes as a fictional account based on her on-the-job experiences. "After working at a public library in a small, rural Midwestern town (which I will refer to as Denialville, Michigan, throughout this book) for fifteen years, I have encountered strains and variations of crazy I didn't know existed in such significant portions of our population," she wrote in the book's introduction."

Book News, In Brief

The Independent got wind of those Craigslist ads for forgers and ran with it. Their article, Signing off: The Weird World of Book Signings, offers a myriad of excuses for authors considering similar scams.

Don't expect to see a film adaptation of the new Bond novel, Devil May Care. The producers behind the recently revived film franchise say the book is too steeped in the sixties and 'would be out of keeping with the current penchant for supercars and state-of-the-art gadgetry.'

Hip hop magazine The Source has been having a rough couple of years. First, their old publisher alienated the readership by starting feuds with some of the most popular rap stars of the day. Then they lost the majority of their staff due to the crazy office antics of that same publisher. And then, last year, they were forced to file for bankruptcy. Well, things are finally looking up. Next month marks the The Source's 20th anniversary, and they're using the opportunity to relaunch the magazine. They've hired Spike Lee to shoot a series of cover photos, they've got a round table discussion with professors Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson, led by Public Enemy's Chuck D, and they're planning on expanding their scope to include travel, education and business. Here's hoping it works.

Book News, In Brief

Wanted: Nimble fingered hands to sign books for lazy authors. Fourteen open positions. See Craigslist ad or the Guardian UK article for details.

Micheal Moore has a list of fall reading recommendations. No, wait. I got that wrong. He suggests you read nothing and spend your time volunteering in local politics instead. Cuz that's just what the world needs: more ignorant fools involved in politics.

A warning for folks seriously considering this 'dating on the cheap' thing: If you think we've gonna let you hang out in our store for hours -- "reading to each other" -- you've got another thing coming. We'll dump a cart of books on you. At the Inkwell, we don't cotton to vagabonds.

You think we're kidding? Think again. The days of the meek and mild bookstore employee are over. Just check out the complaints list filed against Portsmouth, NH bookstore owner and uber-a**hole, Walter Wakefield:
* On April 2, 2005, police were called to the bookstore by a man who reported he was assaulted. According to police records, the customer reported Wakefield "tried to hit him with the door to the store."
* In April 1999, Wakefield was arrested on a charge of simple assault.
* On April 27, 1995, Dale Shaw of Rye went to the store and after being told there was a $5 fee to browse, an argument ensued, according to court records. A court affidavit said Wakefield called the customer a (expletive) retard," before hitting him with a metal pipe, scraping and bruising his arm. In 1995, Wakefield told the Herald he was defending himself from a robbery attempt and Shaw shoved him. Shaw was not charged by police with any crime.
* Hampstead auto parts dealer Patrick Murphy told the Herald in 1995 that he went to browse in the bookstore where Wakefield started an argument and called him "an AIDS infected" (expletive).
* In March 1994, Richard Wentz of Rye was arrested for criminal threatening, according to police records, for showing a handgun at the bookstore after getting into a dispute with Wakefield.
* In 1998, Wakefield was convicted of criminal threatening and assault against a Merrimack man for shoving and threatening him with a pipe.
(In his defense, Wakefeild claims to be the victim of shoplifting.)

Watching The Watchmen Reviews

Ever since that Watchmen trailer first appeared, a whole new flock of readers has been rushing to read the comics masterpiece -- so much so that DC recently announced a 900,000 copy re-printing. But what do all of these new readers think? Is it love at first page, a slow-building appreciation, or a begrudgingly afforded respect given only so as to not seem stupid? Let's round-up the recent reviews and see, shall we?

Pro:
Precisely the kind of comics review I hate: the kind that starts out proudly proclaiming, "I normally don't read comics..."
Oh look, here's another one: "First off, I am not by nature a comic book guy."
And another, this one super pretentious: "I’ve never been a comic book reader, preferring the printed word to pictures on a page, the longer and more intricate the novel, the better."
Ah, finally. A review I actually like...a lot: "These aren't emo Batmen, they're Tony Sopranos and Seth Bullocks, idiosyncratic and troubling portraits of great physical strength and moral violence juxtaposed against tremendous emotional and psychological weakness."
And more:
"I now understand what all the hype was about."
"I embarrassingly bought Watchmen after I saw Dark Knight due to the trailer."
Powell's likes it
"It was the hype itself that made me originally reject it."
"thoroughly engrossing"

Con:
A collection of "scathing reviews" (and a real time saver for me!)
"Ending somewhat disappointing and boring."

