Thank You, Madeleine.

"L'Engle, an accomplished author whose works transcended the traditional boundaries of genre and audience, passed away at a Connecticut nursing home on September 11." She was 88 years old.

One of my favorite authors as a child and young adult, Madeleine L'Engle's books actually made my life more enjoyable. Her work nourished my imagination and made me feel as though there was something greater in this life--something beyond the monotony of each day.

Not only a brilliant author of children's books, L'Engle was a talented poet--just a marvelously talented woman. Today my heart is being squeezed by grief.

News Bits, In Brief

They say 'Write what you know,' and then they go and punish you when you do. A Polish pulp fiction writer was sentenced to 25 years in jail yesterday for his role in a grisly case of abduction, torture and murder, a crime that he then used for the plot of a bestselling thriller, Amok. The dirty, no good snitches over at The Guardian UK tell all.

Two Nebraska teens were busted this past May after repeatedly breaking into their public library to download internet porn. The library responded by installing software that blocks access to adult content, only to outrage free speech advocates in the area. Here's my two step, First Amendment friendly, encourage-the-kids-to-read suggestion: 1. Reinstate the unfiltered internet access. 2. Make a bigger, brighter sign for the erotica section.

Trailing a trend that has been going strong in Japan for years, comic books are now available via cellphone in the USA. For $4.49 a month on Verizon, or $3.99 a month for AT&T and Sprint, subscribers can view nearly a dozen different traditional comic books. There's also a separate subscription service for manga.The books range from well-known names like Bone and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to up-and-coming books, such as crime noirish Umbra and Hindu folklore-inspired Devi. The comics site uClick adds new chapters and/or issues for each title every week. Click here for their catalog of available comics.

Via NPR: "A couple of years ago, British author Ian McEwan conducted an admittedly unscientific experiment. He and his son waded into the lunch-time crowds at a London park and began handing out free books. Within a few minutes, they had given away 30 novels. Nearly all of the takers were women, who were 'eager and grateful' for the freebies while the men 'frowned in suspicion, or distaste.' The inevitable conclusion, wrote McEwan in The Guardian newspaper: 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.'"
Want the rest of this article? Ick-clay Ere-hay.

This Post Has Nothing To Do With Bush Reading 'The Pet Goat'

To try and distract you from the fabulous flubs committed by our commander in chief this weekend, here are reviews to three recent George W. Bush themed tomes.

Terror Presidency
Dead Certain
Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency

Weekend Links

Google steals from Goodreads, launching a new blog feature wherein users can find, organize, review, and boast about the books that they've read. Computerworld.com has the official description, but in short, it's a book nerd's MySpace.


Those of you still emailing newspaper editors, demanding that they reinstate their recently canceled book review sections, might want to head on over to the Columbia Journalism Review. Their cover story this month is 'Goodbye to All That: The decline of the coverage of books isn’t new, benign, or necessary' by Steve Wasserman. It's a thoughtful and surprisingly optimistic piece on that very subject.
Update: Critical Mass just held a brief interview with Wasserman that addresses many of the issues that he raises in his article. To read it, click here.


According to the Associated Press, much of the blame for Wednesday's stock market plummet is being attributed to the the recent publication of the federal government's vaguely titled, Beige Book. So what exactly is this Beige Book, who writes it, how is it written, and why should we as bookstore folk even give a damn?


Stolen whole from the blog.Wired.com article, Whither the E-Book?:
"The New York Times offers some tantalizing nuggets from the perpetually fledgling e-book market. These includes deets on the expensive ($400 to $500) reader Amazon is set to release next month. Early users of the Kindle say it's quite limited as a Web browser, thanks to a screen that can't display color or animation. And it uses a proprietary format that means early e-book adopters will have to repurchase a lot of content from Amazon. More glad tidings from the money-grubbing frontier: Google allegedly plans to require payment for full access to certain digital texts in its database."

"Samedi the Deafness" by Jesse Ball

What follows is a review of Jesse Ball's recently-published novel Samedi the Deafness.

