Dear England: A Letter from America

National Novel Writing Month - up and running!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:21:00 +0000

The writers are off - for National Novel Writing Month 2009, which runs the length of November.

There are certainly people who are down on National Novel Writing Month - this link at Pimp My Blog for example. Editors and agents are thrilled about the possibility of another mountain of submission from work knocked together in a single month. But then that's what makes their jobs so glamorous, right?

Personally, I like the fact that National Novel Writing Month treats writing like running, like a muscle you have to exercise, that you have to get comfortable with. Then you can write/run faster and probably better. That's the idea at least. What do you think?

"On a dark and story night..."

Hey, I made the runner speak!

Fridays are Fundays!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:24:00 +0000

This week, I learned something important: there's no need to blog, people. No need at all. You can be successful without it and, in the case of the PMN bloggers, perhaps despite it. You can use your iPhone instead and read your eyes out, or write your novel on your cellphone for NaCePhoNoWriMo, or tweet some literary chatter. Or you can use Twitter to find Amazon products that aren't clearly marked as advertisements (FDIC, now you don't pay attention?). If you're into snippets, you can buy some books chapter by chapter from Simon & Schuster, although you might be screwing the author on e-royalties (but who knows? I have no idea—unless you're MacMillan, in which case the answer is yes).

And all you smug, hippie e-book readers—you think you're saving the Amazon rainforest with your interweb books? Nope! And as someone from New Jersey, I can say: the environment? I don't even know what that is.

Bruce Springsteen is writing a memoir, and again, as someone from New Jersey, I can say: this is better than if Jesus Christ himself came back from the dead (again or for the first time, depending on your belief system) and wrote a memoir. Because Jesus couldn't sing for shit.

People are going nuts for authors, and authors are going bananas in general. Frank Bruni's book is being turned into a TV show, someone distilled Jodie Sweetin's memoir to the good parts, Rick Riordan is starting a new series, and Jerry O'Connor is writing a book on parenting (because being a parent for like thirty seconds requires a book, if your wife is really hot).

Glenn Beck is the new Oprah for thrillers, which is fitting, since the man's life is thrilling. He had his appendix removed after collapsing on the air (cough on the radio which is less cool cough)! But who trusts the appendix-less? I demand a full organ contingent, friends. Organ-less need not apply.

Mike Huckabee is going on a book tour, and I do have to say, I love Mike Huckabee (not necessarily for his politics, but for his adorableness and jokes). AC/DC is not going on a book tour (as far as I know) but they have a book too, and are adorable. The estate of the late Stieg Larsson is having a less than adorable baby momma drama moment, which hopefully will shake out before the ghost of Stieg has to get involved. Let this teach us all: write a will. And if you don't have any beneficiaries, I am happy to fill in for you. "Laura who blogs at Pimp My Novel" is actually my legal name.

Also making ghosts confused: re-imagined Dr. Seuss covers. Ghosts are not confused by, but rather are jealous of, the continued vampire love. Gawker asks the vampire trend to please die, but this brief history of vampire literature and this book about Dracula say otherwise. EW got an except from the Harvard Lampoon satire of Twilight, called Nightlight, which I think begs the question: what person who likes Twilight is going to buy this, and what person who dislikes Twilight is going to chuck twenty bucks down the hole to let someone else make fun of it, when they have me and I charge nothing?

If you do love Twilight, and also love Barbie, Twilight Barbie is here! If you'd like to geek out about something a little less doll-creepy, XKCD has this awesome, awesome map of where different characters are throughout the story in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. It almost makes you want to buy the XKCD book, which has an odd traditional publishing path. Geek Dad has a book gift guide for the geeky man in your life, and there's a great list of 70 facts you never knew about Marvel (the Hulk was almost red! History: rewritten).

And NaNoWriMo writers: this e-book publisher wants your NaNoWriMo romances, and this playlist will break writer's block, as you have no time for writer's block. Keep on trucking (only 24 more days!) and you, like the fake AP Styleguide Twitter guy, can be sassy and agented.
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Laura's roundup from Pimp My Novel

All Hallow's Eve, and us!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:22:00 +0000

For Halloween we went out, taking approximately 30 seconds to get our costumes together. All Hallow's Eve is a big deal in the USA - definitely worth stepping out, as some of the costumes can be amazing.

We saw a 16 foot skeleton, with an 8 foot armspan, red eyes, and he was actually frightening people. The clocks actually went back the same night, so it was double-time for the witching hour!

Here we are as...er...a girl in a purple wig, and I'm a pirate without the costume, more resembling an abused husband!

Bruce Springsteen and "an immigrant song"!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Having recently received my Green Card, I particularly enjoyed this song. At long last, I got to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Washington, DC last Monday. "We'll make our home in the American Land"!

Enjoy!

Guy Fawkes Night, UK and New Zealand

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:10:00 +0000

Guy Fawkes Night (often referred to as Bonfire Night) is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks on November 5, or the closest Friday or Saturday night.

Until the nineteenth century there was a special Church of England service for this commemoration in the Book of Common Prayer. Guy Fawkes Day became a public holiday in 1606 when it was proclaimed by an Act of Parliament. In commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot on this day in 1605, when Guy Fawkes and his comrades tried to blow up King James I and the whole English Parliament, English people still burn a 'guy' in effigy.

Traditionally the guy's cap was made of paper and knotted with ribbon-like paper strips. The dummy carried matches in one hand and a dark lantern in the other. Children would go around the streets asking for money, saying “Please to remember the guy!” In 1850 in Britain there was a strong wave of anti-Catholic sentiment, and the guy was often in the likeness of the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster!