Mildly Impressed:
"So yeah, the comic was alright."
"Not bad but not 'incredible' either."

Wow, if only the majority of mankind agreed with me about everything...

Indie Bookstores:This Is How You Stage An Uprising

(a lesson in rebellion, brought to us by a bookstore we've been unsuccessfully rebelling against for years)

First, there was this announcement, made at Publisher's Weekly:
Chelsea Green Publishing is crashing a book on Obama in time for the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month. President and publisher Margo Baldwin said the book, Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency by Robert Kuttner, will go from final manuscript to bound books within four weeks. The publisher will produce 2,000 advance copies, and make the book available early exclusively on Amazon—two firsts for the eco-conscious independent publisher.

Three days later, indie bookstores responded -- via email:
Via PW: Chelsea Green’s sales team has received e-mails calling the move “a money-grubbing sellout,” a “slap in the face,” and “another blow to independent bookstores.”

The publisher (predictably) scoffed at these self-righteous, crybaby emails:
Via PW: “This is about a publisher’s commitment to its author to get one of a very few pro-Obama books out into the marketplace in the shortest amount of time,” Baldwin wrote. The house is printing 75,000 copies, its largest first printing ever. But, Baldwin pointed out, that number “pales in comparison to anti-Obama books flooding the market.” She continued, “I wonder how many booksellers are happy to sell another few thousand ‘abomination’ books while being ‘outraged’ by Chelsea Green’s decision to make its book available as fast as possible.”

Oh, and they refused to change their plans.
(How did the indies respond? More emails!)

That's when Barnes & Noble -- hardly a defender of the little guy -- publicly announced their plans to fight corporate bullying with corporate bullying:
Via PW: Barnes & Noble has canceled its 10,000-copy order of Obama’s Challenge, a book by Robert Kuttner that Chelsea Green is making available early exclusively through Amazon.com. Chelsea Green president and publisher Margo Baldwin said the chain will make the book available on BN.com and will special order it, but that it will not stock it in its stores.

Ouch. Sorta makes us indies look like wussies in comparison, don't it?
But let's face it. If The Inkwell was to announce a similar stratagem, it wouldn't even rate as a blip on C.G.'s radar. So what can a small shop only planning to order a fraction of B&N's number of Obama's Challenge do? Well, don't, for starters. Or do, but offset your order by sending Chelsea Green even more sure-to-be-ignored emails. If nothing else, we might get lucky and crash their website. And to a publisher putting internet sales over brick and mortar hand sells, that would be like kicking them in the privates.

Oh, The Irony!

Via Publisher's Weekly:
Salman Rushdie Condemns Random House Over Cancellation of Book
Rushdie weighs in on the cancellation of The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones: "I am very disappointed to hear that my publishers, Random House, have canceled another author’s novel, apparently because of their concerns about possible Islamic reprisals. This is censorship by fear, and it sets a very bad precedent indeed."

This, only two weeks after:

Via Huffington Post:
Salman Rushdie Threatens Lawsuit Over Ex-Bodyguard's Book
Author Salman Rushdie is threatening to sue a publisher over a book by a former bodyguard that he says portrays him as cheap, nasty and arrogant.

Disney Book News, In Brief

Didier Ghez has the covers to two of this year's most eagerly awaited Disney-related tomes: Walt Disney Animation Studios The Archive Series: Story and Alice in Wonderland by John Scieszka and Mary Blair. 'Story' is a collection of notes and sketches from the golden era of Disney animation; 'Alice' is the follow up to last year's gorgeous Cinderella children's book. To gaze upon the goodness, click here.

