EVENT, etc.

The David R. Godine book launch for Arthur Krystal's Half-Life of an American Essayist will be held at 192 Books on Thursday, May 31 at 7:30 pm. 192 Books is located on 10th Ave. at 21st street on Manhattan. Space is limited, so give the store a call ahead and – as always – please stop by the store often to buy your books, and support independent book stores whenever possible.

Also, I found this interesting article on the brewing culture war between established literary-criticism / book review publications, and literary bloggers (courtesy of Arts & Letters, Daily). What I take from the article [this is only one man's interpretation] is that professional reviewers badly, badly want blogs to be seen as a sort of cheap version of their "real " work. It makes sense, considering that the internet is free to all, and if the online reviews are just as good – if not better – than the newspapers and magazines', there will be no book-reviewing business. Blogging would become a threat to the already precarious livelihood of literary academics and reviewers. On the other hand, newspapers are still cutting their arts coverage all over the country. This passage, I think, sums it up well:

... there is a growing sense that enough is enough — and that the friction between old and new book media obscures the fact that the two are in bed together now, for better or worse. Often the same people who churn out literary blogs are reviewing books for mainstream reviews.

As a publisher, this is all hard to watch, since reviewers are so necessary to the success of a book by any small publisher. They are a big, important part of the wheel that makes our business turn.