Happy Bonfire Night, England!

Facebook in Reality!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:36:00 +0000

If Facebook were in the real world...Oh yeah, it is!

'Twitter lists' expand author networks!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:34:00 +0000

Twitter recently launched a lists function, which will help users separate followers into categories that other Tweeters can follow with the touch of a button.

Mashable wrote an article about Twitter lists (still in Beta) in mid-October. Twitter announced the move in a blog post in September.

When I first started exploring the lists function today, I thought it would be a terrific tool to meet new authors, publicists and publishers, and others who have similar political views as myself.

After working with it a while, though, I wasn't sure just how it would fit into my daily Twitter life. There are some highlights - and functionality that could help authors with Internet promotions. There are also some drawbacks.

Pros:

When I logged on today, I found myself already on 14 lists. By the end of the day, it was nearly 20. I went to each of the lists to see who thought I was cool enough to add. Then, I made sure I followed them. I also checked out the others on the list and added those I liked to my own network. I may not have found these contacts otherwise.

The most lists you are on, the broader your network. That means more people can find you. This works for me well, as I want to expand my network, particularly with authors and publicists.

It is terrific at sorting tweets. As with some third-party applications, you can group your followers into categories. You click on each category for a limited list of Tweets just from these folks. This is much more manageable than the current @replies system.

Lists have their own URL, so you can share these on your blogs and Web sites to direct readers to your favorite Twitter users. For example, a paranormal romance author could create a list of other authors in the genre and share it with readers.

On the flip side, you can see which other authors link to you in lists. This will give you a good idea of different readers to target with marketing efforts.

Cons:

As with most things new to Twitter, the function is not user-friendly. It takes a LONG time to add folks to one list. I don't have hours to create lists; I have minutes. Twitter needs to devise a way to make it easier to sort through followers and categorize them appropriately - especially those with several thousand.

If you already sort your followers on Twitter programs like TweetDeck, this may be too little, too late. However, it is worth a look if you visit the actual site daily, rather than access it via a third-party application.

It appears that you can be put on a list without actually following, or being followed. That could lead to some issues for authors who have a very strict genre brand.

As with anything, the most lists you have, the more Tweets you check. I have several lists already and, of course, will want to check them. I will also want to check out the new lists I am on, just to see who likes my stuff.

Have you used the new Twitter list function? If so, what are your thoughts? How does this function compare with those in third-party applications?

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Get added to my list! If you would like to be part of my authors and books list, leave a comment with your Twitter handle. I will add you to my personal books list, as well as one for @marketmynovel. Thanks!

Market My Novel
Ask Angela

Quote of the Week, #2

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:13:00 +0000

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make." Truman Capote

Empire State of Mind: New Jay-Z and Alicia Keys!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:36:00 +0000

FBI buries VS Naipaul alive!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:58:00 +0000

An FBI report has mistakenly declared the Nobel laureate dead

Eye-popping news ... VS Naipaul. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

Reports of the death – and the degree of royal preferment – of Nobel laureate VS Naipaul have it seems been greatly exaggerated. A bizarre discovery by the website The Smoking Gun – the one which also uncovered James Frey's porkies – found that an FBI agent referred to "the late Lord VS Naipaul, a Nobel prize winning author" in court documents unsealed yesterday.

Now, Naipaul might not have published a new book since 2007's A Writer's People, or won a literary prize since he took the Nobel in 2001 for "having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories", but he's still very much alive.

The FBI, rather confirming the estimation of a character in David Mamet's film Homicide that they "couldn't find Joe Louis in a bowl of rice", also – posthumously, as it were – elevated Sir Vidia to the House of Lords.

The poor man – it must be a very strange feeling to become a "late". One consolation, however, may be that he shares this profoundly uncomfortable experience with Alfred Nobel. Nobel, whose renown during his own lifetime rested on having invented dynamite, was profoundly shaken when a French newspaper rather precipitously declared that "le marchand de la mort est mort". After that trauma, the would-be pacifist's strategy for redeeming his name was to create a set of enormously generous prizes.

Alison Flood
Wednesday 28 October 2009
The Guardian

A trick question for Raymond Carver?

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:54:00 +0000

The master of minimal storytelling loathed experimentation in fiction, but his hated 'licence to be silly' is vital to the life of short stories

Conventional reading ... Raymond Carver in 1984. Photograph: Bob Adelman/Corbis

Speaking at the Manchester Literary Festival, James Lasdun – probably the closest in recent years this country has come to a genuinely great practitioner of the short story – expressed dismay at the publication of Beginners; the original, more expansive version of Raymond Carver's minimalist masterpiece What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Unlike Blake Morrison, who saw it as a revelation, Lasdun suggested that this was muddying Carver's great legacy. Reading the two volumes side by side, I found it hard not to agree with Lasdun; in all too many cases it's like looking at a Edward Hopper painting to which someone has added graphic-novel-style thought bubbles.

The rights and wrongs of publishing these stories before editor Gordon Lish took a scalpel to them can be debated, but there's no doubt that this publication has once again put Carver in the limelight – if he'd ever really been in the shadows. Carver is, I suppose, the ultimate modern short story writer. His fiction has a resonance that is attractive to both readers and writers. How he achieves this mesmerising effect is set out in his essay "On Writing", published in the same year as his much shortened version of Beginners.