Cartoon Brew has a brief blurb about The Alchemy of Animation by Beauty & The Beast director Don Hahn. The book "details the process Disney uses to make animated films from traditional animation, to CG to stop-motion." The blurb also offers this enticing bit of news-to-me: Hahn is developing a stop-motion animated feature of Frankenweenie with Tim Burton! To read the Cartoon Brew piece, click here.

Crabapplecove.vom has posted a review of Character Animation Crash Course by animator Eric Goldberg (he did the Genie in Aladdin, among others). Crabapple gives the book a 50/50 rating, saying that "it has some genuinely terrific information in it, but like nearly every other book on animation to date, it’s not so much a systematic how-to as it is a collection of formulae." He then goes on to lament the fact that "animators don’t really have a 'Unified Field Theory' of animation." To find out just what the heck all of this means, click here.

InRich.com recently did a piece on Disney's current Tinkerbell merchandising bonanza. In it, they talk to award winning author Gail Carson Levine, whose book Fairy Dust and the Quest For the Egg was published by Disney Press as the cornerstone of the "Disney Fairies" franchise. Commenting on the character, Carson says, "The only thing (Tinkerbell) says in (the original Peter Pan) is, 'Silly ass!' And she tries to have Wendy killed a couple of times. She is not, in my mind, a warm, fuzzy character." WTF? That sounds way more interesting than a mute do-gooder. To read the article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

I know it's rather late in the season to be foisting yet another summer reading list on y'all, but this one was too good to keep to myself. Via CBR: Comics luminaries share their picks.

Via finance.sympatico: "By opening its channels to a million outside sellers, Amazon has undercut (eBay) and is winning the battle for Internet sales. Next up: A challenge to eBay's PayPal."

Via MSNBC: "The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that college textbook prices increased at twice the rate of inflation between 1986 and 2004. Is there any way to avoid this crippling expense? Actually, there are several."

Via theregister.co.uk: "Amazon's Kindle e-book reader will sell more than 380,000 in 2008, according to analysts at CitiGroup...Analyst Mark Mahaney reckons a Kindle is going to be the must-have item for this Christmas, pointing out that his predicted sales are roughly the same as those achieved by the iPod in its first year...He also reckons that by 2010 the Kindle will be contributing $1 billion annually to the online-bookseller-turned-everything-emporium - four per cent of their total revenue."

Recommended Reads: Geeks

Spirited Away: BFI Film Classics by Andrew Osmund
From the Anime News Network's article/press release:
In Spirited Away: BFI Film Classics, Osmund details the filmmaking process of Hayao Miyazaki on the 2002 work and how it relates to his previous films and the themes that he expounds. The British Film Institute book includes quotes from Miyazaki and his colleagues and over 60 color images. Osmund also wrote Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist, a book that profiles the acclaimed director of Perfect Blue, Paprika, and Paranoia Agent.

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
From the NYMagazine author profile:
Bottomless Belly Button tells the story of a week in the life of the Loony family, whose parents, Maggie and David, are divorcing after 40 years...Shaw’s avoided the path that young writers so often follow, for better or for worse: He’s not really writing about himself. His parents are still married, and he seems to have been drawn to the story of a disintegrating family as a genre exercise. “It was interesting to me how there are differences in family relations”... Bottomless Belly Button, it seems, was created out of a desire to see what would happen if characters from a traditional family drama—“super-dysfunctional and super-dramatic”—were placed alongside characters from a more reserved family story: a narrative game, rather than a dead-serious uncovering of emotional trauma.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
From the NYTimes book review:
Díaz shows impressive high-low dexterity, flashing his geek credentials, his street wisdom and his literary learning with equal panache. A short epigraph from the Fantastic Four is balanced by a longer one from Derek Walcott; allusions to Dune, The Matrix and (especially) The Lord of the Rings rub up against references to Melville and García Márquez. Oscar’s nickname is a Spanglish pronunciation of Oscar Wilde, whom he is said to resemble when dressed up in his Doctor Who costume for Halloween.

Congratulations, Yiddish Policemen's Union! (are you done winning things yet?)

Michael Chabon has been awarded the prestigious Hugo Award for his most recent novel. Where does he find the shelf space?