I will spare you specifics about the book, as this is well-covered elsewhere on these interweb-tubes. Another motivation for this is because I wish for each new reader of Samedi to discover the story on their own terms as much as possible. I was looking forward to reading this novel by the poet Jesse Ball ever since I saw it was to be released. Once I got my hands on the advanced reader's copy, I paused my reading only for sleep and eating. It can go by quickly if you aren't careful to savor it, yet you don't feel as if the book is whipping you along. At the same time, the wonder and preciousness of each moment comes through in the book. The story feels like a distinct character, as if it has it's own life and agency. You come across little wisdoms uttered by the characters which initially feel as if they are meant to remain within the realm of the book, but as the book seeps into you you start to wonder which ones might function well outside the pages. And there are deeper wisdoms here, stretching across pages and sections of the book, which take longer to seep in.

The imagination present in this story is inspirational, as it is not a separate entity but the well up from which the story is drawn. Scenes from the book are still swirling about my head. I say this in contrast to another author whom I enjoy, who blurs the line between reality and the sub-/un-conscious (imaginary?), thus making reality feel unstable and foggy. This is enjoyable on its own merits, if you enjoy such a challenge. Ball's work is assured in its vagaries and imagination, which imparts a confidence on the reader rather than a fog, bringing its own challenges to the reader and reinforcing the reader's suspension of disbelief. While I speak of confidences, I should mention that Ball's writing style makes it feels like the story is being told directly to you, bestowed in confidence not to be disclosed to others. What a feeling to be in collusion with an author while reading their words!

Samedi is a good introduction to Ball's fiction writing style, which has a feel akin to prose poetry. There is talk of another of his novels being released sometime in 2008, which promises to delve deeper into imaginative realms. His other publications are worth your time, including a collection of poetry, March Book, and a collection of short stories/prose poems about an atrocious couple with a stirring joie de vivre, Vera & Linus, written with poet Thordis Bjornsdottir.

I urge you to explore the website for Samedi the Deafness, which includes audio of the author reading excerpts, videos produced by the author, and promotional materials for the populace to spread the word about Samedi. The Flash plug-in is necessary.

Your Favorite Literary Classics, Now With 100% More Bodily Fluids!

Marquis de Sade, Hunter S. Thompson, Virginia Woolf...all of them were great literary minds who willfully ignored the accepted social and moral codes of their day in order to artistically examine and express the darker aspects of the world they lived in.

Johnny Ryan, author and illustrator of Angry Youth Comics and Comic Book Holocaust makes no such claims. He is just a filthy, funny, cantankerous motherf***er with no self-righteous excuses for the foul things he draws.

Ryan's officially licensed website is currently offering free peeks at a few of his comics. Making it marginally appropriate for inclusion on this blog is The Klassic Komix Klub, an X-rated collection of comic strips themed solely around the capital-G Great Works of Literature.

If, after clearing your hard drive of any evidence that you ever visited his site, you're curious to read an extensive interview with Mr. Ryan, head over to The Hooded Utilitarian. Then clear your hard drive all over again.

The Way We See It: At Least They're Not Bashing Bookstores

The popularity of crappy, new release bestsellers with the cheap and demanding public is forcing many libraries to restructure themselves into book-themed Blockbuster Videos. This sad turn of events has prompted the Guardian UK to ask, 'Where's the great literature in local libraries?'

Do Bookstore Employees Dream of Shelving Philip K. Dick Novels?

We are now two days into our nine month hibernatory slumber. The self-reflective imagery that we had so eagerly looked forward to has already proved entirely disappointing. It lacks vividness and grows fainter with every passing hour. What were we thinking, asking for answers? There are no lessons to be learned in the downtime.

Shrill snippetts of garbled voices echo and drift in from the street. They belong to the lost and not the looking. I offer direction, but they crave only directions. Don't they know who we are? What we are? What we can do?

I step outside to check: Has our once proud sign fallen into disrepair? Have the shadows stretched so far as to obscure the letters, making our mission moot?

Or is it true what scientists say: That no one reads in dreams?

What Does Your Store Do?

Summer is over. The crowds have left the Cape. No longer are the streets packed with people who forgot their intended summer reads and have no permanent address where Amazon.com can send their orders to. This leaves our shop with only the faithful year round residents and the occasional and possibly accidental walk-ins to pawn our paperback wares to.
Yesterday I posed a challenge to the members of my staff. I wanted each of them to try and think of an idea/gimmick/scam/kidnapping plot to attract a fresh, new audience to our bookstore and win back the crusty bottomed crowd that would rather sit at home and shop than peruse the aisles of a local indie. We already do in-store book signings and readings, as well as the seasonal museum tour or two. These work well, but we're noticing that it's the same faces attending every time. We've also been doing out-of-store events, mostly due to the tireless promotional work of one our store's best handsellers, Kay. These, too, have been highly effective. But now we need something new to add to our arsenal. So we're putting the question out to you, the readers.
As a bookstore employee/owner, what does your store do to attract a crowd?
And as a bookstore shopper, what sorts of things do you look for in the stores that you frequent?

