By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 9/21/12 8:20am

Notes From The Underground

Photo credit: PowerHouse Arena Tumblr

Salman Rushdie Relives His Time in Hiding

The lights dimmed and mood music began to play as Salman Rushdie walked to the stage at PowerHouse Arena in Dumbo the other night as part of a week of events to launch his new memoir, Joseph Anton.

The title of the book is the pseudonym that Mr. Rushdie used while he was in hiding after Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the author’s death following the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989. The book, which is written in the third person, focuses mostly on the period when Mr. Rushdie was in hiding before the fatwa was lifted in 2002.

Mr. Rushdie stood at the microphone in a slightly baggy, somewhat wrinkled gray suit and a blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 9/19/12 2:42pm

Publishing

(photo by Martha Kaplan)

Knopf Remembers Longtime Editor Ashbel Green

Last night, legendary Knopf editor Ashbel Green died while at dinner with his wife, Elizabeth Osha, and friends near their Stonington, Conn., home. He was 84.

Mr. Green, who was known as “Ash,” started working at the publishing house in 1964 and went on to edit over 500 books by a stable of well-known authors, political figures and journalists such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Vaclav Havel, George H.W. Bush and Walter Cronkite.

To many in the publishing world, Mr. Green was one of the last of the old-style gentleman editors.

“You could hear his typewriter from anywhere on the floor,” said Paul Bogaards, director of publicity at Knopf. “He was a classic editor with a red pencil.”

“He was an editor’s editor,” said Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon. “Those kind of people are rare in any generation. Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 9/14/12 6:18pm

Kickin' It

image

Cat Marnell Gives Up Her Vices

In last week’s installment of her Vice column, “Amphetamine Logic,” Wild child blogger Cat Marnell announced that her time at the hipster web mag was coming to an end.

“I’m writing my last columns,” Cat Marnell explained when we reached her late Friday afternoon .“I almost feel addicted to them, like I could go on forever.”

However, Ms. Marnell, who celebrated her 30th birthday earlier this week, is ready for her next venture. She said she has become a perfectionist. “I’ve  just got to do it right. When you are writing weird, it’s make it good or go home, you know?” Ms. Marnell noted she scrapped this week’s column because she wasn’t happy with it and missed her deadline.

“I miss my deadlines all the time, and my editor just has to deal with me like Jane did.” Ms. Marnell was the Beauty Editor at xoJane.com until June. Ms. Marnell said she still talks to Jane Pratt all the time, and they plan to have dinner soon.

“I love her, she’s the great love of my life,” Ms. Marnell said of her erstwhile mentor. Read More

By Kim Velsey 9/10/12 10:40am

Art Projects

A close-up. (New York Times)

Architectural Designer Updates One Outdated Technology With Another

The endangered and extinct species of Manhattan are myriad: affordable apartments, mom and pops, the middle class. But perhaps none are so endangered as pay phone booths: not only do they take up precious real estate in a packed city, but the pay phone itself is considered Jurassic technology by the smart phone-wielding set.

So why not match them up with another endangered species—the book? Enter John H. Locke, an architectural designer profiled in The New York Times. Mr. Locke spends his Sunday mornings transforming pay phones into mini lending libraries (the phones remain functional), creating what you might call delightful book nooks that would fit right into a Wes Anderson set. Obsolete technologies unite! Read More

By Drew Grant 1:29pm

Fun With Feminism

What a slut! (Julius Rolshoven)

Feminish? Women’s Site Holds ‘Sexy Reading’ Photo Contest, Probably Has Something to Do With Fifty Shades of Grey

Who says smart girls can’t be sexy? Well, no one, really (at least not in public). Especially if they combine their love of literature with, say, photos of themselves in a bikini. That’s the theme of TheGloss.com’s new photo contest, which asks readers to “Send In Your Sexy Reading Photos, Win Books.”

A better title may have been “Whose wave of feminism is this, anyway?” Read More

By Foster Kamer 7/26/12 4:48pm

Haters Gon Hate

wonder-boys

Confessions of an Obsessively Jealous MFA Workshop Colleague of Successful Novelist Joshua Ferris

Have you ever seen Wonder Boys, the movie based on the book by Michael Chabon? In the first scene, it takes you inside a grad school fiction workshop, where various students undercut each other through passive-aggressive critique. It is utterly painful and also rings true (as far as we’ve heard, having never experienced the masochistic impulse to seek out graduate studies, let alone the studies themselves). Inevitably, one student will be more successful than the others, and the others will no doubt, in most instances, begrudge them that success. Of course, it is uncouth to publicly begrudge one success, so most people will just go about this in the most passive and cowardly way possible.

Until now! Read More

By Hunter Walker 7/25/12 10:46am

Crime

Dimitry Sheinman in Inwood Hill Park with his daughter and his dog in 2004. (Photo: TheSheinmanSource.com)

Killer or Clairvoyant? Coffee With the Prime Suspect in the 2004 Murder of Sarah Fox

Dimitry Sheinman is an author, painter, self-proclaimed clairvoyant and, most importantly, a suspect in the brutal 2004 killing of Juilliard student Sarah Fox.

In June, after several years in Africa, Mr. Sheinman returned to New York to deliver police information that he claimed he obtained through psychic visions—and to shop around a book about his experience with this still-unsolved Read More

By Drew Grant 7/19/12 4:15pm

EBooks

'Pride & Prejudice,' minus zombies, plus dirty words (Clandestine Classics)

Read Excerpts From New Erotic E-Book Versions of Pride & Prejudice, Sherlock Holmes

Thank you, statute of limitations on copyrighted material! Clandestine Classics, a subsidiary of Total-E-Bound publishing, has rewritten five of those stuffy British novelsyou were forced to read in English class and turned them into poorly-spelled BDSM sex stories. Unfortunately, these e-rotica e-books won’t be available till July 30th (let the 12 day countdown begin!), but on the bright side, Clandestine has given readers a sneak peak to its 19th century knickers.

Let’s read some excerpts (which are NSFW…as much as words can be NSFW), shall we? Read More