"On Writing" is Carver's vision for fiction; his blue-collar blueprint. It's a fine and persuasive piece, full of insight into the creative process and the obligations of the writer. There are moments of personal confession, coupled with elegantly quotable sentences – "Get in, get out. Don't linger" for example. But as with his very best writing, there is a darker, less palatable truth lurking within its pages.

The lessons that Carver provides are second hand ones, derived from creative writing teachers and authors he admires. This is no criticism when you consider his mentors are Chekhov, Isak Dinesen, Isaac Babel and Flannery O'Connor. The advice, it seems to me, is well chosen. Trusting your instincts, while also being open to new discoveries; to write a little each day without despair; to revel in the mysteries of revelations.

All good – if slightly non-specific – advice, told in a considered, conversational tone. But then, Carver hits you with a curve ball. "No tricks." He says. "Period. I hate tricks." Experimentation, as Carver goes on to say, is too often "a licence to be careless, silly or imitative." Which in amongst the homilies and creative class wisdom changes his essay from a fascinating insight into his working practices, into a manifesto. A sort of write-in-a-day-the-Raymond-Carver-way.

I like tricks. I like formal invention; not for its own sake, but in the sense that it gives the reader something to think about, to look at from another angle. To be told that this is wrong, somehow mistreating the reader, made me suddenly quite angry. What about Barthelme, I thought, Sterne, BS Johnson, Angela Carter? And what about perhaps this year's most feted story collection, David Vann's Legend of a Suicide?

Vann's book seems initially to conform to all Carver's edicts. It is polished, elegant and beautifully written; fitting into an American lineage that encompasses Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff. But then halfway through, Vann does something transformative, something that you simply don't see coming and nothing is the same again. You could call this a "trick", but to me it's something approaching genius.

When people talk negatively about creative writing classes and the kind of fiction they produce, it's precisely Carver's prejudice against invention and tricks to which they are usually alluding. New voices are stifled behind rules and conventions, like Carver's, that should be challenged and bent and railed against. Innovation – as Vann and his fellow countryman Wells Tower prove – is what keeps the short form vital and alive, despite its status as a commercial pariah for publishers.

For all Carver's disdain for experimentation, even Donald Barthelme and BS Johnson would look on admiringly at the effect of Beginners. How much would they have enjoyed readers holding two versions of the same stories, reading them side by side? And how ironic that a writer who said that he "ran for cover" at the sight of a trick, has now become the newest trick in town.

Stuart Evers
Wednesday 28 October 2009
The Guardian

Martin Amis v Katie Price - on the bookshelves!

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:40:00 +0000

On and off the shelf ... Martin Amis and Katie Price. (Photograph: Rex)

It's always a little bit astonishing in these relatively enlightened times when someone who would like to be regarded as an important contributor to the cultural agenda relies on lazy, casual misogyny to attempt a critique. But it's the approach that Martin Amis has taken in adding his thoughts to the current (somewhat tired) debate about celebrity writers creaming off the profits of talented ones, when he remarked of Katie Price (widely recognised as his key literary rival) that "She has no waist, no arse ... an interesting face ... but all we are really worshipping is two bags of silicone."

Now, I doubt that Amis has flickered across Price's radar; nor, if he has, that she cares much about his opinion since it would appear that she is currently preoccupied with her romance with her cage-fighting boyfriend and not much with writing books, which she employs someone to do on her behalf. But while Price may not be troubled by Amis's remarks on a personal level, I am: because they speak to the continued endurance of a surprising tolerance for misogyny from vaunted men of letters who came of age as writers in an era when the loathing of women for being women – rather than for being crap writers, or unkind people, or whatever – was still legitimate.

It may be diverting for Amis to imagine that legions of his would-be readers have been distracted from his work by Katie Price's cleavage: perhaps he thinks at the sight of her latest pony book, people on the verge of purchasing The Rachel Papers or London Fields think, "ooh! Breasts!" and toss his work aside. But this apparent anxiety is misplaced: Amis and Price's target markets do not intersect. It is risible to suggest that they do, but no matter: it's much easier, and simpler, for him to blame her décolletage for his decreasing sales and critical acclaim than to entertain the terrifying thought that his writing may no longer be quite as firmly on the pulse as it once was.

When writers like Amis, or Philip Roth – who declared this week that novel-reading would be a fringe activity in 25 years – make their apocalyptic proclamations about the state of publishing, it seems apparent that their pessimism may in fact be rather strongly influenced by anxiety that their new work no longer carries the kind of cultural clout they have grown used to, not because people aren't reading novels, but because people aren't reading their novels. And part of the reason for that may be that with the bulk of modern consumers of fiction being women, the particular brand of literary writing in which a particular aptitude for fellatio suffices as characterisation for a woman is less interesting, or resonant, than it once was.

I very much doubt that Amis is going to change at this stage – I do admire some of his immense skills as a writer, but remarks like this underscore my lack of interest in him as a cultural commentator. But I'm heartened, at the same time, by a new generation of male writers – David Vann and Joshua Ferris are two who I've recently read who come to mind – who are producing ground-breaking work that addresses issues of masculinity in fresh ways without relying on lazy misogyny; who are too busy to bother with worrying that anything that fails to preserve the long-expired literary status quo of the 70s and 80s is a sign of an apocalypse.

Jean Hannah Edelstein
Wednesday 28 October 2009
The Guardian

Man Booker Prize 2009 winners, including Hilary Mantel

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:38:00 +0000

Does winning the Booker mean a boost in sales? And which of the previous winners has sold the most?

Hilary Mantel won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, but will sales match those of previous winners? Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

Hilary Mantel won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize yesterday for her historical novel Wolf Hall, which examines the life of Thomas Cromwell, an advisor to Henry VIII.