3 Day Weekend?

It's hard not to jealous of the 9-5ers. I've been in retail so long that I don't remember what it's like to have a 3 day weekend off. On the Cape, this is the last gasp of summer and the end of our busy season. So no posts this weekend, we'll be back on Tuesday along with the rest of you lucky dogs. Hope you remembered to pack a good book.

Podcast Links

NPR exposes its phallic shaped mic to Pamela Druckerman, author of Lust in Translation. Druckerman's book is an examination of the way infidelity differs around the world.

Since we're already talking about sleeping around, fans of the book Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival at a New England Prep School will want to head on over to WBUR for an interview with the authors, Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley, Both Jones and Miley are graduates of Milton Academy, the prep school that they are exploiting...er, exposing.

The Agony Column interviews 'bookseller extraordinaire' Mark V. Ziesing about the current state of bookselling, alternatives to Harry Potter and the catalog he writes.

Just in time for the back to school sojourn, The Penguin Podcast offers up ten minutes with two writers sure to inspire every less than studious student. Alexandra Koslow, author of Slacker Girl, reads a brief excerpt from her novel about life, love and the pursuit of leisure. Ron Bliwas, author of The C Student's Guide To Success, shares a few of the tips he hopes to sell you more of.

News Bits, In Brief

The Wall Street Journal recommends investing in art books. This week, anything's better than the stock market.

A new website for the Hugo Awards has been launched. Sci-fi fans knew all about this years ago, though, what with their access to time machines and wormholes and the Tardis.

Jack "King" Kirby gets a birthday tribute in The New York Times, and a virtual gallery displaying an eclectic selection of his artwork over at TheComicsReporter.com.

American Splendor's Harvey Pekar meets No Reservations' Anthony Bourdain, and both make their own comic strips documenting the experience!

Alison Morris at Publisher's Weekly lists a slew of booksellers who blog. No, she didn't mention us. Yes, we're offended.

Will Self Publishing Soon Be Referred To As 'Rolling Your Own'?

A few weeks ago we highlighted a publisher's plan to sell classic literature specially designed to look like packages of cigarettes. It gets weirder. Now there's a company hoping to sell small books of poetry via cigarette vending machines. What? No flask bound fiction for us drunks?

Marginal Graffiti

Are you the sort of reader who jots notes in the margins of the books that you're reading? Do you underline passages that hit a raw nerve, or witty one liners that you plan to wow your co-workers with at the next office party? Have you ever written something totally unrelated -- say, a phone number or grocery list -- in a book, simply to avoid getting up from the comfortable position you're sitting in?
If so, stand tall. You've nothing to be ashamed of.
Unlike those folks who only open their books partway so as to avoid creasing the binding, you're actually enjoying your reading experience. Hell, you've taken it to the next level, making it an interactive activity. What's more, you've proven yourself to be such an avid reader that while loving and respecting literature, you've also made it into a natural extension of yourself. Think of it this way: you write stuff down on the back of your hand all of the time, don't you? The fact that you're able to draw quick police sketches of shady individuals on the inside cover of your airport read only proves that you are books and books are you.
So to hell with the haters who scoff at scuffed bindings and your corner-of-the-page flip book adaptations. They've never experienced the joy of picking up an old paperback, only to find the pin number to a long lost checking account with fourteen dollars plus interest accrued. Nor have they ever tasted their own vomit after opening up an old book of poetry and seeing their freshman year knockoffs iambic pentametered in the blank spaces.
Sure, you'll never be able to sell (or even give away) your unwanted books for fear of the cringe-worthy secrets that you wrote in the margins seeing the light of day, but honestly, is there really such a thing as an unwanted book? When I look around my dusty old mansion, piled from floor to ceiling with books that might benefit needy schoolchildren, I remind myself that once a book has been vandalized...er, personalized, it's a part of me. As such, the inevitable donation and/or disposal of my ballpoint battered books will be handled under the same stipulation with which I have agreed to donate my organs.
Only after I'm dead.


