The New York Times (”Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?” by Motoko Rich) gets into the debate about whether Web literacy is the same as book larnin’. If we are to believe the article, Americans have only two opinions: yes and no. Which is good, because a third opinion would be downright confusing to someone such as myself, who reads . . . wait a minute, I read books and articles! On paper and online!

Cuteness aside, clearly we have to address Internet literacy as a nation, if only to ensure that future generations do not come of age thinking that octopi grow on trees.

My favorite quote comes early on:

Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”

I agree with Mr. Spiro. I myself was irreparably harmed by my own chapter-based education. When I left the groves of academe for the real world, I found it hard to cope with the rather more free-form experience of reality–and the utter lack of predictably spaced cliffhangers made me want to quit my job and return to the comfort of English 201: The Victorian Novel.

Seems to me we should be focusing more on what people are reading than how they’re reading it. Is “Web-based” going to become slang for “scattershot and poorly proofed”? Then how do you explain Salon?

But above all, anyone who’s taken a look around lately knows that the last thing we need is to encourage people to have even shorter attention spans. Remember what Santayana said, whoever he was.

I somehow missed this last week when I was home with the kid. Fortunately, my buddy Frank brought it to my attention: in exchange for a 50% pay cut, Publishers Weekly reviewers now have their names printed in the issues where their reviews appear (”The Reviewers Come in from the Cold,” by Leon Neyfakh, New York Observer). A little Googling, a little e-mailing, and a few incomplete bios emerge (one of them is a prominent book blogger).

There’s a little debate in the comments about what constitutes good credentials for a reviewer–I’d argue that it’s nothing more than the ability to read quickly, write clearly, and have an interesting and defensible opinion, book after book after book after book, while caring little for financial rewards–but clearly some people are startled to learn that the position of book reviewer does not come with a litter and footmen.

For my part, I’m proud to have my name attached to the reviews I write and to have a transparent professional affiliation.

(Full disclosure: a PW reviewer hates my books. They’re certainly entitled to their opinion, whoever they are. And who knows? There may be two of them!)

Vedran Smailovic, the “Cellist of Sarajevo,” wants money from Steven Galloway, the Canadian author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, for his role in the book (”Famous cellist claims story stolen by Canadian author,” CBC):

With a stool and his cello, Smailovic once played on top of the rubble from a deadly mortar attack in Sarajevo. In plain view of snipers, he played for 22 days straight — one day for each person killed during the mortar attack.

So does the character in Steven Galloway’s book, published this year. It’s a war tale woven around three characters in Sarajevo and their reaction to a cellist character inspired by Smailovic, whose story has travelled around the globe.

“How can somebody steal your work, my, my sadness, my, my tragedy?” asks Smailovic.

“[I don’t know] for what I would be compensating. I mean, he performed a public act and I mentioned it?” asks Galloway.

I’m shocked–shocked!–that in this day and age, a spontaneous and moving tribute could be claimed as a copyright-protected piece of performance art. Then again, I am naive and easily surprised. I’m guessing that Galloway didn’t make as much money off it as Smailovic thinks he did. But then again, I am naive, etc.

Likely Stories was less story-filled than usual last week because I was home with a sick kid–interestingly, he felt well enough to demand that I build train tracks for him most of the time he was awake. Fortunately, a lot of people seemed to enjoy the Booze and Books post. Keep the comments coming!

In a sad story in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune (”Taser death spotlights town’s corrupt history“), Howard Witt used a variation on a stock line that always drives me crazy:

No novelist could have invented Winnfield, a place so steeped in corruption that they built a local museum to try to sanitize it all. 

I’m sympathetic to journalists on deadline who sometimes slip in the turning of a phrase. But couldn’t his editor have caught him? (I hope it wasn’t editor-introduced.) Perhaps some novelists couldn’t have invented a corrupt Southern town, but many have. Perhaps they were inspired by actual corrupt towns, but certainly the idea isn’t beyond the reach of writers’ imaginations. If a corrupt Southern town is too far-fetched for fabrication, how do you explain the work of Tolkien, Vonnegut–hell, take your pick. How do you explain Neil Stephenson’s Anathem?

