26 locations

Places Jami Attenberg slept over the first six months of this year.

(Reminds me slightly of some notes of Georges Perec in my favorite Species of Spaces and Other Pieces.)

For an even bleaker account of the financial woes of the forty-year-old novelist, read Benjamin Anastas's gripping and horrifying Too Good to Be True.

The literary treadmill

At the TLS, Geoffrey Wheatcroft has a great piece on Peter Clarke's new book about Winston Churchill's literary career (the tax details are especially fascinating!):

It was when installed in a government office that Churchill discovered the delights of dictation to a shorthand-typist, and thereafter all his work was dictated. This gave, as it happened, a kind of homogeneity to everything he produced “by tongue or pen”. His speeches were first dictated and then typed before being delivered in public, his books were dictated and set in galley proof to be endlessly amended at outlandish cost. And he also soon learned the value of enlisting the help of others: his first private secretary, at the Colonial Office, was (later Sir) Edward Marsh, who would follow Churchill from one ministry to another and then serve him with personal devotion, reading his proofs, ghostwriting his articles, and even compiling his tax returns.

The best possible images

Interesting piece by John Gapper at the FT about why Annie Leibovitz's pictures don't sell for as much money as Richard Avedon's (site registration required).

Money, freedom, anxiety

A great piece by John Lanchester at the FT on how he came to write a book about money (FT site registration required).

Tapping a vein

This fellow really has hit the jackpot!

(Hmmm, I have been worrying a lot about money recently - like almost everyone else in the world! - I do not know that setting out to write a bestseller really is the way to write one, there is an element of the fortuitous that seems somewhat beyond rational ken, but it certainly would be convenient if I came up with a highly lucrative book project in the near future...)

The story is by Alison Flood, for the Guardian:

"I wouldn't say anyone ever singlehandedly created anything (unless maybe they were in complete isolation for their entire lives and then suddenly invented Velcro or something) but I do think that Seth has tapped a vein here," said acquiring editor Ben Greenberg. "I had been aware of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies when the online buzz started a while back, and so when this idea was pitched, it just immediately made sense to me and I thought it was a great direction for him."

The first book, said Greenberg, will be Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, "a presidential biography in the vein of a Doris Kearns Goodwin or David McCullough, but repositioning the president as the greatest vampire hunter to walk the earth". Unlike Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there is no source material, so the novel will be all original writing. "But rather than just toss vampires in wherever he feels, Seth is doing a lot of research to see where they could fit in properly to the actual events of Lincoln's life – from childhood on," said Greenberg.

Setting the record straight

Even more Hedge Fund Wives! (Link courtesy of Becca, whose apt summary I will also quote: "not a princess, not a vacuum cleaner heiress"!)

Fallen socialites

More on Hedge Fund Wives!

(Link courtesy of Sarah.)