(For my preferred crematorium and a map to the spot where I'd like my ashes scattered, see the margin of page 152 of my copy of Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder.)

R.I.P. Grace Paley

The marvelous short story author and poet Grace Paley has passed away.

There are plenty of obits across the web, but why not this one?

And Ursula Le Guin's remembrance is quite lovely.

Check out a selection of her publications, including her Collected Stories.

Study Up on Gwendolen Gross Before Her Event on Thursday

Gwendolen Gross will be at the Inkwell this Thursday, August 30th at 6:30 PM to talk about her new novel The Other Mother.

Dubbed “the reigning queen of women’s adventure fiction” by Joanna Smith Rakoff in Book Magazine, Gwendolen Gross grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. She graduated from Oberlin College, where she studied science writing and voice performance. Read her complete bio here.

Join us in welcoming novelist Gwendolen Gross. Author talk, Q&A, Book Signing. Complimentary wine & cheese.

A compelling novel about family, work, and the constant push and pull of contemporary womanhood, Gross, author of Getting Out and Field Guide, creates a stunning, dark, and suspenseful novel.
"A finely wrought domestic drama, The Other Mother draws out the intimacies of two women poised against each other's yearnings. Gwendolen Gross writes with the kind of nuance and grace that fire every moment of this timely story."
-Amy Scheibe, author of What Do You Do All Day?

Amanda is a successful book editor at a prominent publishing house in New York City. Thea is a stay-at-home mother of three who has never really left the community in which she grew up. The two women find themselves both drawn to and repelled by each other and their opposing choices in the constant struggle to balance career and family life. When a disaster forces Amanda and her family to take refuge in Thea’ s home, the underlying tensions simmering between them are forced to the surface.

"A suspenseful and compulsively readable domestic drama that's anything but ordinary. Smart and timely, The Other Mother is sure to keep the 'mommy wars' debate raging."
-Harlan Coben, author of The Woods

Click here to read the NPR Late Summer review.

Click here to read an Excerpt from The Other Mother.

Déjà Links

Because I'm lazy and busy and out of topics linking Oprah, O.J. and J.K. Rowling (If only Oprah used her initials more. Wait -- isn't Oprah's magazine called O?), I've decided to recycle my three-days-old idea of offering links to the Top 10 Books on the NYTimes Best Sellers List (Hardcover Fiction).

What? There's four new entries and it's a damn good idea.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Play Dirty by Sandra Brown

Force Of Nature by Suzanne Brockmann

The Quickie by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

The Secret Servant by Daniel Silva

Devil May Cry by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Spook Country by William Gibson (audio version, read by Gibson!)

The Burnt House by Faye Kellerman

News Bits, In Brief

Today's capitol-b Book News is a lot like those old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ads -- you know, the ones where two jerks bump into one another and say, "You got chocolate in my peanut butter" and "You got peanut butter on my chocolate." Except, instead of combining two delicious flavors of questionable nutritional value, it's a mash-up of the two most over-hyped personalities in recent publishing publicity: Oprah and O.J.
Via Publisher's Weekly: "On September 13 Fred and Kim Goldman will appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show along with Denise Brown to discuss the publication of the controversial O.J Simpson fictional confessional If I Did It to be published by Beaufort Books."

MovieCityNews.com offers this unique way out of debt: "Now that the movie's out, and Laura Linney embodies the icy socialite Mrs. X, Nanny Diaries producer Harvey Weinstein (according to the New York Post) was overheard offering some 'well connected socialites' $100,000 to unmask the 'real Mrs. X.'"
(Editor's note: You rich people suck. Haven't you ever heard of the 'Stop Snitchin', Stop Lying' campaign?)


According to The Associated Press, one in four adults read no books at all in the past year. According to me, 1/3 of the 75% of the adults that claimed to have read books really did not, but lied so as not to appear stupid. Another third only read the new Harry Potter.

