The winners of the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize have been announced:

Overall

My War: Killing Time in Iraq, by Colby Buzzell (Berkeley/Penguin)

Fiction

The Doorbells of Florence, by Andrew Losowsky (Prandial Publishing/Lulu)

Comics

Mom’s Cancer, by Brian Fies (Abrams)

More details at the official contest blog.

As the dust settles in the newspapers-versus-blogs punchup, the L.A. Times (”Battle of the book reviews,” by Josh Getlin) explores the common ground:

The accusations flew back and forth. But now there is a growing sense that enough is enough - and that the friction between old and new book media obscures the fact that the two are in bed together now, for better or worse. Often the same people who churn out literary blogs are reviewing books for mainstream reviews. (Champion, for example, has a review appearing in this week’s Los Angeles Times Book Review.)

Many believe there’s a healthy synergy between the two. Maud Newton, who runs one of the more respected literary blogs (maudnewton.com), was puzzled by the idea that the two are somehow competing. “When bloggers disagree with or agree with an article about books in the mainstream press, it drives traffic to the newspaper,” she said. The cutbacks at newspaper book reviews are unfortunate, but hardly the fault of bloggers.

“This was truly a false dichotomy,” Mark Sarvas, who runs the L.A.-based blog the Elegant Variation, said by phone. “The two sides needn’t be in opposition, certainly not at this time. There is a vast ecosystem of information about books out there, and all of it needs our support.”

(I wonder if it’s only bloggers who “churn out” their content, or if those who write for print publication do, too. And does Champion “churn out” his blog before he turns to “writing” his L.A. Times book reviews?)

Champion and Dirda make nice (Dirda with an asterisk):

“I think cutting newspaper book coverage is an abject and unfortunate development,” said Champion in an e-mail to The Times. “I also think it’s egregious for either of the two sides to wag schoolmarmish fingers at each other. The litblogs could use more editorial care; the newspapers could use more passion and spontaneity. But here’s the good news: the twain can meet.”

“It’s great that people should voice their opinions about the books they love or hate,” Dirda wrote in an e-mail, sounding more conciliatory but still noting that he prefers traditional book reviews. Blogging “encourages a vital literary culture, just as book clubs and other discussion groups do. But we still need the common ground of book review sections…. Perhaps there is a modus vivendi that will allow both kinds of literary discussion and opinion to flourish. I hope so.”

And, once again, there are too many books:

PERHAPS the pervading sense of scarce resources is compounded by a publishing industry that produces more books than even the most robust cultural conversation could possibly include. Last year there were 120,000 new titles released, far more than American consumers could be expected to navigate. Only a relative handful get media attention. 

On another statistical matter, I’m not sure why the newsies persist in comparing newspapers’ circulations to blog visits (or, for that matter, why they don’t know the difference between a hit and a visit):

Still, the numbers are telling: The literary blogs are reaching a small audience. While larger newspapers have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the Elegant Variation, for example, has an estimated 5,000 to 7,500 hits a day, while Champion’s Return of the Reluctant is averaging 40,000 visits a day.

What, exactly do those numbers tell us? A newspaper may have 500,000 subscribers but, unless the newspaper releases its own reader surveys, we don’t know how many people read the book review section. While we’re guessing, it’s entirely possible that Champion’s 40,000 visits is more action than some newspaper book sections get. (Especially when the book section comes wrapped with an inch or so of advertising circulars…but now that you’re moving to Saturdays, Chicago Tribune, I guess we won’t have that problem anymore.)

Lucille Clifton has won the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The Poetry Foundation site has some good links — actual poems and an interview, too. For those who don’t follow the glitzy poetry scene, the Ruth Lilly “honors a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.” Furthermore:

Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the award is one of the most prestigious given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation’s largest literary honors.

If you ask me, a poetry award needs to hand out $100k before it’s even taken seriously.

Links to reviews of Clifton’s work? Check.

Mercy. 2004. BOA, $22 (1-929918-54-2).

Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000. 2000. BOA, hardcover, $25 (1-880238-87-X).

The Terrible Stories. 1996. BOA, $20 (1-88023-836-5).

The Book of Light. 1993. Copper Canyon, $21 (1-55659-051-2).

A nice way to take a quick break without leaving your desk: The Cover Art Gallery (found via Edward Champion and Kitabkhana):

I love books. I love the smell of ‘em, the feel of ‘em, and I love the look of ‘em. In fact, I even like to read them, but that’s another story. The main preoccupation of this site is the covers of books. Mainly books I’ve picked up in charity shops, or at carboot sales or jumble sales, even some that I’ve found on the ground. Here you will find hard-boiled detectives, scantily-clad floozies, unlikely space-ships, grotesque aliens, bizarre religious images, beatnik shockers, hell’s angels, skinheads, barbarian heroes, and horrifying monsters… among others.

…and Finnish pulp fiction, natch.

I wish this were a little bit easier to browse, but what’s a few mouse clicks between bad-cover-art aficianados?

I’ve been deep in the data lately, having a hard time feeling creative enough to do much writing. Which is an inadvertent but completely appropriate lead-in to what I logged on to write about. I recently finished reading Robert Walser’s The Assistant, in what may or may not be the first English translation. And while I enjoyed it, I had that curious feeling of not enjoying it as much as I felt I should have. That may seem esoteric, but I think most people should be able to relate. I was thinking, “This is good, but it seems like the kind of thing I’d love — why don’t I love it?”

I think it has something to do with the language. While I’m certain this is a very fine translation — my German isn’t good enough to make my opinion on that matter worth rendering — and I know that this prose was modern for its time (1908), it still displays both the rhythms of its time and a degree of ornamentation that most writers wouldn’t use today.

I cut my teeth on Victorian writers, so filigree doesn’t faze me. I think the problem may be that I read so frantically now — always at pace, almost always contemporary fiction — that I’ve forgotten how to adapt to the rhythms of older literature. Booklist rarely reviews reprints, so I rarely have the opportunity.

And this raises a book-reviewing conundrum: how do you review a book that you think you would enjoy more if you were in a different state of mind?

Anyone?

I know this doesn’t say much about the book itself, but I need to get back to writing the review. I’ll be curious to know if anyone else thinks that Colson Whitehead is a good read-alike for Walser.

Hooray! The Quills will be returning for a third year, reports Publishers Weekly (”Revamped Quills Set for October 22“). There will be some changes, however. First, instead of letting anyone with an Internet connection cast a vote, 6,000 booksellers and librarians will do the honors. Second, the books they’ll be voting on (5 books times 19 categories), PW reports, will be selected by…PW.

To be considered for the Quills, books must have been published between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2007. This year, the nomination process will feature a Quills/PW Selection Committee headed by PW editor-in-chief Sara Nelson. The committee will choose titles from books that have appeared as PW starred reviews or on the magazine’s bestsellers lists.

Sure, all awards are subjective, but…huh. Either it’s good (starred review) or it’s not good (no starred review) but sold a lot. It’s populism–with a critical edge! (Don’t worry, Average Internet User, you’ll still be able to vote for the “Book of the Year” at www.quillsvote.com.)

In a third change from last year, winners will be announced over a month before the actual ceremony–presumably because last year not enough winners bothered to show up.

I can’t wait. I can practically taste the Hollywood-style glitz.

Thinking more about the whole truth-in-memoir conundrum, I’ve come up with the following idea: if a book is called a memoir, let’s assume that, like memory, it’s not to be trusted. Enjoyed, possibly, but not viewed as documentary evidence.

If an author is writing in the first-person and they do want us to trust the veracity of their facts, they’ll have to use footnotes that prove their claims can be verified by another party. (Or, if they don’t want their prose to look like that of David Foster Wallace, endnotes.)

Easy peasy.