But does winning the Booker guarantee an author a boom in sales? Here at the Datablog we've pulled together Nielsen BookScan's sales figures of all 43 winners of the title since its inception in 1969 (the prize was a tie in 1974 and again in 1992).

Nielsen's data runs from 1998 onwards, so sales of older books aren't directly comparable, but the runaway winner of recent years is Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which won in 2002 and has taken over £9m and sold 1.3m copies so far, more than twice as many as Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things in second place.

A look at the spreadsheet also reveals that Jonathan Cape is the publisher to sign to if you want to improve your chances of winning the Booker - seven of the previous winning novels have come from them, closely followed by Faber & Faber with six.

And if you really have your heart set on a Booker, the words to include in the title of your novel are Sea, Ha, God, Tiger and Road, as our Wordle shows.

Click on the link to access the full list of winners, their sales figures and a link to the Guardian review of each book (many courtesy of Sam Jordison's Booker Club blog). Let's see what you can do with the data.

Katy Stoddard
Wednesday 7 October 2009
The Guardian

Why has John Le Carré left his publisher out in the cold?

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:23:00 +0000

Divorces everywhere. First Peter and Jordan, now John Le Carré and Hodder.

Why should the fact that a novelist changes the merchandiser of his books be of more headline interest than, say, Martin Amis changing his dentist? Who cares? When the book trade was a cottage industry we did; it's questionable if we do any more. You can remember the title but can you recall, from the top of your head, who published Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall? (Answer below.)

Why do authors stay loyal to publishers? Gratitude is one reason. After 20-odd rejections it was Faber that finally plucked William Golding's grubby Lord of the Flies from the slush pile. Grateful comradeship with his editor, Charles Monteith, kept Golding at Faber for the whole of his long career.

Editors often mean more to an author than publishers. David Lodge seems to have remained attached to Secker because he got on so well with John Blackwell (a brilliant worker on manuscripts, and one of the heroic drinkers of his day). Look at the dedication to AS Byatt's latest novel – it is to her editor, Jenny Uglow. A dedication to "Chatto and Windus"? Absurd.

Nonetheless, for some authors, loyalty brings with it the nagging sense of being "owned". It breeds resentment. Thackeray suggested publishers' carpets should always be red, because – like the butchers in Smithfield market – they traded in authors' blood and brains.

Most authors, at the start of their careers, get snubbed or – in a few cases, robbed – by publishers. They can develop a deep-seated hatred of the publishing breed – "brigands" all of them, as Dickens (the least publisher-loyal of writers) called them.

Resentment is the most radioactive of emotions. Gratitude, like Golding's, usually has a much shorter half life. And then, of course, there are agents, those serpents in the literary garden (Le Carré has dumped that partner as well). It was the so-called "jackal", Andrew Wylie, who enticed Amis away from his long-standing literary agent, Pat Kavanagh. It resulted in a broken friendship with Kavanagh's husband, Julian Barnes, and a letter which, as Amis recalls, had a lot of fs in it. As in f-words.

So why has Le Carré divorced Hodder? More money? Prettier dustjackets? Artistic restlessness? Most likely, it's something else. Who, to answer the question above, is Mantel's publisher? Fourth Estate. Well, no, it isn't. Fourth Estate is these days part of the HarperCollins Anglo- American megacombine. Hodder? A division of the Anglo-French giant Hachette. Where publishers are concerned, there's no identifiable editorial friend to be loyal to any more. So why be loyal?

John Sutherland
Thursday October 29 2009
The Guardian

"Nowhere Boy": new movie about the young John Lennon

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:39:00 +0000

Peter Bradshaw
Friday October 30 2009
The Guardian
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A man who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror," wrote Sigmund Freud - and Sigmund Freud was never twirled by his mum lasciviously around in a coffee bar to the novel sounds of rock'n'roll on the jukebox, and furthermore gigglingly taught by her that "rock'n'roll" actually means sex.

This was the dizzyingly erotic experience of the young John Lennon - played by 19-year-old newcomer Aaron Johnson - in this account of his painful, messy teenage years in 1950s Liverpool, written by Matt Greenhalgh (the author of Anton Corbijn's Ian Curtis biopic, Control) and directed by Sam Taylor-Wood.

The mother in question is the legendary Julia, played by Anne-Marie Duff, a cheerful lover of good times and rock'n'roll in all senses, who had a mysterious breakdown after John's birth and surrendered parental control to her sister, the Tchaikovsky-loving and equally legendary Aunt Mimi, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, who brought him up strictly with genteel, middle-class values.

As adulthood dawns, John's increasingly rebellious discontent manifests itself in re-establishing contact with the dangerous Julia, who passionately introduces him to his musical destiny. She and John begin a strange kind of Oedipal affair, with Julia as the mistress and Aunt Mimi the wronged wife. John's story is the story of the duel between these two women - an intolerable situation for which music is the only way out.

Taylor-Wood interestingly begins her film with the opening, jangling chord from A Hard Day's Night, left hanging in a protracted silence until its potential for implied menace and even tragedy has been allowed to float free. It's a witty opening, but apart from pointed references to "nowhere" in the script and in the title, to a glimpse of Strawberry Field children's home and to a schoolbook doodling of "Walrus", Greenhalgh notably avoids cute prophetic touches. However, it has to be said Julia does hang around a bit possessively backstage, to the unease of both John and the young Paul McCartney, played by Thomas Sangster. Heroically, Greenhalgh avoids gags about John letting a woman get between him and the band.