Book News, In Brief

How true to life (i.e. scandalicious) is Britney Spears' mom's book going to be? Not very, judging from that soft focus book cover. For a more fitting distillation of the book's themes, click the image to the left.

Last week, disappointed readers of Breaking Dawn (are there any other kind?) were calling for a book burning. This week they're rallying behind a new plan: returning the books for full refunds. Ha! Go back to burning 'em, suckers. Caveat emptor, and all that.

Booksellers get labeled as nerds, sure, but we've got it a hell of a lot better than our brethren, the comic bookseller. Their public ridicule knows no bounds. Here's a link to a website dissing a comic book shop owner simply because he gave the new Astonishing X-Men a negative review. Although the comments section seems to side with the dissing, the piece raised a couple of question in my mind: Should negative reviews be nixed from a shopkeeper's spiels? Are they bad for business, or do they help to build a buyer's trust?

(Editor's Note: The fact that we've called our patrons suckers in one news item, only to then ponder customer loyalty in the next was not unintentional. To quote Full Metal Jacket, we're only "trying to suggest something about the duality of man...the Jungian thing.")

Book News, In Brief

McSweeney's asks tweens, teens and their online predators:
Did you see Shakespeare's Facebook pics?
(OMG!!! He's hot!!!)

Kafka and Thomas -- the new Britney and Lindsay?

Dylan Thomas' dirt filled diaries are up for public perusal, while an upstart publishing house has put out a book cataloging Kafka's vast and varied porn collection.

Edjumacated dudes predict Oprah's endorsement is worth a million votes. Considering the staggering quantities of East of Eden that she managed to sell to an otherwise illiterate America, I'd have to agree.

Wal-Mart Hosts A Bus Tour(for authors)(of books!)

I've gotta admit, Wal-Mart hosting a book tour makes about as much sense to me as Target hosting a wine tasting. But hey -- kudos to the big box, blood-sucking corporation for trying to bring a lil' culture to the Nascar crowd.

Related Links:
Here's an article describing one author's extravagant plans for the two state, four day tour. (NSFW!)
Here's a different author's blog about the tour. (SFW, but highly suggestive!)
Here's a different blog, a different author...but the same tour! (SFW...if your bosses are pervy.)
Semi-related links:
Wal-Mart hearts Russian rubles.
Wal-Mart strongly endorses McCain.
Robbers wear Wal-Mart uniforms...to rob rival store.
Man caught walking around Wal-Mart with chicken down his pants.

Blog-Jacking: The Bennington Banner

Writer Shows Importance of Documents
Written by Stephanie Ryan
Originally published: 08/04/2008

Footnotes.Bibliographies. Scribbles in the margins. How do we show how we know what we know?

Robert Hauptman's new book, "Documentation: A History and Critique of Attribution, Commentary, Glosses, Marginalia, Notes, bibliographies, Works-Cited Lists, and Citation Indexing andAnalysis," attempts to answer thatquestion, through an examination of the history of the art of documentation and a critique of the major systems thereof.

"I've always been interested in the ways scholars document," said Hauptman, a professor emeritus of St. Cloud State University and the editor of the "Journal of Information Ethics." "There's nothing more important than documenting your sources."

Acknowledging that documentation is an esoteric subject,Hauptman, 67, retired, and a resident of West Wardsboro, said, "One day, I decided that no-one has ever done it, so I decided to do it." The result is a 200-plus page volume, illustrated with numerous examples of footnotes, endnotes, commentary and marginalia, describing how various forms of documentation are used, critiquing the various systems, and even tackling errors and misconduct. And the book takes — and demonstrates — a stand for illustrations as a legitimate subset of documentation in their own right. "We'll see what the critics say," Hauptman said, smiling.

"I also criticize, pretty blatantly, indexing — using citations to assess and evaluate" articles," Hauptman said. He described the process of publishing an article and having that article cited repeatedly in other publications as having what the academic world calls an "impact factor," and said the impact factor is often used in an unfair way. In Spain and in China, raises and bonuses can hang on an article's impact factor. Here, frequently cited writers find themselves rewarded with tenure. "People tend to work toward a high impact factor, instead of a cure."
To finish this article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

Anti-Obama books are selling well...on Amazon.com. Three anti-Obama releases were in the top 20 of Amazon.com's best-seller list on Tuesday, despite little critical attention or mainstream media coverage. Does this mean that the online behemoth has a right wing posse, or are buyers simply seeking an anonymous purchase for fear of being labeled racist?

