Rock stars and authors, one and the same

No, I'm kidding, only Neil Gaiman gets to be a rock star author (except for celebrity memoirs). But Jeffrey Wasserstrom came up with 5 reasons author tours are like rock concerts. Among them is the knowledge that being the opening act for someone huge is bittersweet. He of course leaves out the drugs and groupie sex, to meet HuffPo standards of cleanliness.

That's what she said: Literary haterade

Writers are notoriously cranky, reader types, not only in regard to their own work, but also in regard to the work of others. And sometimes, they just want to throw down. Like Faulkner on Mark Twain:

A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.

That is what the kids would call "a burn," I believe. And there are 49 more! Click click, sirs and madams.

Also, thank you michael for sending this along!

I fought St. Patty's Day, and St. Patty's Day won

Thus, no posts today, while I drink Gatorade and try not to puke in my Chicago Manual purse.

Casper the friendly ghost(writer)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every out of office US president needs to put out a memoir, and can use a little ghostwriter help. And, it turns out, he may be inclined to pick his speechwriter who is all of 28 and who started as an unpaid White House intern.

American dream coming true for someone? Check. Boozy afternoon for those of us who haven't managed to luck our ways into ridiculously sweet writing projects? Also check. Join me, won't you?

Haterade, 40 ways

A bunch of academics came up with a list of the worst 40 books, which is really 40 academics discussing one, several, or no books at all that they think are terrible. Of course they were roundly chastised by the internet via Jacket Copy, and the best, best thing was said by one of the commenters:

A friend of mine was at an academic conference session about "Ulysses." Someone on the panel referred to an episode where a character in the novel had coffee at a restaurant. The rest of the panel turned on him, and one of them hissed, "It was cocoa!" Now do you see why this ridiculous list came about?

Reading is important, especially for drinking

How can you know what wines to order, if you can't read the list well? Finally, a guide to reading a wine list, so your drunkeness can be well informed.*

*This is totally relevant to publishing. Shh.

Writing and drinking and drugs, oh my

Life put together a gallery of famous literary drunks and drug addicts. While the whole is pretty interesting (although some are pretty standard--Hemingway was a drunk!), my favorite is about Stephen King:

In his 2000 memoir, On Writing, King revealed that he'd been so shattered by his alcohol and drug abuse in the 1980s that, even today, he cannot remember working on many of the books he wrote back then. There were times when he'd been doing so much blow that he wrote with cotton wads stuffed in his nostrils, to prevent blood dripping on his typewriter.

That is a new fact for me. And it is kind of messed up.

Jane Austen, drunk and dancing

There's a Jane Austen exhibit at The Morgan, that the lazy (and non-New York based) need not go to, because the New York Times went and wrote it up for us. Janey wrote letters, a few books (or so I hear), and partied:

In [a letter], from 1800, she confides that she must have drunk too much at a ball the night before; she danced 9 of the 12 dances, she said, and “was merely prevented from dancing the rest by the want of a partner.”

Sassy, Jane! Also, suspiciously similar to a Pride and Prejudice line. I think the point made here is that, while the Bronte sisters were wet blankets, I would take Jane Austen to any kegger.