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The literary life of R.A. Dickey
When already-legendary Blue Jays pitcher Dickey was in Grade 7, a teacher submitted a poem of his to a statewide contest, which he ended up winning. At the time he was struggling with the ramifications of abuse, and the success buoyed him: “From then on, I knew that I wanted to write. Unpacking literature and writing for me came very natural.” READ MORE: natpo.st/13AS6BU
Anne of Green Gables gets a sexy makeover, blond dye-job for new edition — and Canadian fans are not amused
A new image of Canada’s most beloved literary orphan has Canadians seeing red, but not where they’re supposed to.
A new edition of Anne of Green Gables depicts the notoriously youthful and ruddy-headed heroine as a curvaceous blond teen, sparking a fierce backlash from scholars and casual readers alike.
Critics derided the cover — which shows the heroine reclining against a hay stack, clad in a plaid shirt and smiling suggestively — saying it is a far cry from the feisty, 19th-century 11-year-old brought to life in the pages of L.M. Montgomery’s classic series of novels. (Amazon.com; Postmedia News files)
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It’s not only Election Day in the United States, but here at The Afterword, as well.
We are huge fans of artist Jane Mount. We wrote about about her bookshelf-inspired paintings, which she sells on her website, a couple of years ago.
Her first book, My Ideal Bookshelf, will be published on November 13. It features the ideal bookshelves of over 100 writers, musicians, directors, chefs, journalists and other cultural figures, including Judd Apatow, David Chang, Miranda July, Michael Chabon, and Dave Eggers (pictured above).
In anticipation of the book’s release, we’ve asked Mount to paint Canada’s ideal bookshelf. That’s where you come in. Read on: natpo.st/SqSlVr
Zadie Smith is homeward bound for NW
Zadie Smith’s new novel, NW, is about four people stuck in different circumstances despite starting out from the exact same place on the map. (Illustration by Kagan McLeod)
What kind of J. K. Rowling novel might we expect where every character is a Muggle?
Book review: The Casual Vacancy confirms that J.K. Rowling does not lose her narrative gifts by stepping outside her usual realm. Stripped of the fantastic, she still draws the reader onward.
How I put my library on a diet
I don’t like getting rid of books. I’ve previously written about my literary hoarding tendencies; I own hundreds of books I’ve never opened, let alone read, not to mention the stacks in my cubicle I intend to bring home one day. The idea of divesting myself of a small, yet substantial, part of my collection was daunting.
There is an unspoken agreement between reader and author when a new book is brought into the home: This book will (eventually) be read. Getting rid of a book — especially if it remains unread — represents failure for both book and reader. It means the book was never able to escape the shelf and make it into the reader’s hands. It represents unrealized potential, unfulfilled hope, an unkept promise.
R.I.P. Ray Bradbury
Artist Kagan McLeod’s beautiful portrait of the late author.
SmithMag asks writers to share their magic moments
Everyone has that one “moment” — whether it’s a bad one, a good one, a strange one or what feels like an insignificant one, it’s that one slice of time where anything and everything seems possible.
J.K. Rowling is finally leaving Hogwarts behind — and for decidedly more adult fare, too. Little, Brown Book Group and Little, Brown and Company announced Thursday that Rowling, author of the mega-successful Harry Potter series, is set to publish her first novel for adults.
“Although I’ve enjoyed writing it every bit as much, my next book will be very different to the Harry Potter series, which has been published so brilliantly by Bloomsbury and my other publishers around the world,” Rowling said in a statement. “The freedom to explore new territory is a gift that Harry’s success has brought me, and with that new territory it seemed a logical progression to have a new publisher. I am delighted to have a second publishing home in Little, Brown, and a publishing team that will be a great partner in this new phase of my writing life.”
Are retold tales a new fad or the latest incarnation of a rich tradition?
Margot Livesey’s latest novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, tells the story of a young girl who goes to live with her aunt, uncle and cousins after the death of her parents. The uncle treats his niece like a daughter, but after his accidental death she is shunned by her remaining relatives. Eventually, she enrolls in a strict boarding school, and later, lands a job at a remote estate tutoring a young girl. She falls for the young girl’s brooding guardian, only to have a deep, dark secret threaten their relationship.
Sound familiar?The Flight of Gemma Hardy is a retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. This is not a secret, but a selling point. Two of the blurbs that grace the back of an advance copy of the book mention Brontë’s classic, and Livesey isn’t shy about acknowledging her debt. ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEVE MURRAY
A Publisher’s Year: A quest for Survival
By now, it’s become almost clichéd to point out the challenges facing publishers, not only in Canada but around the world. The press release announcing the sale of M&S cited “the challenges facing publishers, including a difficult economy and digital-driven transitions facing the industry.”
But what does it mean to be a publishing house in this day and age? Why are publishers even necessary when a book can be produced independently — a file uploaded to Amazon and downloaded on a Kindle, no middleman required? Will McClelland & Stewart be the sole Canadian publisher to succumb to industry pressures this year, or were they simply the first domino to fall? How will technology continue to influence the future of books? Who are these people who still believe in a future with books?
Over the next 12 months, the National Post will chronicle the ups-and-downs, ins-and-outs, and day-to-day dealings of House of Anansi Press and its sister publisher, Groundwood Books — the stories behind a company devoted to storytellers — offering an in-depth look at what goes on inside a Canadian publishing house, and what it takes for a 20th-century model to survive in the 21st century.
Salman Rushdie dismisses demands of Islamic group calling for his ban from India
Controversial author Salman Rushdie has dismissed demands by an influential Islamic seminary in India that he should be banned from entering the country to attend a literature festival later this month.