Novelists can invent just about anything. But perhaps it’s understandable if journalists, who are not allowed to invent anything, find that hard to believe.

I don’t know why, but this made me think of Michael Gruber’s excellent Book of Air and Shadows. Oh, wait, I know why. (Although this is more Donald Westlake than Gruber.) New tag: Life Imitates Art. (Although we know where Art gets his ideas.) From the Guardian (”Man held over theft of Shakespeare first folio,” by James Sturcke and others):

A tale of greed, woe and comic folly - not unlike those contained within its ancient pages – appeared to be nearing its final act today after the recovery of a “priceless” edition of Shakespeare’s plays stolen a decade ago.

The first folio edition, printed in 1623, was among a number of books and manuscripts taken from Durham University library in December 1998.

. . .

Durham police said a 51-year-old man, claiming to be an international businessman who had acquired the volume in Cuba, had showed the folio to staff at a library in Washington, DC and asked them to verify it was genuine.

In a moment of apparent foolhardiness, he agreed to leave it with librarians, whose research revealed it as stolen.

I’ve been saving up dozens and dozens of links to follow when I had the time to do so, and now that I do have a little bit of time, I’m not so sure I should have saved the links. Between the endless stories of bookstore closings and page cuts at newspapers’ book-review sections, and the general laments about declining readership . . . phew. A sample:

John Sutherland asks, “why is newspaper-hosted lit-crit on its last legs?” (”So farewell then, lit-crit,” The Guardian’s theblogbooks) [I’ll take answer #2. KG]

Mark Morford asks, “What happened to all the readers?” (”Page by page, a good book can rewire your brain,” San Francisco Chronicle) [Maybe they’re resting.]

Nicholas Carr asks, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (Atlantic Monthly) [Answer: yes, but beer makes us stupid, too, and it is also delicious.]

Mark Bauerlein asks, “How dumb are we?” (”‘The Dumbest Generation,’ by Mark Bauerlein,” by Lee Drutman) [Um . . . can you repeat the question?]

Sure, times are tough, and ignoring bad news in order to focus on a few bright spots would be irresponsible, but I’d love it if more people were focusing on possible solutions to the problems, or pointing out the upside to the downside, if only to help stave off the feeling that the death of reading (and, by inference, all rational thought) is an inevitability. Faced with an inevitability, most people will simply give up and watch Dancing with the Stars. My own outlook is guardedly optimistic, although I don’t know how a book reviewer-slash-author could keep himself above ground without a certain sense of optimism, however ill-founded. I still love books and reading, and so do my colleagues, and so do my friends.

So, some good news, and good takes on bad news:

NPR says “We’re building up our book coverage because book content really works for our audience” (”NPR.org expands book coverage,” by Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly)

Discussing Lee Abrams’ crazy memo about the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Mark Sarvas says, “there’s something worth discussing here.” (”Rethinking the L.A. Times Book Review,” The Elegant Variation)

David Crystal says that the long-term impact of text-messaging “is not a disaster.” (”2b or not 2b?” The Guardian)

Hey, it’s something.

(Apologies to all the blogs and newsletters where I found these links for not tipping my hat. I lost track. You know who you are.)

The nominees for the 2008 Macavity Awards have been announced. The winners will be revealed at Bouchercon in October. I sure wouldn’t want to handicap Best First Mystery–some tough compeition there.