In WI, The Man commands: Stop giving books to our prisoners! Rainbow Books, a co-op bookstore operating a nonprofit charity, Wisconsin Books for Prisoners Project, has been told to stop sending free books to inmates. State prison officials claim that 'contraband can be sealed inside bindings (and) underlining certain words can be a code,' but really, they're just trying to keep the underclass from getting too uppity.

German papers are announcing the creation of an e-book to rival Amazon's Kindle. Will this giant-slaying software be the key to wiping away those negative, Nazi stereotypes once and for all? (Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks of Dr. Strangelove when I hear a Kraut shout.) From TheBookseller.com: One of Europe’s biggest telecommunications companies, Deutsche Telekom, is developing a portable e-reader, apparently a competitor for Amazon’s Kindle, reports German magazine Der Spiegel...One of the engineers involved in the project is quoted as saying that the Kindle generally points in the right direction but Deutsche Telekom will end up developing a device with a larger (and possibly bendable) display. It’s also supposed to be easier to operate.

Author Du Jour: Kenneth Anger

Biography
(stolen from Wikipedia, but revised to reflect my personal opinions)

Kenneth Anger is an author, magician and filmmaker. He was born in Santa Monica, California as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer and attended the Maurice Kossloff Dancing School with Shirley Temple. He began making films around age nine, but his early films are now lost. He gained fame and notoriety from the publication of the French version of Hollywood Babylon in Paris in 1959, a tell-all book of the scandals of Hollywood's rich and famous. A pirated (and incomplete) version was first published in the U.S. in 1965. The official U.S. version was not published until 1974.

His first film to see distribution was Fireworks, filmed in Los Angeles in 1947, which gained the attention of Jean Cocteau, who then invited him to go to Paris. In 1949, Anger directed The Love That Whirls which according to the 1972 book Experimental Cinema contained (faked) nudity, and was thus confiscated by the film lab. While most of his films are short subject (ranging from 3.5 minutes to 30 minutes) mood pieces, in 1955 he made a documentary film of the ruins of Crowley's Thelema Abbey in Cefalù, Sicily, which is now considered a lost film.

He developed a close friendship with Dr. Alfred Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research. Anger would later recall that Kinsey was his first customer after Kinsey purchased a copy of Fireworks when they first met in 1947. Anger eventually helped Kinsey build his film archive. The Anger Collection includes correspondence between the two men, as well as letters to and from former Institute director John Bancroft. Anger would later speak openly of his participation in Kinsey's research, including being filmed masturbating.

During the late 1960s he associated with The Rolling Stones, as well as Bobby Beausoleil (before he gained notoriety as an associate of the Charles Manson family). Beausoleil, a musician who had played with Arthur Lee, was cast as Lucifer in Anger's proposed film, Lucifer Rising. Beausoleil and Anger had a falling out and Beausoleil left, taking most of the completed film with him (Beausoleil is also rumored to have buried the film's negative in the desert at one of Manson's former hangouts.) British singer Marianne Faithfull later appeared in Anger's re-shot version of the film. Some footage from the earlier version of Lucifer Rising (including Beausoleil) ended up in Anger's Invocation of My Demon Brother.

Kenneth Anger had a widely publicized spat with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page over the Lucifer Rising soundtrack.Anger claimed Page took three years to deliver the music, and the final product was only 25 minutes of droning and was useless. Anger also accused Page of "having an affair with the White Lady" and being too strung out on drugs to complete the project. Page countered claiming he had fulfilled all his obligations, even going so far as to lend Anger his own film editing equipment to help him finish the project. Page's music was dumped eventually and replaced in 1979 by music written and recorded by Bobby Beausoleil - the only movie soundtrack in history recorded inside a prison.

