Millard Kaufman,the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “Bad Day at Black Rock”, co-creator of Mr. Magoo, and author of the novel Bowl of Cherries (2007) died Saturday of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles two days before his 92nd birthday. Kaufman’s second novel Misadventure will be published by McSweeney’s Books this fall. LAT obit
Authors
Dubai Festival Responds to Censorship Allegations
The inaugural Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature in Dubai got off to a rocky start yesterday with reports that Geraldine Bedell, originally under consideration but not on the festival’s final schedule, had been disinvited because her novel, The Gulf Between Us, contains references to homosexuality. “I do not want our festival remembered for the launch of a controversial book,” the Times of London reports festival director Isobel Abulhoul wrote to Bedell. “If we launched the book and a journalist happened to read it, then you could imagine the political fallout that would follow.” Bedell also told the Times of […]
New (ish) Works by Mailer, Cheever, Dick
The New York Review of Books runs the second of three previously unpublished selections of Norman Mailer’s letters with annotations from the author’s biographer, J. Michael Lennon. John Cheever’s short story “Of Love: A Testimony”, runs in installments throughout the week on FiveChapters.com, its first appearance in over 66 years. And though it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a “new” work by Philip K. Dick, his fifth and final wife Tessa has self-published The Owl of Daylight, which she terms a “tribute” to the novel of the same name her former husband was working on until his […]
Wimpy Opens Strong
In its first week on sale Jeff Kinney’s DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE LAST STRAW recorded sales of approximately 240,000 copies in outlets tracked by Nielsen Bookscan, as publisher Abrams says that first day sale alone “exceeded 100,000 copies” and “first-week sales totaled more than 300,000 copies.” Two reprints comprising 500,000 copies will bring the copies in print up to 1.5 million units. Abrams ceo Michael Jacobs says, “Booksellers of all sizes are thrilled with the popularity of this series, and it’s clear that the huge response…has far exceeded expectations. In this difficult economic climate, with reports of bad […]
Marquez Still Writing?
Two years ago he said he was finished, but now friend and writer writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza says that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is closing in on a new novel. “He has four versions of it. He told me that he was now trying to get the best from each of them.” But a spokesperson for the Carmen Balcells Agency replied, “There is nothing, for the moment.”Guardian
Cornwell Gets Personal
With the release of SCARPETTA, her sixteenth novel featuring the title character, Patricia Cornwell is “for the first time, welcoming the media into the sprawling farmhouse-style home she shares with Staci Gruber, 41, whom she married in 2006. Cornwell, 52, has never before discussed their marriage with a mainstream US publication. She did talk about it this year with The Advocate, a gay magazine, and she has spoken with the British press. She considers her sexual orientation enormously private.” She tells USAT, “I’m not a soapbox kind of person. My private life is not 100% comfortable, but I’ve decided these […]