Now even the New York Times (”Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?” by Motoko Rich) is writing about the decline of book reviews in newspapers:

To some authors and critics, these moves amount to yet one more nail in the coffin of literary culture. But some publishers and literary bloggers - not surprisingly - see it as an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books. In recent years, dozens of sites, including Bookslut.com, The Elegant Variation (marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/), maudnewton .com, Beatrice.com and the Syntax of Things (syntaxofthings.typepad.com), have been offering a mix of book news, debates, interviews and reviews, often on subjects not generally covered by newspaper book sections.

For those who are used to the old way, it’s a tough evolution. "Like anything new, it’s difficult for authors and agents to understand when we say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not going to be in The New York Times or The Chicago Tribune, but you are going to be at curledup.com,’ " said Trish Todd, publisher of Touchstone Fireside, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. "But we think that’s the wave of the future."

Maud Newton offers a balanced assessment…

"I find it kind of naïve and misguided to be a triumphalist blogger," Ms. Newton said. "But I also find it kind of silly when people in the print media bash blogs as a general category, because I think the people are doing very, very different things."

…while Richard Ford reviews the medium without having read it:

Of course literary bloggers argue that they do provide a multiplicity of voices. But some authors distrust those voices. Mr. Ford, who has never looked at a literary blog, said he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. "Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership," Mr. Ford said, "in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn’t."

And what’s so bad about basements? Plenty of novels have been written in basements, and we don’t give those authors crap about it. Good writing is good writing. Bad writing is bad writing. Some of it is on blogs, some of it is in newspapers.

We’re talking about this in the Booklist Book Club, too.

It’s been practically weeks without news about a memoirist’s faulty memory, so you can imagine my relief upon learning that some women are challenging the veracity of Deborah Rodriguez’ Kabul Beauty School (”Shades of Truth: An Account of a Kabul School Is Challenged,” by Abby Ellin, New York Times):

But Crazy Deb has raised the ire of six women who were involved at the founding of the Kabul Beauty School. The women say the book is filled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. They argue that events did not unfold the way Ms. Rodriguez depicts them, and that she exaggerated her role in the formation of the school.

Though Random House notes on the copyright page that some personal, place and organization names have been changed, and some chronological details adjusted, the women believe that the discrepancies are too vast to call the book a memoir. They even question whether the stories Ms. Rodriguez tells about Afghan women - disturbing, heartbreaking tales of abuse - are real.

And they object to Ms. Rodriguez’s explanation of how she came to be in charge of the school, as she is today. They say that, instead of being its savior, as she represents, she plotted to move the school from the Women’s Ministry to the house she shares with her Afghan/Uzbek husband, Sher (called Sam in the book). And, they said, she did it for personal gain.

(Saw this on Galleycat first — what, I’m supposed to read Fashion & Style now?) 

This isn’t James Frey territory — darn it – as Ellin points out, but still, it raises the question that I sometimes feel we’ll be debating until writing is replaced with mind-reading:

How close to the truth must a memoir be?

One source for the story suggests that, when reading memoirs, we must consider the source:

Yet Ms. Rodriguez provides an incomplete history of the beauty school. In a memoir, was she obligated to do more?

Richard S. Pine, a literary agent and partner at InkWell Management LLC, in Manhattan, said she was not. "Journalists know about fact-checking," he said. "Beauticians know about hair dye and shampoo."

It’s a good point. Much as I love Wikipedia, I don’t view it as an authority equal to Encyclopedia Britannica (excuse me: Encyclopaedia). A book by a beautician who calls herself “Crazy Deb” clearly doesn’t carry the same weight as a book written by the late David Halberstam.

But does the general public make that distinction? I’m not so sure. I think that most people imagine there’s a frenzied team of overachievers that goes to work on every author’s manuscript, doing everything from line- and copyediting to fact-checking, legal vetting, and proofreading. That may be true for publishers’ lead books, but, from where I sit, many authors can count themselves lucky to get the copyediting and proofreading. Most books seem to get most of their attention in the marketing phase.

But that still doesn’t answer the question. I haven’t read Kabul Beauty School, so I need one important question of my own answered before I can weigh in on this particular book flap: how funny is it?