Prizewinning Zadie Smith is not keen on prizes. From the Telegraph (”Author Zadie Smith attacks literary prizes,” by Nicole Martin):

The writer, who has received awards for her novels White Teeth and On Beauty, said that most literary prizes were “only nominally” about literature.

“They are really about brand consolidation for beer companies, phone companies, coffee companies and even frozen food companies,” she said on the website of the Willesden Herald, a forum of the arts.

Her criticisms were attacked as hypocritical by senior publishing figures, who questioned why she had agreed to accept awards for her books.

Does this mean that, by accepting the Whitbread First Novel Award for White Teeth, she was doing a little freelance work in advertising? (Otherwise, perhaps she should have sent Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse on her behalf.) Or maybe she’s simply had a change of heart since then. It will be interesting to see what happens if she wins something else.

The cranky young author also had harsh words for writers who wish to mine a vein similar to hers:

Smith, the chairman of the Willesden Herald’s short story competition, also said that she and the other judges had decided not to award a prize this year because no entry was good enough.

“Just because this prize has the words Willesden and Zadie hovering by it, does not mean that I or the other judges want to read hundreds of jolly stories of multicultural life on the streets of north London,” she said.

Australia has the same problem we do: more people want to write than read (”When everyone’s an author,” by Rosemary Neill, The Australian). Many good quotes, so I’ll just choose this passage:

While creative writing flourishes on campus, academic reservations about the field persist, not to mention double standards. Even Wilding, who helped entrench the sub-discipline, is ambivalent about its amoeba-like growth. Recently, a former colleague teased him: “As the father of creative writing at Sydney University, do you, like the father of the atom bomb, feel remorse?”

“Yes!” he responded, only half in jest. For Wilding, whose novels include the biting satire Academia Nuts, believes the proliferation of writing courses within the academy has been “a mixed blessing”. He is concerned too much creative writing is taught outside a literary context, along with courses about media, communications or theory.

“The way you become a writer is to read books,” insists this former English professor.

Another problem, he argues, is the lack of publishing outlets for creative work produced in our halls of higher learning. “At the moment, we have all these creative writing courses and the Australia Council putting money into mentorships and writers’ centres, but there’s hardly any money going into supporting publishing. What’s the point of encouraging writers if none of the stuff’s going to come out?”

Would-be writers have an obligation to read a lot for two reasons: to become better writers, and to support the business of writing. As Alan Wearne, lecturer at the University of Wollongong puts it (and oh, how I wish my alma mater had a name half as delightful):

“I believe that you can write too much, but you can never read too much.”

Barack Obama has obviously had a good weekend at the polls, beating Hillary Clinton from coast to coast to coast. But, as a number of other people have noted already, he had a good night at the Grammys, too, beating two former presidents (Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter) in the spoken word category.

The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream, by Barack Obama (Random)

Celebrations, by Maya Angelou (Random)

Giving: How Each Of Us Can Change The World, by Bill Clinton (Random)

Sunday Mornings In Plains: Bringing Peace To A Changing World, by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster)

Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself, by Alan Alda (Random)

Boy, Random House must have been really chagrined not to nab that fifth nominee spot, too.

I just can’t stand to have that picture of James Patterson be the last image of the week. So how about this instead? Joseph Sullivan of the Book Design Review listed his favorite covers of 2007, 2006, and 2005. At Booklist, we don’t see too many books with the finished covers on them. Looking at Sullivan’s lists is like being in a candy store.

(This is the cover of Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems, 1956-1998)

I keep trying to write a funny caption for this and then feeling as if I’m insulting the taste of millions of readers. Let me just say that I still don’t understand James Patterson’s popularity. Or maybe it stands to reason that, if you publish 12 books per year, you’re 12 times more likely to be checked out of the library than someone who only publishes one book per year. From The Independent (”The author of choice for Britain’s library borrowers“):

He may have been dismissed as a “best-seller factory” who churns out novels at a rapid rate to fill bargain-priced supermarket shelves, but James Patterson is now able to claim that he is British book borrowers’ favourite writer.

Just between you, me, and the doorpost, the third issue of Booklist Online REaD ALERT went out yesterday.

If you’re not already receiving it, why, just sign up for Booklist Online REaD ALERT here.

Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press reminded me of another noteworthy “eye” cover–on Lydia Millet’s How the Dead Dream. The effect is a little different–think of the eye models after years and years of beach time and hard living–but, in its way, strikingly similar.

This book, by the way, was an Editors’ Choice pick as well as a Top 10 Book on the Environment.

In the Times Literary Supplement (”Erotic qualifications“), Robert Irwin offers a somewhat cheeky (ahem) review of Gaetan Brulotte and John Phillips’ Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature (Routledge):

I also finished my reading of these two volumes with the feeling that sex was a lot less fun than I had hitherto supposed.

That’s funny, I had much the same feeling after finishing Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel. (Rimshot!) Although there is a clear difference between the two works:

In general, the entries tilt towards the intellectual, the magical realist, the transgressive and the gay. In the article on the novelist Jack Fritscher, Fritscher is quoted: "The gay erotic writer is to gay non-erotic writers what Ginger Rogers was to Fred Astaire: gay erotic literature does everything gay literature does, but it does it backwards and in high heels adding to its Olympic degree of difficulty and pleasure". This is a striking but puzzling metaphor. What sort of shoes is the non-gay erotic writer wearing and for what sort of dance?

But the real reason I’m writing about Irwin’s review of the EEL (as we in the “biz” refer to it) is a throwaway line in the first paragraph:

(It is common practice in reference books to insert a bogus entry or two in order to establish copyright in any future plagiarism case in court.)

Really? Is this true? Such a practice would seem more likely to cause the publishers of a reference book to end up in court themselves than to help them drag others there.

Can any reference librarians out there weigh in on this?

I thought the cover of Stephenie Meyer’s forthcoming book looked familiar….

Any other eyes out there?

Too many to post here, but you can download the PDF (what, no HTML?!?!) at the Audio Publishers Association site. After the award ceremony on May 30, I’ll try to post and link the winners…in all 29 categories. (What, 30 was too many?)