And now, a classic News Bit (from a 3 year old BoingBoing post)
How Fanfic makes Kids Into Better Writers
"FictionAlley, the largest Harry Potter archive, hosts more than 30,000 stories and book chapters, including hundreds of completed or partially completed novels. Its (unpaid) staff of more than 200 people includes 40 mentors who welcome each new participant individually. At the Sugar Quill, another popular site, every posted story undergoes a peer-review process it calls "beta-reading." New writers often go through multiple drafts before their stories are ready for posting. "The beta-reader service has really helped me to get the adverbs out of my writing and get my prepositions in the right place and improve my sentence structure and refine the overall quality of my writing," explains the girl who writes under the pen name Sweeney Agonistes?a college freshman with years of publishing behind her.
Like many of the other young writers, Agonistes says that Rowling's books provide her with a helpful creative scaffolding: "It's easier to develop a good sense of plot and characterization and other literary techniques if your reader already knows something of the world where the story takes place," she says. By poaching off Rowling, the writers are able to start with a well-established world and a set of familiar characters and thus are able to focus on other aspects of their craft. Often, unresolved issues in the books stimulate them to think through their own plots or to develop new insights into the characters. "

Free First Chapters!

To test the Top 10 Books on the NYTimes Best Sellers List (Hardcover Fiction), click the links below.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Devil May Cry by Sherrilyn Kenyon

The Quickie by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

The Secret Servant by Daniel Silva

Spook Country by William Gibson (audio version, read by Gibson!)

High Noon by Nora Roberts

The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke

Waking With Enemies by Eric Jerome Dickey

Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich

News Bits, In Brief

Attention stoners and/or senior citizens: Is there a long-lost book whose title you've been racking your brains to recall? For just $2, you can submit a description to Stump The Bookseller, and their staff will try to reunite you with that favorite tome. At last, a website designed for rapidly deteriorating memories like yours.

So much for doctor/patient confidentiality. The Bellevue Hospital -- one time care provider for such celebrities as Tupac Shakur, Courtney Love and John Lennon's assassin, Mark David Chapman -- is about to launch its own publishing imprint, The Bellevue Literary Press. From the AP article: "Among the first titles of the Bellevue Literary Press, released this spring, are a novel interweaving themes of sickness and recovery into a 1940s family drama, a collection of editorial cartoons by an accomplished physician-artist and an experimental nonfiction work that explores the mind-set and meaning of awkwardness. The press plans to release four more books, including another novel, in the fall."

Real cyberpunks only listen to their podcasts on 7" vinyl. BoingBoing.net has just posted their newest podcast, and their special guest is author William Gibson.

Go, Read...Nicholas Gurewitch's Perry Bible Fellowship comic strips. Not only are they not religious, they're free for online perusal! Oh, and the book collecting them, The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories, comes out next month.

If Christianity Is Correct, This Post Better Buy Us Some Slack Come Judgement Day

The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy is currently receiving stellar reviews, a TIME Magazine cover story, as well as a place on the New York Times bestseller list. Here's an old interview with the good Reverend...conducted by the agnostic Woody Allen!



A few Billy Graham fun facts, care of Wikipedia:

1. He has not completely allied himself with the religious right, saying that Jesus did not have a political party.

2. Graham opposed segregation during the 1960s and refused to speak to segregated auditoriums, once dramatically tearing down the ropes that organizers had erected to separate the audience. He paid bail money to secure the release of Martin Luther King from jail in the American South during the 1960s civil rights struggle; he invited King to join him in the pulpit at his 16-week revival in New York City in 1957.

3. Graham would not allow himself to be seen or photographed in public with his daughters (or any other women) without his wife, Ruth, present. He did not want to give any sort of impression of marital infidelity. When then-First Lady of Arkansas Hillary Clinton invited him to lunch as he arrived in Little Rock for a crusade in 1989, Graham declined and said, "I don't eat with beautiful women alone" and met her in a hotel dining room instead.

Rowling's Reported Mystery? It's Been Solved.

The only topic getting more media coverage than Oprah's next book club pick is what J.K. Rowling is up to now that the Potter series is done. Speculation reached its zenith during the Edinburgh book festival, when Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin reported that his wife, Miranda, had seen Rowling "scribbling away" in an Edinburgh café, supposedly hard at work on a detective novel set in the Scottish capital. This anecdote was immediately reported that night in an early edition of The Sunday Times, after which it was picked up by The Associated Press and spread like celebrity sex tape footage through the rest of the world. The only problem? Rankin was kidding. According to the Guardian UK, Rankin has confessed, "This is a joke that got out of hand."
Whoops. Nice fact-checking, folks.
So what is Rowling up to?
Your guess is as good as ours (and The Times' and The Associated Press').