Rushdie, who was threatened with death in a “fatwa” order from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then the spiritual leader of Iran, over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, is due to speak in the city of Jaipur alongside fellow writers such as Lionel Shriver and Richard Dawkins.
The Darululoom Deoband seminary, one of the world’s most important Islamic universities, is known for its conservative teachings thought to have shaped the views of some radical Islamist groups such as the Taliban.
Maulana Qasim Nomani, a seminary official, called for India to cancel Rushdie’s visa, saying that “the man whose blasphemous writings have hurt the sentiments of Muslims all over the world must not be allowed to set foot on Indian soil.”
Rushdie — who was born in Mumbai in 1947 — responded late on Monday by pointing out on Twitter that he did not need a visa to visit India. (Photo: Brian Harkin for National Post)
Flash of the Pan: A look at everyone’s favourite case of arrested development
The boy who wouldn’t grow up turned 100 years old this past year, and he still doesn’t look a day over eternal youth.
To celebrate the centennial, W.W. Norton & Company recently published The Annotated Peter Pan, edited by children’s literature scholar Maria Tatar and positively bursting with illustrations and photos of Peter’s various incarnations, from Arthur Rackham’s whimsical fairy portraits to the gallery of young actresses who have played Peter over the years.
Actually, in the spirit of Tatar’s very thorough adaptation, Peter Pan is technically more like 109, but what’s an extra decade in Neverland? What 2011 did mark is the centennial of the first publication of J.M. Barrie’s beloved children’s novel Peter and Wendy, which was itself an adaptation of the 1904 play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. But Peter’s first appearance was in Barrie’s 1902 novel The Little White Bird, and Peter proved so popular that his scenes were extracted from that book and published, with illustrations by Rackham, in 1906 as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Whew! No wonder that kid is forever flying off to Neverland.
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The Unread: You’ll never read every book; perhaps that should be cause for hope Recently, I began to read Moby-Dick for the first time. I was inspired to take Melville’s 1851 classic novel off the shelf, in part, by the fact that three related books had come across my desk in short succession: Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding; Matt Kish’s Moby-Dick in Pictures; and Nathaniel Philbrick’s Why Read Moby-Dick?Why read Moby-Dick, indeed? I’d lived 30 years without reading a page of Captain Ahab’s crazed pursuit of the great white and the world had not come off its axis. Still, I felt there was a gap the size of a sperm whale on my personal reading list. So, midway through my interview with Kish, I blurted out that I intended to finish Moby-Dick by the end of the year. I’d made a similar promise a few weeks earlier, while talking to Harbach, but had yet to even find the book on my shelves. This vow to Kish, who had just finished a project that saw him complete one painting for every page of the book, was like signing a contract with myself.“I have a very small library upstairs, and I often say one day maybe I’ll read all the books I have,” George Jonas told me during a recent interview. “We’re not scratching the surface of what’s worth reading, [even] in one language …”It’s true. There are scores of books I have not read, and it saddens me to think that I will never read most of them. I have not read War and Peace, nor Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment or pretty much any of the Russians. I have read Pride and Prejudice, but that’s it for Austen. I’ve read To The Lighthouse, but not Mrs. Dalloway, though I have seen The Hours (but I haven’t read that, either). I’ve read Dubliners (well, most of it) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but haven’t even attempted Ulysses and was scared off by the first page of Finnegans Wake. The only Brontë sister I’ve read is Emily. I have all of Roth and Bellow and most of Updike to look forward to. I’m embarrassed to reveal how little Atwood and Munro I’ve consumed. If any of these books come up in conversation, I’ll offer a polite smile and quickly change the subject. (Illustration by Clayton Hanmer)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw3krmpuEu1r59dcio1_1280.jpg)
The Unread: You’ll never read every book; perhaps that should be cause for hope
Recently, I began to read Moby-Dick for the first time. I was inspired to take Melville’s 1851 classic novel off the shelf, in part, by the fact that three related books had come across my desk in short succession: Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding; Matt Kish’s Moby-Dick in Pictures; and Nathaniel Philbrick’s Why Read Moby-Dick?
Why read Moby-Dick, indeed? I’d lived 30 years without reading a page of Captain Ahab’s crazed pursuit of the great white and the world had not come off its axis. Still, I felt there was a gap the size of a sperm whale on my personal reading list. So, midway through my interview with Kish, I blurted out that I intended to finish Moby-Dick by the end of the year. I’d made a similar promise a few weeks earlier, while talking to Harbach, but had yet to even find the book on my shelves. This vow to Kish, who had just finished a project that saw him complete one painting for every page of the book, was like signing a contract with myself.
“I have a very small library upstairs, and I often say one day maybe I’ll read all the books I have,” George Jonas told me during a recent interview. “We’re not scratching the surface of what’s worth reading, [even] in one language …”
It’s true. There are scores of books I have not read, and it saddens me to think that I will never read most of them. I have not read War and Peace, nor Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment or pretty much any of the Russians. I have read Pride and Prejudice, but that’s it for Austen. I’ve read To The Lighthouse, but not Mrs. Dalloway, though I have seen The Hours (but I haven’t read that, either). I’ve read Dubliners (well, most of it) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but haven’t even attempted Ulysses and was scared off by the first page of Finnegans Wake. The only Brontë sister I’ve read is Emily. I have all of Roth and Bellow and most of Updike to look forward to. I’m embarrassed to reveal how little Atwood and Munro I’ve consumed. If any of these books come up in conversation, I’ll offer a polite smile and quickly change the subject. (Illustration by Clayton Hanmer)