It's a handsomely made film, with a very game lead performance from Johnson, hampered perhaps only by the fact that Lennon is really a rather callow figure at this stage; unlike, say, the more interesting, more grownup Lennon that Ian Hart played in Iain Softley's 1994 film Backbeat. When John shows Julia an EP record of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, she asks where he got it, and John says he swapped it with a bloke at the docks. "Swapped it for what?" Julia asks sharply, and John has no idea what she's implying.

Throughout the movie, I had the sense that Lennon was really a supporting turn and the stars were Julia and Mimi, but that, frustratingly, we were only ever allowed to see them from John's lairy and semi-comprehending point of view. John has to be the focus, and part of the movie's point is his youth, his poignant inability to appreciate how much these women love him.

And the film does contrive a tearful crisis in which the awful secret origins of the Mimi-John-Julia love triangle are laid bare. But for me, this finale was a little stagey, is resolved too easily and disconcertingly discloses a more intense story which has been happening, as it were, behind the movie's back.

None the less, this is an accomplished feature debut from Taylor-Wood, and a satisfying follow-up to her likeable short film Love You More.

Tony Blair's bid for EU presidency sinks

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:25:00 +0000

Nicholas Watt and Ian Traynor in Brussels
Friday October 30 2009
The Guardian
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Tony Blair's hopes of becoming Europe's first sitting president were receding fast tonightas Britain admitted his chances of success were "fading" after the continent's centre-right leaders made it clear one of their own must have the post.

Hours after Gordon Brown delivered his strongest statement of support for Blair - disclosing that he had spoken to him earlier this week - British sources indicated that the former prime minister was unlikely to assume the high-profile job.

"It would be right to describe Tony's chances as fading," one British source said. "Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are not terribly enthusiastic. Silvio Berlusconi remains his strongest backer."

Blair's expected failure to secure the post of president of the European Council meant that David Miliband was emerging as a serious contender to assume the new post of high representative for foreign policy. The foreign secretary insisted, however, that he was "not available".

Miliband spoke out as British sources said it had become clear in recent days that Blair would struggle to become president. The post is likely to be filled in the next month amid signs that the Czech Republic will become the last EU country to ratify the Lisbon treaty.

Sarkozy, the French president, and Merkel, the German chancellor, are understood to have agreed at a dinner at the Elysée Palace last night that the new president should be appointed from the main centre-right EPP grouping, which brings together the parties currently ruling most EU countries.

Brown gave a hint at a press conference that Blair's candidacy was fading when he qualified his strong backing for his predecessor by stating that there were also other candidates for the job. "Of course it may not happen and there are other candidates as well," he said.

The prime minister's remarks came after he attended an acrimonious meeting of the European centre-left leaders this afternoon, shortly before the EU summit in Brussels began.

Brown was understood to have had a tense exchange with Martin Schulz, the German leader of the Socialists in the European parliament, who wants the left to assume the new foreign policy post, leaving the presidency to the centre right.

Brown told the meeting: "You need to get real. This is a unique opportunity to get a progressive politician to be the president of the council."

But it soon became clear that Blair has no support on the left, let alone on the centre right. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain's centre-left prime minister, for the first time publicly queried the Blair candidacy by announcing that the centre left across the EU was more concerned with securing the other post of European foreign minister. Zapatero, who will have to work with the new European figureheads when Spain assumes the EU's six-month rotating presidency on 1 January, said the European socialists were clear that they want the post of the high representative. "There is a preference for the high representative," he said. "That is rather reasonable."

A senior Spanish official said this was the first time that Zapatero had "dropped Blair" and that the centre-left in the EU was seeking a deal with the centre-right, led by Merkel. The centre-right would get the job coveted by Blair, while the centre left would take the foreign minister post. The lack of support for Blair became clear when Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's foreign minister, launched a strong attack on him as he emerged from the meeting of Socialist leaders. "It is not about the person of Tony Blair. Now in the United States, Obama is the president, it is no more Mr Bush. We have a new treaty, we have to reset Europe and we need to start with some new ideas. There is and will remain a link for the next generation between Iraq, Bush and Tony Blair."

Downing Street will resist criticism that it was wrong to mount such a strong campaign in favour of Blair when it had become clear earlier this week that his chances were fading.

Brown believes it was right - and in the national interest - to argue strongly for Blair when there was a chance to secure such a senior post for Britain. Blair, who had a tense relationship with Brown during his decade as prime minister, will be pleased by the strength of his successor's support.

Brown said today: "Let me say very clear that we, the British government, believe that Tony Blair would be an excellent candidate and an excellent person to hold the job of president of the council.

"His international experience is well known, his expertise on environmental, economic and security issues is well known to everybody throughout Europe as well as known throughout the world - If you have the chance for that to happen it is in Britain's national interest."

Quote of the Week, #1

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:13:00 +0000

"Don't loaf and invite inspiration, light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get get something that looks remarkably like it." Jack London

James Bond and Chess

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:45:00 +0000

James Bond and Chess

"The two faces of the double clock in the shiny, domed case looked out across the chess-board like the eyes of some huge sea monster that had peered over the edge of the table to watch the game. The two faces of the chess clock showed different times."

With these words Ian Fleming opens chapter 7 of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. In 1963 this novel became the second film in the perennial James Bond series.

But there's not much 0-0 in 007 -- or much chess in most chess fiction, for that matter. The book only tells us that grandmaster Kronsteen, a secret agent of the deadly SMERSH, won this game after introducing "a brilliant twist into the Meran Variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined to be debated all over Russia for weeks to come."