Poetry News and Reviews, In Brief

An Edgar Allan Poe fan has taken credit for creating the writer's 'graveyard visitor' legend. But there are those who would claim that this raven old lunatic's heart tells false tales.


At long last, the world will finally know what sorts of cartoony goth characters Sylvia Plath used to doodle on her jeans. Paintings and drawings by the Bell belle, many of which have never been seen before, are to be published in October to mark the 75th anniversary of the birth of the American poet and novelist.


"I married the girl I loved, yet poisoned her life
Lies began to coil in my heart and call it home."

The Los Angeles Times reviews Raymond Carver's collection of poetry, All of Us, here.


"What kind of spring is this,
Where there are no flowers and
The air is filled with a miserable smell?"

The New York Times holds court on the recently released, Poems From Guantánamo. Their verdict?
"The bulk of these poems are so vague, their claims so conventional, that they might have been written at any point in history by anyone suffering anything."
An anonymous source at the Pentagon agrees.

Don't Forget This Wednesday's Author Event!

This Wednesday, August 22, at 7:00 PM the Inkwell Bookstore will host a reading and Q&A with Thomas Cathcart, one of the two authors of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes. This is, without a doubt, the funniest book we've had the pleasure to promote at our store. Not only that, reading it might make you smarter (although the author offers no money back guarantees).

For a bit of back story on the book (care of Buzzflash.com), click here.

For a few reviews: The Writing Doctor, Harvard Magazine, Lancaster Online

And to hear the NPR interview with the authors...click here.

Bards Behind Bars

I already stole from CrimeTime.co on Thursday for the Jim Thompson piece, but I wanted to highlight one other great link that I found there: School For Writers: A Prison Cell. It's an article about the many great works of literature written behind bars. An excerpt:

"Writers in prison and prisoners who write have produced, between them, an oeuvre of global significance. From Boethius in 6th-century Rome, they have triumphed over carceral adversity through a combination of willpower and literary excellence. Malory, Bunyan, Cervantes, Vanbrugh and Voltaire might, at first glance, seem a pretty disparate lot. It is only where one throws in their 'previous convictions' that a mutual connectedness becomes apparent. In far-flung prisons across half a millennium, each man managed to transcend his predicament by drawing strength and inspiration from it."

Best of all, this isn't some NPR-produced work of underclass romanticism-cum-condescension. It's written by Peter Wayne, himself a recently released convict/wordsmith.
That's what the kids call 'keepin' it real.'

Oh No He Didn't!

Via The Associated Press:
Bill Schneider, Provincetown's administrative director of tourism, has admitted that he made an "error in judgment" by claiming that his self-published book had been selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club and that he had been interviewed by the talk show diva.
(Editor's Note: By an 'error in judgment,' he means 'a motherf**king lie.')
The book, Crossed Paths, was self-published by Schneider in March, and recounts the story of two men who fell in love in the 1970s. One later committed suicide.
(Spoilers: Schneider lives!)

News Bits...Well, Two Of 'Em, Anyways

Not content with killing the record industry, Apple has unveiled its plans to do the book industry in as well. The first step: Book excerpts are about to be featured on the iPhone.

Beowulf comes to the big screen! Directed by Robert Zemeckis, adapted by Neil Gaiman... and starring a CGI Angelina Jolie?

Author Du Jour: Jim Thompson

Biography
(courtesy of: The Killer Beside Me: The Jim Thompson Homepage)

Born September 27, 1906, James Meyer Thompson grew up in Oklahoma to become one of the finest pulp novelists of The Cold War era. His life during the Depression and his up and down family history of working the wildcat oil fields of Texas seeped into Jim's dirt-under-the-nails writing as he created characters at displaying both brutality and empathy.

Thompson began his career as a more "traditional" writer, publishing his first two novels, Now and on Earth and Heed the Thunder as hardbacks. After these books failed to find wide audiences, Thompson found his voice in crime fiction, grinding out hellish tales for paperback mills such as Lion Books and Gold Medal. While on the surface indistinguishable from the rest of their kin, those who dropped a quarter on one of Thompson's novels were exposed to a vision of the world as seen through Thompson's eyes; much of it ugly, little of it good, where redemption goes for a premium and an unnerving honesty to oneself pervades.

