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    THURSDAY MARGINALIA: THE "ON THE ROAD" EDITION

    http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2008/05/thursday-marg-1....
    4 days ago in The Elegant Variation · Authority: 367

    * Yann Martel's Life of Pi has captured Abe Books' Best of the Booker survey, edging out Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. * LA City Beat calls Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends "a treasure trove of intriguing and revealing looks at where Chabon goes to make up his worlds and how he tells his fables of the reconstruction." * Steve Wasserman's book review section for Truthdig - to which we have proudly contributed - has won a Maggie Award. * Martin Amis is collaborating on a screenplay adaptation of London Fields. (We support any venture that prevents him from holding forth on geopolitics.) Amis is working on the screenplay with Roberta Hanley, co-founder of Muse Productions, the film production company behind indie hits such as as The Virgin Suicides, Buffalo 66 and American Psycho. It's a good fit for Amis's novel, which was omitted from the Booker prize shortlist in 1989 amid fierce debate after two of the prize's judges deemed it misogynistic. The novel centres on the character of Nicola Six, a femme fatale who foresees the exact date and manner of her own death in a dream. Not knowing who the future "murderer" might be, she manipulates three potential candidates - crook Keith Talent, rich banker Guy Clinch and terminally ill American author Samson Young - into meeting at the Black Cross pub in west London's Portobello Road for her impending death. * We propose a moratorium on the designation "unknown writer" which seems, will, sort of cold. D. Hooijer is, presumably, known to her publishers, readers and even family. And now she's won a big, fat prize. * Always worth your time - the wonderful Laila Lalami on Thomas McCarthy at The Nation. * Serious props to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In an era when books struggle to be reviewed at all, they actually return to Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero to give it a second consideration, which puts us in mind of something we believe John Freeman recently said, to the effect that Tree of Smoke deserved more than the usual milisecond of critical consideration given the time that went into its creation. And, it turns out, in this case the reviewer in question is pleased. (OK, it's short, but it's the thought that counts.) * Ngugi wa Mirii, who was recently killed in a car accident, is remembered in an allAfrica.com editorial. As a culture worker and artist, writer, playwright, and film-maker, Ngugi wa Mirii encouraged personal introspection and dynamic thinking which he hoped would contribute to African unity through social and cultural ideas. "The musicians must of necessity compose lyrics that not only entertain but should educate and inform, the playwrights must dramatise the drama of life, journalists should report without fear or favour. Novelists, actors, film-makers are called upon to shed light through historical analysis," he wrote. * And, finally - James Bond reads Benjamin Black. Who can resist? We sure can't.