Best Mystery Novel

Soul Patch, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House)
The Unquiet, by John Connolly (Atria)
Blood of Paradise, by David Corbett (Ballantine)
Water Like a Stone, by Deborah Crombie (Morrow)
What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

Best First Mystery

In the Woods, by Tana French (Viking)
Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill (HarperCollins)
The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
Stealing the Dragon, by Tim Maleeny (Midnight Ink)
The Collaborator of Bethlehem, by Matt Beynon Rees (Soho)

Best Mystery Short Story

“A Rat’s Tale,” by Donna Andrews (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 2007)
“Please Watch Your Step,” by Rhys Bowen (The Strand Magazine, Spring 2007)
“The Missing Elevator Puzzle,” by Jon L. Breen (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Feb. 2007)
“Brimstone P.I.” by Beverle Graves Myers (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May 2007)
“The Old Wife’s Tale,” by Gillian Roberts (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mar.-Apr. 2007)

Best Mystery Non-Fiction

Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, by Barry Forshaw (Penguin)
Chester Gould: A Daughter’s Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy, by Jean Gould O’Connell (McFarland)
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower & Charles Foley, editors:  (Penguin)
Police Procedure and Investigation: A Guide for Writers, by Lee Lofland (Writers Digest)
The Essential Mystery Lists: For Readers, Collectors, and Librarians, by Roger Sobin (Poisoned Pen)

Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery

Her Royal Spyness, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley/Prime Crime)
Mistress of the Art of Death, by Ariana Franklin (Putnam)
The Snake Stone, by Jason Goodwin (Farrar/Sarah Crichton)
Consequences of Sin, by Clare Langley-Hawthorne (Viking)
The Gravedigger’s Daughter, by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

Reporting the latest developments in the 2004 plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea, Lydia Polgreen writes that the details are “too outlandish even for Graham Greene” and that “fact has proved as strange as fiction, if not stranger.” The events “loosely mirror the plot of Frederick Forsyth’s 1974 book, ‘The Dogs of War’,” et cetera and so forth (”Fact Mirrors Fiction in African Coup Trial,” New York Times).

Personally, I think she’s flogging it pretty hard, but at least she seems to be in the fiction-is-stranger-than-truth camp. I always scrunch my eyebrows when I hear people respond to strange tales by saying, “You couldn’t make that up!”

Oh, really? Ever read Edgar Allan Poe? Or Carl Hiaasen? Or Kurt Vonnegut? Or . . . .

Rawi Hage’s debut novel, De Niro’s Game, has won “the world’s richest literary prize,” the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. How rich is it? A cool 100,000 Euros, which, according to Bloomberg, translates to 154,000 simoleons.

From Joanne Wilkinson’s Booklist review:

Both terse and lyrical, Hage’s narrative is a wonder, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful.

Now this is my kind of literary feud. There’s been bad blood between Derek Walcott (The Prodigal, 2004) and V. S. Naipaul (A Writer’s People, 2008) for years, but Walcott just took it to a whole new level, debuting a poem, “The Mongoose,” onstage at the Calabash Literary Festival in Kingston, Jamaica. From the Guardian (”Rhyme and punishment for Naipaul,” by Daniel Trilling):

Telling the audience, ‘I think you’ll recognise Mr Naipaul … I’m going to be nasty’, Walcott launched into The Mongoose amid a hubbub of surprised gasps and nervous laughter from the crowd.

A sample:

I have been bitten, I must avoid infection
Or else I’ll be as dead as Naipaul’s fiction
Read his last novels, you’ll see just
what I mean
A lethargy, approaching the obscene
The model is more ho-hum than Dickens

This year isn’t going too well for Naipaul. First Patrick French’s biography, The World Is What It Is, now this–and it’s only June. But perhaps Naipaul will have the last laugh:

But Walcott’s attack is unlikely to be ignored. French says that Naipaul will most likely wait until he has devised a suitably literary way of striking back. ‘Knowing Naipaul, he’ll say nothing and then at some point he will lash out. I remember him saying to me once: “I settle all my accounts, I settle all my accounts.” He gets even in his own way, even if he has to bide his time.’

Update: Here’s audio! (It’s at the very end.)