David Loftus interviews Paul Collins about his new book (on how Shakespeare's First Folio conquered the world) and various other matters of interest concerning publishing, the book business and so forth.
Yale University Press chooses to omit images of Muhammad from new book on the Danish cartoon controversy.
In praise of literary hackery. (As a Young Person, I aspired to a career of literary hackery in the vein of an Anthony Burgess or a Gore Vidal, but in the event I steered myself towards academia instead, and still think it suits me better - but I love the notion of simultaneously paid and playful literary dilettantism, and am strongly drawn to those figures who pull it off...)
More from Levi Stahl on invisible libraries and his ongoing love affair with the internet, including this wonderful quotation from Max Beerbohm: "'And yet--for, even as Must implants distaste, so does Can't stir sweet longings--how eagerly would I devour these books within books!'"
"[E]ven as Must implants distaste, so does Can't stir sweet longings" is the best description I have ever read of the psychological underpinnings of why a TBR ("to be read") pile of books does not have the same shine on it as an Amazon page for a book that hasn't yet been published! (See under: "The Other Amazon.")
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Write to make a living? Oh those hacks, don't they know that livings come from landed estates? Mine pays 3,000 pounds per annum, and that covers my 750 hunting horses, my 2,000 pure bred hounds, my 3,500 Irish servants (in worse housing than my hounds), all the red dye I need for my hunting jackets and even have a little left over to invest in colonialist-imperialist ventures. Why bother to write anything for a few shillings? Anyone who would do so must be a HACK.
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