The position on a wallboard in the movie is based on an intruiging King's Gambit won by Boris Spassky against David Bronstein at the USSR Championship in 1960. Here it takes place at the Venice International Tournament where Kronsteen ignores a courier's sealed message ordering him to stop play on the spot. He knows he risks his life if he fails to obey, but how many players can abandon a sure win?

At his own peril Kronsteen waits three more minutes to accept his opponent's resignation; but later he must explain to his superior why he did not obey at once. In the book his excuse is accepted reluctanctly:

"To the public, Comrade General, I am a professional chess player. If, with only three minutes to go, I had received a message that my wife was being murdered outside the door of the tournament hall, I would not have raised a finger to save her. My public know that. They are dedicated to the game as myself. Tonight, if I had resigned the game and had come immediately upon receipt of that message, 5000 people would have known that it could only be on the orders of such a department as this. There would have been a storm of gossip. My future comings and goings would have been watched for clues. It would have been the end of my cover. In the interests of State Security, I waited three minutes before obeying the order. Even so, my hurried departure will be the subject of much comment."

In the real game Spassky gambled by rejecting the prudent 15 Rf2. Black in turn missed the best defense by 15...exf1/Q 16 Rxf1 Bxd6 17 Qh7 Kf8 18 cxd6 cxd6 19 Qh8 Ke7 20 Re1 Ne5 21 Qxg7 Rg8 22 Qxh6 Qb6 23 Kh1 Be6 24 dxe5 d5 25 Qf6 Kd7 and the king trips to safety with a possible draw in the offing.

Later if 17...Kxf7? (necessary is 17...Qd5 18 Bb3 Qxb3) 18 Ne5 Kg8 19 Qh7! Nxh7 20 Bc4 Kh8 21 Ng6 mate.

White: BORIS SPASSKY Black: DAVID BRONSTEIN King's Gambit 1960 1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Nf3 d5 4 exd5 Bd6 5 Nc3 Ne7 6 d4 0-0 7 Bd3 Nd7 8 0-0 h6 9 Ne4 Nxd5 10 c4 Ne3 11 Bxe3 fxe3 12 c5 Be7 13 Bc2 Re8 14 Qd3 e2 15 Nd6!? Nf8? 16 Nxf7 exf1/Q 17 Rxf1 Bf5? 18 Qxf5 Qd7 19 Qf4 Bf6 20 N3e5 Qe7 21 Bb3 Bxe5 22 Nxe5 Kh7 23 Qe4 Black resigns

Source: Evans On Chess. June 30, 1995. From Chess Connection

It's a Book! No, It's a Vook! No, It's a... Nook?

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:22:00 +0000

As Joseph L. Selby pointed out in yesterday's comments, Barnes and Noble just unveiled the Nook, and I must say, it is a handsome device indeed. And with its dual screens, Wi-Fi capability, an open format, and (GET THIS) a "book lending" feature, I think it's my new favorite reader. (Sorry, Sony... we can still be friends.) And what are you talking about, Kindle? We were never anything at all.

With the e-reader market exploding and some even more promising technology on the way, I feel I must reiterate my position that e-books are absolutely the future of reading/writing/publishing. Don't get me wrong: there will be challenges, and there are some of you who will only surrender your printed books when AmaGoogleMart.com pries them from your cold, dead fingers, but I think change is in the air (and has been for awhile) and while e-books certainly won't spell the end of publishing, they're going to be game-changers. Industry professionals who can't keep one step ahead of said game (or at least keep up) will be left behind.

Which brings me to today's question: has Barnes & Noble's e-reader changed your opinion about the technology in any way? Are you more likely to buy a Nook than a Kindle?
--
Source: Pimp My Novel

From Gambit: Where was the Paul Morphy Chess Club?

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:11:00 +0000

WHERE WAS THE PAUL MORPHY CHESS CLUB?

Blake Pontchartrain

Hey Blake,

Ronnie Virgets wrote a wonderful column on the history of Paul Morphy. My question is: where was the Paul Morphy Chess Club? I can remember an uncle of mine speaking of it often as a place where men met for lunch, cards and cigars.

Kenny Mayer

Dear Kenny,

Virgets' story ("Chairman of the Board," News Views, May 6, 2008) about our local chess genius who died in 1884 at age 47 was excellent.

Morphy was the first great American-born chess player. He traveled to Europe in the 1850s, defeating all challengers except the English champion of the time, Howard Staunton, who refused to play him. Morphy, however, still was hailed as the chess champion of the world.

Paul Morphy Chess Club in New Orleans had several locations, the first in the Balter Building, in the block surrounded by Commercial Place, Camp Street, and St. Charles and Poydras avenues. The last was at 316 St. Charles Ave.

The club was organized in May 1928, when several chess-playing gentlemen agreed to form a new club devoted exclusively to the game. Members were solicited, and the club soon had officers and a charter. New members decided to name the club after the local chess master they so revered. The club opened its doors to members for play on June 22, 1928, Paul Morphy's birthday. There is no longer a chess club by this name in New Orleans, but there are several in America, and there's even a Paul Morphy Chess Club in Sri Lanka.

An earlier group called New Orleans Chess Club was founded in 1841, but it languished due to lack of interest. Later, many New Orleanians became interested in the game when young Paul Morphy burst on the scene. By the mid-1850s, the club sponsored weekly tournaments and membership increased rapidly. Morphy himself was elected president of the club in 1865. Earlier, when Morphy went to Europe in June 1858, the New Orleans Chess Club offered to pay his way. Morphy declined because he did not want to be considered a professional chess player.