In the mid-1980s, Anger sold a 16mm print of the incomplete Lucifer Rising, containing the Page soundtrack, to Christopher Dietler, who eventually released the soundtrack taken from film on an album titled Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising Jimmy Page Soundtrack. Anger filed a lawsuit and won an injunction against Dietler who turned over the digitally enhanced master and agreed not to press or sell anymore record albums.

Anger's lifelong interest in the occult brought him into contact with a variety of groups and individuals. He was a lifelong friend of Anton Szandor LaVey, both before and after the founding of the Church of Satan in the 1960s, and lived with LaVey and his family during the 1980s. In more recent years Anger accepted initiation into the Ordo Templi Orientis in a semi-honorary fashion. For 20 years from the early eighties, Anger released no new material. In the new millennium he has since returned to filmmaking.

Anger has been threatening to release a third installment of the Hollywood Babylon series, but says that legal threats (most notably from the Church of Scientology) have prevented it. A crappy, un-Anger, Hollywood Babylon 3 was released earlier this year. Avoid it, lest you be cursed.

Bibliography (English Works)
(Again, stolen from the Wikipedia)

Hollywood Babylon Kenneth Anger (1959)
Hollywood Babylon II Kenneth Anger (1986)
The Devil's Notebook Kenneth Anger and Anton Szandor LaVey (1992)
Satan Speaks! Kenneth Anger and Anton Szandor LaVey (1998)
Suicide in the Entertainment Industry Kenneth Anger and David K. Frasier (2001)

For your viewing pleasure: Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

Book News, In Brief

Last week's winners: Breaking Dawn and Watchmen.
This week's losers? Breaking Dawn's readers, apparently.

The Bookseller of Kabul meets The Jetsons. Afghanistan's most successful bookseller, 54 year old Shah Muhammad Rais, is trading in his book bus for a web site.

Remember that upcoming book from Salman Rushdie's former bodyguard? The one that claims Rusdhie was pompous and had no sense of humor? He still is and he still doesn't.

The hype machine for Olympics 2008 is in full swing. Not only can you watch Tank Girl artist/creator Jamie Hewlett's animated Olympics promo online, but the Guardian UK's done a nice piece dissecting sports fiction, including a list of recommendations.

Breaking Dawn, On Sale Tonight At Midnight!

Attention all you frustrated housewives, Hot Topic shopping teens, and romantically delusional tweens! The Inkwell Bookstore will be selling copies of Breaking Dawn tonight at midnight -- with a 20% discount to boot. But that's not all. We'll also have food, drinks, costume contests, trivia contests, a special screening of the anime Vampire Knight (not yet released in the US!), and a surly staff unaccustomed to working such late hours! Yes, this is either going to be a raging success (the likes of which has not been seen since that last Harry Potter book was released...a year ago!) or a fall-flat-on-our-faces example of misplaced hopes and hubris for the book industry as a whole.

Please, come join us to find out which!

Note: E-book readers will have to wait an extra day for their digital copies of Breaking Dawn. They ain't coming out 'til 12:01 EST on Sunday, August 3. But seriously (heartless insult alert!), few things are less sexy than an e-book, and you wanna-be vampires are all about the sexy, no?

Recommended Viewing:Haruki Murakami's On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl

A while back, we posted YouTube clips of a couple of fan-made adaptations of the work of Haruki Murakami. One the folks whose work-in-progress we'd featured, KrispyMike, recently let us know that he'd finished his animated adaption, so we thought we'd post it here for y'all to see. Enjoy.

Recommended Viewing: Alan Moore On Everything

There's 10 parts, so settle in.
Part 2: the legendary years, 3: on his upcoming novel, Jerusalem 4: V for Vendetta, 5: on Super Heroes, 6, 7, 8: Moore's favorite superhero, 9: The Simpsons, 10: advice for young cartoonists

Book News, In Brief

From masturbation to making fun of the infirmed: The Onion picks the 22 most unflattering moments in autobiographical comics.

In summation: In lieu of any new Pirates of the Caribbean films, frustrated females are turning to pretty-boy vampires.

At least it's more creative than plagiarism: Armed with Noel Coward's diaries and an English dictionary, a New York author turned out some 150 forged letters from one of England's most flamboyant writers.

The Power Of Teen-Lit -- Explained!

