Thanks to Maud for pointing out the Harvard Crimson‘s coverage of the Greene centennial. They sent a staff reporter who runs down the discussion pretty thoroughly. And in case anyone missed it, here is my coverage plus the audio (my coverage is lame. I pretty much went, listened and just posted the audio.)

The Globe covers the new Tom Wolfe book I am Charlotte Simmons in an article today. Apparently all the negative reviews don’t faze Wolfe. In response, Wolfe said mildly: ”I assume it’s just the way the book struck them. They just didn’t like it. How can you argue with that? To say ‘You did so like it?'” On why he wrote about college campus life: ”I didn’t approach the subject with the notion that I was going to write any sort of indictment,” Wolfe insisted. ”I had merely become so curious about college life. During the ’90s, when I was slaving away at ‘A Man in Full,’ I had begun to hear stories about coed dorms, about drinking, about political correctness. College had more and more replaced the church as the source of new values, of new ethical outlooks.” This is my favorite part of the article: “Wolfe said that while drinking is probably no more common on college campuses today than it was 50 years ago, the amount of casual sex, or ”hookups” in student parlance, has greatly increased.” He even went to frat parties for “research”. Oi.

First, there’s a great discussion of David Foster Wallace going on over at TEV’s blog. So visit here. Some readers love him and some don’t like him as much, but the discussion itself provokes a lot of thought.

Second, I am being bombarded with comment spam. It’s exploded this past week. I deleted 25 this morning, only to find 15 new ones just now. So email this asshole: bertadaniels@rediffmail.com. He’s behind it all. I am hoping the same technology that blindly searches for email addresses finds this one. Fucker.

The NYT Book Review has drawn the ire of Jonathan Bush apparently. He objects to their reveiwing the Kitty Kelley biography of the Bush family. He doesn’t object to the review itself, merely that they ran a review of a book that *gasp* “consists for the most part of quotations and commentary lifted from other writers, themselves also quick to seize upon the protection of New York Times v. Sullivan to write a litany of lies not only about our mother and father and the two presidents, but the entire family as well.” Sorry, I can’t feel sorry for you there Jonathan. Not just because of the election yesterday, but also for the fact that your family’s been in the limelight for years. And y’all put yourselves there. And that you are “surprised and deeply offended to see your review, which treats this rotten book seriously” also suggests that you are not a regular reader of the NYT Book Review, at least not of late.

As has been noted in many places, Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writer’s Network has an interview with 10 bloggers that I read on a daily basis. They both validate my blog’s existence and shame me on its posting lightness.

With the help of Mr. Bookdwarf, I finally got the audio ready for uploading. I had to compress it a bit, but it sounds good still. The event was actually pretty interesting. I went into it not knowing too much about Graham Greene, having only read The End of the Affair years ago. The audience seemed really excited to see the two of them talk. About 30-40 people showed up (that’s a lot considering most of the Boston area is still recovering from the Sox’s World Series win even today). Michael Gorra started out with some prepared stuff and then James Wood did the same. After that, they opened the floor for questions. But rather than my inelegant retelling, here is the audio file. It is about 8 MB and over an hour long. Also, the quality may not be great as it is the first time I have used this recorder. It begins mid-introduction. Good listening.

I’m back from the Michael Gorra-James Wood Graham Greene centennial event. Very interesting. I have to figure out how to upload the audio, but I did record the whole thing. Here is a picture in the meanwhile:

Wordsworth is closing on Saturday. Dammit, I hate to see another independent go under. Everyone, support your local bookstore, if there is indeed one still in your neighborhood!

The Globe and Mail visits with David Mitchell after he lost the Booker last week. He’s working on a new book already (although he said as much when he came to the store).

When he does return to the bustle and grime of London, there are moments when the city redeems itself. “I was taking a taxi from Paddington the other day, and my taxi driver stopped to talk to this other one. My taxi driver says,” Mitchell switches to a Cockney accent, ” ‘Oi, Frank! I thought you was retired!’ And the other taxi driver says, ‘Retired? Nah. Retarded, yeah.’ ”

Publisher’s Marketplace reports this today:

On and Off Again
The NYT raised a few eyebrows last week after the unusual dispatch of two different versions of its weekly e-mail providing advance release of the bestseller lists dated October 31. The first version incorrectly listed DON’T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT, credited to Howard Dean and Don Hazen with Ballantine listed as the publisher, at No. 30 on the extended paperback nonfiction list. (Dean wrote the foreword and Hazen contributed an introduction; the author is linguist George Lakoff, and the publisher is Chelsea Green.)

At least a few eyebrows remained raised when a second, corrected version of the list dropped the title entirely, with the paperback of Thomas Cahill’s SAILING THE WINE-DARK SEA moving onto the list at No. 35.

When Chelsea Green publisher Margo Baldwin contacted the NYT, they told her the book had been recategorized for tracking on their “advice/how-to/miscellaneous” list. After challenging the recategorization multiple times (a political book, it provides “advice” in the sense of what Amazon calls “recommendations for how the progressive movement can regain semantic equity by repositioning their arguments.” Baldwin’s appeals apparently ended with NYT staffer Rich Meislen, who told Baldwin via e-mail, “Having looked through the book, I think it’s correctly categorized…. I appreciate your concern, but people of good will can disagree, and we disagree on this one.”

Don’t Think of an Elephant appeared on my store’s bestseller list weeks ago and I had no idea what the book was when I saw the title. I was familiar with George Lakoff and the publisher Chelsea Green, but had never heard of the book. A lof of students ordered it, so I assumed it was for a class (shows you what I know). But I finally went and looked at the book on the shelf (yes, I judge a lot of books without having seen them) and I am surprised that the NYT recategorized the book as “advice/how-to/miscellaneous”. Most of what appears on that list is straightforward self-help and diet stuff. The first few books this week are He’s Just Not That Into You, The South Beach Diet and The Purpose Driven Life. The Lakoff book is not any of these. It’s political commentary. I don’t know what they are thinking. And the NYT staffer’s email….I’ll be polite and not say what I am thinking here.