GREAT LITERATURE RETITLED TO BOOST WEBSITE TRAFFIC

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7 Awesome Ways Barnyard Animals Are Like Communism

The 11 Stupidest Things Phonies Do To Ruin The World

8 Surprising Ways West Egg Is Exemplary Of The Hollowness Of The American Dream

6 Shockingly Evil Things The Turn-Of-The-Century Meatpacking Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know

5 Insane Ways London Could Become a Dystopia (And How It’s Not That Far From Reality)

1 Weird Thing Caddy Smells Like

I, on the other hand, wrote about Africa for the win. Common search terms for this blog:

1. Luanda girls 

2. Luanda money

Jonathan Galassi just published a little op-ed for the New York Times on publishing in the age of  e-books. 

The piece outlines the chain of events that lie between the writer and the reader of the book (in all its permutations). We are reminded of the role of the editor, giving his or her ‘scrupulous line-by-line attention’ and of the copy-editor. The designers that choose the typeface, binding, and create the dust jacket to ‘induce reviewers and reader to pick the book up and pay attention to it.’ The employees of the publicity department that talk the book up to anyone who will listen, who submit bound proofs to newspapers and magazines for reviews. The employees of the sales department who get advance orders from booksellers. The employees of the rights department who work with the author’s agent (certainly floating around the whole operation) to pitch the book to magazine editors, movie agents, and foreign publishers.

For each book, the publishing house “exploits its edition in every conceivable format,” in cheaper paperbacks, e-books, large-print and audio versions are produced, marketed and sold by the publisher or licensed to other houses.

As Mr. Galassi emphasizes, the details of contemporary bookmaking are not all that new. His is a reminder that the industry that promotes the consumption of literature not only acts as the gatekeeper for literary value but also defines it, not only prints but is part of the author.
 

But as a host of legal squeamishs has followed in the wake of virtual libraries, one can feel the pricking of lost revenue in the warning, “[i]n this increasingly virtual age of open access and universal availability, it’s important for readers to keep in mind what it is that a publisher does for an author.” The businesses of translation, (re) translation, and  (when read) new prefaces, introductions, etc would protest the idea that “the constantly evolving, imperishable book” is given “its definitive form by a publisher.” 

[storytelling is a tricky business]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03galassi.html?scp=1&sq=Jonathan%20Galassi&st=cse

(here if you speak Portuguese http://luandaship.blogspot.com)

It’s time I get down to my end.

The title Angola – Birth of a Nation has the misfortune to echo that of D.W. Griffith’s celebratory film on the Ku Klux Klan (an extremist white supremacy group in the United States)   

http://internationalachievementsaward.guardianprofessional.co.uk/

judgesnomination/Details/5

and his blurb quoted here: 

Camuto is the director of Radio Ecclesia, Angola’s only independent radio station. He also runs a magazine and online newspaper, O Apostolado. Radio Ecclesia is committed to publicising human rights abuses and corruption in a country where public participation in government is limited by very low literacy rates and poor access to independent news sources. The station has broken stories such as the surge in the number of children dying from rabies. In the face of official resistance, Camuto’s programming is dedicated to bringing citizens into the decision-making process by providing information about the effects of poverty and offering a forum for public debate on social issues. One of his most successful initiatives has been the creation of Community Listening Groups. Members of one group successfully persuaded their local authority to provide anti-retroviral drugs to children suffering from HIV/Aids. Through his steadfast commitment to independent broadcasting, Camuto has turned listeners into stakeholders, and made a valuable contribution to activism and government accountability in Angola. 

If you follow the  link posted above, you can see the profiles of all five finalists, and vote.

Naturally my own suspicions are confirmed, academic lectures are the place to seen and be seen. But in the spectacle of the viewer/ being viewed/ buying himself as the viewer, there are a lot of rediculous snapshots of audience members with nodding off, etc that make me wonder whether it is the image of scholarship that is being sold, or if its really the moment, souvenir style.

You tell yourself: I’ll be gone
To some other land, some other sea,
To a city lovelier far than this
Could ever have been or hoped to be-
Where every step now tightens the noose:
A heart in a body buried and out of use:
How long, how long must I be here
Confined among these dreary purlieus
Of the common mind? Wherever now I look
Black ruins of my life rise into view.
So many years have I been here
Spending and squandering, and nothing gained.
There’s no new land, my friend, no
New sea; for the city will follow you,
In the same streets you’ll wander endlessly,
The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age,
In the same house go white at last-
The city is a cage.
No other places, always this
Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists
To take you from yourself. Ah! don’t you see
Just as you’ve ruined your life in this
One plot of ground you’ve ruined its worth
Everywhere now-over the whole earth?