An excerpt from Full Frontal Snogging and Other Stories
Originally written by Alice Wignall for The Guardian UK, 7/29/08

The truth is that you never love books the way you do as a young reader. My generation consumed with fanatical zeal the works of Judy Blume and Paula Danziger and the far less wholesome American series, Sweet Valley High. And contemporary teenagers are just as likely to be found with their heads stuck in a book. Hannah Rutland, project manager at the reading charity Booktrust, says: "Teenage girls do get obsessed with things, including books." Becky Stradwick, head of children's books at Borders UK, agrees. "It's like bands," she says. "There are crazes. They suddenly fall in love with an author and are consumed by a need to have everything they've ever produced."

Canny authors are on to this and a high number of "young adult" books are series. The fourth in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, an American who writes about teenage vampires, is out in August and anticipation is running high. As Blume points out, young readers will read their favourite books again and again. And she knows that the connection forged at that age between book and reader will last for years. "They remember where they where, physically and emotionally, when they first read these books. They have a strong attachment to the characters. And now they want to share these books with their kids."

To read the whole article, click here.

There Be Gold In Them Thar Lecture Halls

From the essay More Bang for the Book, written by Rachel Donadio
Originally published in The New York Times on 7/27/8:

In recent years, a growing number of writers, from the best-selling to the less so, have hit the rubber-chicken circuit, speaking at colleges and businesses, chambers of commerce, trade fairs and medical conventions. While a midlist novelist might ask, though not necessarily get, $2,500 per appearance, a superstar presidential historian might command $40,000. And some best-selling authors charge double that.

The venues can range from the upstanding (libraries, churches) to the downright weird. “Once, back in the ’80s, I spoke at a ‘motion upholstery conference’ in North Carolina,” the author Roy Blount Jr. said in an e-mail message. “Motion upholstery,” he explained, means “chairs that tilt back or vibrate or turn into beds.” He learned something at the conference: “Just as fish can’t see anything funny about water, people in the motion upholstery field don’t respond to jokes, however inspired, about motion upholstery.” Blount said speaking fees helped put his children through college. “Then I drifted away from it,” he said. “Now I’m doing it again; the money is a comfort in my golden years.”

Mark Twain went on tour to promote “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and some of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s most famous essays, including “The American Scholar,” originated as lectures in Boston. But these days, publishers have become booking agents. HarperCollins established an in-house speakers bureau in 2005, and Knopf and Penguin have followed suit. (Random House has teamed up with the American Program Bureau, and Simon & Schuster just went into the speakers-bureau business with Greater Talent Network.) Beyond making money, keeping authors visible long after their publication dates and making sure copies of books are on hand, the in-house bureaus also reflect a market reality: with fewer bookstores and less coverage of books in newspapers, publishers are scrambling for new ways to connect books and readers without spending too much of their own money.

To read the entire essay, click here.

DC Confirms: Neil Gaiman to Write Batman

From IO9:
Saving the biggest news of the convention until the last few hours, DC Comics' second DC Nation panel confirmed the rumors that Neil Gaiman is going to be taking on the Dark Knight following Batman RIP...The announcement itself came in the form of a thirty-second video at the end of the panel, which showed a Bat-Signal shining on a coffin while the words "Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?" appeared on screen. The story - written by Gaiman and drawn by Andy Kubert - will begin in January next year, but no details were given on where it will appear or in what form.
For the complete article, click here.

Update: For even more information about the project, click here.

Book News, In Brief

Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, wasn't exaggerating. It was.

Sometimes a headline expresses more than it intends. Via CBC: Queen "fasciniated" by Negroes.

Salman Rushdie is tight-fisted and arrogant, a junk food junkie, and surprisingly smooth with the ladies, says a Special Branch officer who'd been assigned to protect him.

How to get your non-fiction book published -- a deceptively simple list of tips for people who are reading when they should be writing. Oh, and while you're dreaming your life away, here's 10 tips for selling your book online.

A few more lists:
Jackie Collins' 10 favorite "steamy" novels
Tom Shippey's top 10 books on JRR Tolkien
Vermont celebrities' pick their favorite books
Recent books by Hawaiian authors
Top 10 Christian audiobook downloads