By Emily Witt 11/17/11 9:01am

Publishing

NBA winner Jesmyn Ward.

Book It! Tears, Cheers, Beers at the National Book Awards

With tears of joy and lots of liquor, New York publishing gathered at Cipriani Wall Street last night for the National Book Awards. This year’s host was actor John Lithgow, who recently published a memoir (Drama: An Actor’s Education) and performed his role with just the right amount of self-deprecation.

It was not as bad as 1999, when attendees of the PEN American Gala had to cross a picket line to get into Cipriani Midtown, but there were a few jokes about the celebration’s short distance from Zuccotti Park. Read More

By Ron Rosenbaum 9/19/05 12:00am

The Shakespeare Code: Is Times Guy Kind Of Bard ‘Creationist’?

It started out amusing, in a way, but now it’s getting ugly—the little-noticed battle over The New York Times’ Shakespeare coverage.

Earlier this month, invocations of creationism and Holocaust denial were injected into the debate by no less an authority than Harvard’s Stephen Greenblatt, author of the best-seller Will in the World. On Sept. 4, Read More

By Robert Cornfield 10/04/04 12:00am

Call Me Will, Forsooth: The Bard as Ordinary Guy

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt. W.W. Norton, 430 pages, $26.95.

The records of Shakespeare’s life aren’t skimpy: There are deeds and court entries, real estate and town papers, his will, reports of performances of his plays, even an accepted example of his handwriting. From tributes in the original collection Read More

By Rebecca Traister 1/06/03 12:00am

The Droves of Academe

“The famous line about the M.L.A. is that you’ve never seen a convention where people drink so much and fuck so little,” said Michael Bérubé, an English professor from Penn State University. Mr. Bérubé was on the revolving 49th floor of the Marriott Marquis Hotel at 11 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 29, hanging out with Read More