Another famous club in the Crescent City was the New Orleans Chess, Checkers and Whist Club. This organization was founded in 1880, shortly before Morphy's death. The club first met in July in a room at 128 Gravier St. There were 27 members. It was an immediate success and membership grew rapidly. New quarters had to be found, so the group relocated to Common Street and then to a three-story building at the corner of Canal and Baronne streets.

Then disaster struck: A fire in 1890 burned the building to the ground. Lost in the fire was invaluable Morphy memorabilia. The owner of the structure agreed to rebuild, and soon the club was re-established in comfortable surroundings on the third floor. At this point, there were more than 1,100 members.

In 1920, another move brought the club to 120 Baronne St., where the men played various games in splendor. It occupied four floors in a large building, which had many rooms for games, as well as dining rooms, a billiard hall, a library and bedrooms for men who lived at the club.

It was after the death of Judge Leon Labatt - a strong supporter and member of the New Orleans Chess, Checkers and Whist Club - and a number of resignations that the members decided to form a new group: the Paul Morphy Chess Club.

Morphy retired from chess long before his death. He played absolutely no games of chess with anyone after 1869.

To read my chess novel about Paul Morphy's life, please see this link.

PS22 Chorus "RUN THIS TOWN" Jay-Z Rihanna & Kanye West

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:37:00 +0000

Dear England, check out the kids from Public School 22, in NYC!

"Yeah, the new group is really starting to come together! Here is the hip hop anthem "Run This Town" performed by the new PS22 Chorus of 2010! Thanks to the Mr. Eberle for the acoustic guitar-work. And serious props to Karinna, who does the fantastic leading, and to Alyssa, who really gets down on the rap.

Rewritten rap lyrics:

We are
Yeah I said it, we are
We will be the leaders
Look at us. We're fearless
Don'tcha wanna be us?
P.S. We're the chorus

22 is poppin'
Don't believe that we are stoppin'
Cuz the music that we're droppin'
You can see that we are rockin'
Out the stage and we ain't frontin'
Lemme tell ya little something
22's gon be runnin'
Running this town tonight"
--
To see more of the songs of PS22, check out their blog here!

Chess Book of the Year, Part 3

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:06:00 +0000

Ronan Bennett & Daniel King
Tuesday October 13 2009
The Guardian

Gligoric-Nikolic, Novi Sad 1982. Black to play. Who stands better?

RB Our third shortlisted book for the Guardian Chess Book of the Year award is Winning Chess Middlegames by Ivan Sokolov (New in Chess, GBP 24.95). Like our first shortlisted title, Chess Strategy for Club Players by Herman Grooten, Sokolov's book focuses on the middlegame, but whereas Grooten emphasises the dynamic aspects of the game, here the stress is on pawn structure. In an introduction Michael Adams makes the point that we often learn opening lines without giving serious thought to the kind of pawn structures they create.

Sokolov arranges his material into four different types of pawn structure: doubled pawns; isolated pawns; parallel hanging pawns in the centre; and pawn majority in the centre, further dividing these into subgroups. He then analyses the structures with reference to the opening. Chapter 1, for example, deals with doubled pawns arising mainly from the Nimzo. Chapter 2, on isolated pawns, looks predominantly at lines in the Queen's Gambit Declined. The essential point - but one often overlooked - is that from the opening we should be able to anticipate the structure of the middlegame.

The diagram position arose out of a Nimzo (H?bner Variation), with the characteristic doubled pawns on c3 and c4. White has tried to exploit the semi-open b-file to create threats against the enemy king. His rooks are doubled, the bishop is on b5, and the queen lurks on a3. On the other wing, Black's pawns are advancing, supported by the rooks. Who stands better?

Fritz assesses the position as roughly equal. But Sokolov is unequivocal: "A sorry sight. On the queenside White is not able to create a single threat, while on the other side of the board the battle is lost." The computer is wrong. White is dead lost. After Black's simple defensive expedient 1...Na6-b8, the game continued 2 Nf1 g4 3 f4 exf4 4 Bxf4 Ng6 5 Rf2 h4 and the pawns quickly smashed the white king's position.

Oxford slips in international university ranking as Asian rivals 'snap at heels'

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:43:00 +0000

Polly Curtis, education editor
Thursday October 8 2009
The Guardian
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Oxford University has slipped down an international league table of the world's top universities which also reveals the advance of academia in Asia that will soon pose a challenge to the Ivy League and Oxbridge.

Oxford fell from fourth to joint fifth place with Imperial College London in the QS/Times Higher Education rankings, published today, widening the gap with Cambridge which was rated second in the world. University College London (UCL) leapfrogged Oxford coming fourth after Yale, Cambridge and Harvard.

Overall the UK still punches above its weight, second only to the US. It has four out of the top 10 slots and 18 in the top 100. But there has been a significant fall in the number of North American universities in the top 100, from 42 in 2008 to 36 in 2009. The number of Asian universities in the top 100 increased from 14 to 16. The University of Tokyo, at 22, is the highest ranked Asian university, ahead of the University of Hong Kong at 24.

Leading UK universities said institutions in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong were "snapping at the heels" of western institutions arguing they needed more funding to compete on the global stage.

Earlier this week the outgoing vice-chancellor of Oxford warned the university needs more than ?1bn investment in the next decade to bring "unfit for purpose" facilities up to a world-class standard. John Hood said the university was budgeting to make a loss for the fourth year in a row.

