Sherry Chandler

To my list of the good things the Kentucky Community and Technical Colleges are doing for literature, you can add the Maysville Festival of Books. I just got back from the inaugural Festival and am astounded to report that I actually sold some poetry books, which is remarkable given that both my books are going on three years old and I’ve just about saturated the market. In spite of the weather and the fact that some of the big names, like Sharyn McCrumb, weren’t able to make it, the crowd was decent, friendly and in a buying mood. The Festival was small but efficiently run and all the staff were wonderfully friendly and ready to have fun. I met some old friends and, I hope, made some new.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

Steve Holt and I were the only poets there. Organizer Garry Barker is a poet, but he wasn’t selling books.

Playwright Takes a Prize and a Jab at the US by Sarah Lyall in the NYTimes. “So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction,” he continued, “a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.” The full text of Pinter’s highly anti-U.S. remarks are available from The Guardian. But he does manage to tuck in a few remarks, too, about the nature of writing.

Just as an aside, it seems to me that the Nobel folk have been deep into expressing their outrage at the Bush administration in the last few years. Maybe they always have been so political but I didn’t notice it so much. I admit to a certain glee when they thumb their noses at Bush et al., but I wish they had given Jimmy Carter the peace prize on his own merits and not as a gesture.

This Season’s War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else, NYTimes op-ed by Adam Cohen [contains a pretty nice thumbnail history of attitudes toward Christmas in the U.S., offers some perspective – a novel idea these days.]

The Month When Our Culture Collapses Into a Pile of Preferences, NYTimes op-ed by Verlyn Klinkenborg [the reading of which made me think I probably ought not to offer you another reading list]

Stiff competition for Bad Sex award by Michelle Pauli in The Guardian Unlimited. Read the finalist scenes here. Thanks to I See Invisible People for the link. This award was won by Giles Coren .

“Goodnight Moon,” Smokeless Version by Edward Wyatt in the NYTimes. [The illustrator’s photo has been altered to remove a cigarette from his hand.)

Goodbye, Moon, NYTimes op-ed by Karen Karbo

Study Suggests Caffeine Can Help Liver — good news for writers?

Instant Millions Can’t Halt Winners’ Grim Slide by James Dao in the NYTimes (a Corbin lottery winner lives fast and dies young)

AND

from I See Invisible People, a link to Supermonk: warnings for cartoon violence, language, loud music, and the need for a high-speed connection