Thompson's best known novel is The Killer Inside Me, the story of a doomed small town sheriff unable to control his blood lust as circumstances force him to kill and kill again. Other notable books include Savage Night, The Getaway, and his often-overlooked novella masterpiece, The Criminal.

In the mid-fifties, Thompson began walking the long rough road to Hollywood. He worked with a young Stanley Kubrick on screenplays for two of the director's earliest films, The Killing (w/Sterling Hayden, from the novel Clean Break by Lionel White) and Paths of Glory (w/Kirk Douglas). What would seem a promising start never materialized, and Thompson's screen fortunes took a downward turn after that, and he spent the rest of his career writing unproduced screenplays and teleplays for low-rent television programs like Convoy and MacKenzie's Raiders.

Like jazz and Jerry Lewis, Thompson's writings found a life in France. Besides translating several of his novels, two films, Coup du Torchon (based on Pop. 1280) and Serie Noire (A Hell of a Woman), were made to much acclaim by French filmmakers.

A good number of Thompson's works have been put on screen by American filmmakers with varying degrees of success. These include The Getaway (twice, three times if you include the first half of the Rodriguez/Tarantino B-movie rave-up From Dusk 'til Dawn), The Grifters (nominated for four Oscars),and After Dark, My Sweet. The latest, This World, Then the Fireworks (w/ Billy Zane and Gina Gershon), was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997 to a positive audience.

Two biographies of Thompson have been published. The first, Sleep With the Devil, by Michael McCauley, was published in 1991. Savage Art: a Biography of Jim Thompson by Robert Polito, was published by Knopf in 1995. Polito's book won both the Edgar and National Book Critics Circle awards.

Thompson died on April 7, 1977, and had his ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean. As he had predicted, Thompson did not live to enjoy his own success.

The Classics
(stolen from the highly recommended site, CrimeTime.co.uk)

Nothing More Than Murder (1949)

Thompson's first noir classic and a variation on the old double indemnity shocker. Joe Wilmot and his wife Elisabeth (a woman with "trouble spelled all over her") jointly own and run a profitable smalltown movie house. Their marriage is empty and passionless and made more complicated when Carol Farmer, a business student, comes to lodge with them. Despite Carol's singular unattractiveness compared with Elisabeth, Joe has an affair with her: Elisabeth finds out (she craftily encourages the liaison) and blackmails the couple to fix an insurance scam in which she supposedly dies (substituting an innocent victim in her place) and nets the lucrative pay-off. Murder, arson, blackmail and suicide combine to make an exciting edge-of-the-seat thriller.

The Killer Inside Me (1952)

Perhaps Thompson's finest book. Stanley Kubrick called it "the most chilling and believable first person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered." The main character, Lou Ford, a smalltown sheriff, suffers from "the sickness," a psychopathic need to kill. Ford conceals his true identity under the guise of an inept, wise-cracking lawman: in truth he is one smart cookie (he reads psychological treatises and solves calculus problems for enjoyment). He is also a schizophrenic thug with a compulsive need to control, and if necessary, destroy, others. Thompson also invests Ford with a sickening, black humour: "I think I've broken the case," says Ford, after he's just secretly snapped the neck of one of his key witnesses held in custody! This disturbing, compelling masterpiece redefined noir.

Savage Night (1953)

A bizarre gangster novel which pays homage to the hard-boiled style of writers like Dashiell Hammett. Savage Night tells the story of Charlie "Little" Bigga, a pint-sized hitman who is blackmailed out of retirement by "The Man" to kill Jake Winroy, whose testimony as a key witness in a racketeering case threatens to expose the mob. Features all the usual Thompson ingredients of human depravity: lust, blackmail, murder, and a particularly gruesome rape scene where the consumptive Bigga ravishes Ruthie, a one-legged girl!

A Swell-Looking Babe (1954)

Thompson uses his experience as a former hotel bellboy to supply the authentic background to this novel about Bill "Dusty" Rhodes, a bright, good-looking young nightporter who finds himself embroiled in the seductive Texas underworld. The babe of the title is the vampish blonde bombshell, Marcia Hillis, working a scam with gangster Tug Trowbridge to rob the hotel. Look out for Oedipal images of incest and patricide. A disturbing tale of lust, avarice and murder presented in a third person narrative.