"From a financial perspective these are genuinely worrying times," he said. "Government budgets are over-stressed and endowments are extremely volatile, as are the markets for our entrepreneurial activities."Yesterday Oxford expressed surprise at its fall in the table. A spokesperson said: "League table rankings can vary as they often use different methods to measure success, but Oxford University's position is surprising given that Oxford ? has come first in every national league table."

The rankings are based on an international survey of 9,000 academics, how influential the institution's research is and measures of teaching quality and ability to recruit staff and students abroad.

Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group of Universities, said: "The broad message of these tables is clear - the leading UK research universities are held in high esteem internationally but countries like China and Korea, which are investing massively in their best institutions, are snapping at our heels.

"The precise accuracy of league tables like this can be debated but there is no mistaking the alarm bell warning that our success is at risk if we as a nation don't take action to fight off such fierce competition."

She added that the UK was less well-funded than its competitors and if public spending cuts hit budgets they would be under increasing pressure. Universities are currently arguing for improved funding in a forthcoming review of the student finance system, to be launched by the government within weeks. They are increasingly calling for fees to be increased to safeguard the quality of their teaching.

The league table rates teaching quality according to the staff to student ratio. A recent report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England suggested some students were struggling to get enough contact time with tutors.

Phil Baty, the deputy editor of Times Higher Education magazine which published the tables, said: "Oxford comes out with perfect scores on reputation but citations per staff have slipped slightly while UCL has improved dramatically. It's very tight at the very top so a relatively small change can move the pecking order. Spending on higher education in Asia is phenomenal and that's why you see their results going up."

Chess Book of the Year: Part 2

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:16:00 +0000

Ronan Bennett & Daniel King
Tuesday October 6 2009
The Guardian

Smyslov-Botvinnik, 5th game World championship 1958. Black's king is in check. Should it move up to c5 or back to c7?

DK Two books on world championship matches made it on to our shortlist for book of the year. Kasparov vs Karpov 1986-1987 (Everyman Chess, GBP 30) written by Garry Kasparov, is an automatic choice. This is the latest volume in the former world champion's monumental series, and this time he dissects the matches in London/Leningrad 1986 and Seville 1987.

Kasparov's detailed analysis of the games is admirable but I skimmed them and just read the story ? it's gripping. Gorbachev had just come to power and was implementing his policies of glasnost and perestroika in the face of conservative opposition. In that context the result of these matches had enormous significance: Kasparov was the outspoken outsider, Karpov the loyal communist. Which image would the Soviet Union be projecting to the world? Kasparov alleges - and backs up with strong evidence - that there were spies in his camp passing information to Karpov, backed by the KGB. Some of the episodes could have come straight from the pages of a le Carré novel.

Botvinnik-Smyslov, Three World Chess Championship Matches: 1954, 1957, 1958 (New In Chess, GBP 28.95) is another reminder of a great chess rivalry. The annotations are mainly by Botvinnik and are characterised by his typical "objectivity" (read harshness). These notes were, of course, written in the pre-computer era, which means fewer variations than many contemporary books. That's a relief. I'd rather have a few well-chosen words than blocks of indigestible moves.

In the position above, Botvinnik was short of time and played the reflex 1? Kc5, following the general rule that kings should be as active as possible in the endgame. But Smyslov replied with 2 Kd3, and checkmate with b4 was unavoidable. Black should have tried 1?Kc7, and he still had chances to save the game.

Karpov-Kasparov, KK2 16th match game, 1985

fullerty@gmail.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:35:00 +0000

Ronan Bennett
Thursday November 13 2008
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/nov/13/chess-karpov-kasparov

Karpov-Kasparov, KK2 16th match game, 1985. Black to play and win.

Four titles made it to our chess book of the year shortlist: 100 Endgames You Must Know by Jesus de la Villa; Forcing Chess Moves by Charles Hertan; From London to Elista by Evgeny Bareev and Ilya Levitov; and Modern Chess: Part 2 Kasparov vs Karpov 1975-1985 by Garry Kasparov. Once again we drafted in Guardian chess club stalwarts Sean Ingle and Stephen Moss to help with the judging.

We all admired 100 Endgames for its clarity and practical value but, in Ingle's estimation, it lacked pizzazz (which, to be fair, is asking a lot of a manual on endgames). Forcing Chess Moves, which has featured in this column several times, was also well liked, but in the end it was also considered a little too much like a workbook.

From London to Elista is definitely a book rather than a manual, and Bareev's contributions are particularly impressive. But even this fine book has to give way to our winner ? Modern Chess: Part 2. As Moss observed: "Kasparov had a monumental career and with this series of books he is creating a monument to it." Some will balk at the ?30 price, but the great games, detailed analysis, compelling narrative and the insights into the psychological and political dimension to the struggle over the board make it an outstanding contribution to chess literature.

This week's position is from the brilliant 16th match game of Kasparov and Karpov's second titanic encounter. Kasparov's play is, interestingly, more like Karpov's in that it is positional and tight. On move 16, he succeeds in planting a knight on d3, dominating Karpov's position. Move by move, Kasparov gradually restricts his great opponent, bringing him in the middlegame to virtual zugzwang, quite an achievement with so many pieces on the board. On move 34, to get rid of the terrible knight, Karpov is forced to give up his queen for three minor pieces ? not a terrible exchange in strictly material terms, except that Black now played 37...Rc1, and after 38 Nb2 Qf2 39 Nd2 Rxd1+ 40 Nxd1 Re1+ Karpov resigned because of 41 Nf1 Rxf1 42 Bxf1 Qxf1 mate.