A Hell Of A Woman (1954)

Once again, deadly and alluring femme fatales grip Thompson's febrile imagination. Frank "Dolly" Dillon ("Dolly," incidentally, was Thompson's bellboy nickname while Dillon was his Communist party alias) is a salesman who comes across a depraved old woman who prostitutes her attractive niece (Mona) for downpayments on goods. Frank is attracted to the girl but is still married to his trampish wife, Joyce. Mona discloses to Frank that the old woman has a hidden hoard of cash ($100,000) and together they plan to kill her, setting up an unsuspecting alcoholic hobo to take the fall. Things are complicated by the suspicions of Frank's wife and his creepy boss, Staples. Expect blood, infanticide, pumpkins(!), blackmail, more twists and turns than Spaghetti Junction and the disintegration of the narrator's personality on the final page. Gripping stuff!

After Dark, My Sweet (1955)

The compelling tale of an escaped mental patient and ex-boxer (William "Kid" Collins) who gets mixed-up with a crooked ex-cop ("Uncle Bud") and booze-sozzled, spiky femme fatale (Fay Anderson). Together, the threesome hatch a plot to extort ransom money from a wealthy family by kidnapping their son from school. "Kid" Collins, however, is set-up by his treacherous accomplices as the fall guy in this taut, gripping novel of avarice, lust, betrayal and ultimately, sacrificial redemption.

Wildtown (1957)

Lou Ford returns but this time as a more humane, benevolent figure (and obviously at a time pre-dating The Killer Inside Me).

The action is set in the seedy location of Ragtown featuring David "Bugs" McKenna as a prickly, paranoid ex-con who accepts a job as a hotel detective. McKenna believes he has been hired to knock off the infirm, wheelchair-bound hotel owner by the man's glamorous young wife. Bugs accidentally kills the embezzling hotel accountant and is then plummeted into a dark world of easy sex, bloody betrayal and multiple double-crosses. Nasty!

The Getaway (1959)

What starts off as a simple bank heist yarn eventually mutates into an horrific nightmare when the book's two major protagonists, Doc McCoy and his wife Carol, find sanctuary in the kingdom of the enigmatic dictator, El Ray. After escaping capture by enduring two days in underground caves and being holed up in a mound of farmyard dung, the McCoys find that the mysterious El Ray's kingdom they flee to is no safe haven. In fact, it's hell on earth, where fugitives have to pay for their liberty with added financial and psychological interest. It's a place where one's worst imagined fears become incarnate. The effect of Thompson's grim metaphysical musings at the book's conclusion still divides the critics (both film versions dispensed with the book's original, arguably unfilmable, ending). A disturbing masterpiece.

The Grifters (1963)

The classic tale in which Jim Thompson gives the lowdown (with the help of sadistic mobster, Bobo Justus) on how to serve oranges to a person you don't like! Roy Dillon, the son of Lillie, a racetrack collector for the mob, is master of the "short con." He has a romantic entanglement with another expert grifter, Moira Langtry, who sells sexual favours to her landlord in return for the rent money. Together, the three characters get caught up in an incestuous, double-crossing menage-a-trois culminating in betrayal, infamy and murder. Another Thompson masterpiece.

Pop.1280 (1964)

Lawman Nick Corey is fat, lazy, foul-mouthed and an irritating practical joker. His memorable, moronic catchphrase is "I wouldn't say you was wrong, but I sure wouldn't say you was right, neither." But like Lou Ford before him, Corey is a sharp-witted malevolent killing-machine masquerading as a witless, innocuous clown. Set at the turn of the last century in a backwater town, Pop.1280 begins as a raucous, almost farcical comedy but descends into an apocalyptic bloodbath. A dark, disturbing novel that ranks alongside Thompson's best work.

The Rest:

Now And On Earth (1942)
Heed The Thunder (1946)
Cropper's Cabin (1952)
Recoil (1953)
The Alcoholics (1953)
Bad Boy (1953)
The Criminal (1953)
The Golden Gizmo (1954)
Roughneck (1954)
The Nothing Man (1954)
The Kill-Off (1957)
The Transgressors (1961)
Texas By The Tail (1965)
South Of Heaven (1967)
Child Of Rage (1972)
King Blood (1973)
The Rip-Off (1987)

Novelisations:

Ironside (1967)
The Undefeated (1969)
Nothing But A Man (1970)

Screenplays:

The Killing (with Stanley Kubrick)
Paths To Glory (with Stanley Kubrick and Calder Willingham)