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=============================================================  1Lit - The Literary Ezine Sunday, December 2, 2001 Issue XIII ============================================================= 1Lit is available by subscription only. If you no longer wish to receive this ezine, instructions on how to unsubscribe can be found at the end of this and every issue. ============================================================ �By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.� The Bible, Matthew 12:37 �Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes.� William Shakespeare, King Lear >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SPONSOR <<<<<<<<<< 4.5 cents a minute Plus 100 FREE Minutes No Hidden Fees No Contracts New! Click Here >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SPONSOR <<<<<<<<<< Introduction Notice anything different about this issue? Yes, we've switched from Arial to the Verdana font. The majority of commercial Web pages created in the last year use Verdana, and the reason is simple: when reading text on a screen, Verdana is easier on the eye than the likes of Arial and Times New Roman. Most commonly-used fonts were created before the meteoric rise of the personal computer and the web and focussed on being legible on the printed page; Verdana, on the other hand, was made by world renowned type designer Matthew Carter in 1996 especially for the medium of screen. One doubts if reading on a VDU will ever become completely strain-free and match the pleasure of viewing text on the printed page (maybe it's a psychological thing?), but Verdana is a step towards a less eye-aching online experience. The reason it makes reading text on a monitor less of a chore is because of the way it has been designed. This is where it gets technical, as terms like 'hinting' and 'bitmaps' come into play, but if you are interested, you might like to visit this page at Webmonkey and this one at Microsoft's website. We would like to offer a sincere apology for the delay in sending out this and last month's issue of 1Lit. It is easy to offer excuses without taking responsibility, but the truth is that, since the closure of Microsoft's ListBot, we have been struggling with the new mailing list software. We must have spent over two hundred hours trying to get to grips with it! On top of that, the unscrupulous nature of many e-commerce operations means we seem to be engaged in never-ending battles to receive money from our advertisers - our sole source of income. Just this last week, we have been to see our attorney three times in relation to money owed to us by SmartShop.com. We'd rather be creating content for you, our dear readers, than writing invoices and making telephone calls to recover money from our debtors, but that's the way businesses operate in modern America. 
Finally, we are proud to announce that the 1Lit.com ezine has joined the Green Ribbon Campaign. Set up by Christian publisher, Zondervan, the Green Ribbon Campaign believes that the right to free speech, while being one of the most important and fundamental rights of liberty, ought to be exercised with consideration. Such an idea is not fashionable in an age where any notion of 'values' and 'morality' seems to have been thrown out of the window, but we firmly believe that the the true right of free speech is accurately carried out when self-restraint is exercised.
Freedom of speech has never been absolute. There have always been limitations. We are now living in a period in history, in a part of the world (if you are reading this in the United States or Canada), where there is more freedom of speech than at any time in the past. But the pendulum seems to have swung in the other direction to the extent that, as the Green Ribbon Campaign argues, "freedom is being abused and used irresponsibly as a smoke screen to communicate in a vulgar, profane, violent, and insulting manner". One can barely walk a few yards down the sidewalk here in New York without hearing profanities from young and old alike. Even the most innocent of searches on the net results in hardcore pornographic sites being thrust in our faces. And it is a rare day indeed when one doesn't find spam promoting websites about either incest, bestiality or some other perversion in one's email account. We at 1Lit believe that language should not be used to degrade and insult, it should be used to make the better place, to enhance, to educate, to learn, to love, to seduce; such an attitude is in accordance with the vast majority of writers thoughout history up until perhaps the era of the beatniks and post-modernists of the 1960s onwards. It was around 700 B.C. that Homer wrote in The Iliad, �From his tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey.� You can read more about the Green Ribbon Campaign here. Feel free to write to with your views about it, whether they are positive and negative. Don't hesitate to express criticisms of our or the Green Ribbon Campaign's perspective! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Eid Mubarak to all our readers. Ciao, Darren Clark, Standing Editor, 1Lit.com North America  CONTENTS: 1. News: Ken Kesey, Jonathan Franzen, Online Bookselling 2. Author Profile: J. R. R. Tolkien 3. Author Photographs: J. R. R. Tolkien 4. Review: 'The Black Book' by Orhan Pamuk 5. Poetry: Haiku XP 7. Competition: Monthly subscriber prize draw 8. Recommended Websites: Gift stores for the holiday season ============ NEWS ============ 1,000 People Send Kesey Off at Memorial About 1,000 people said farewell on September 14 to Ken Kesey at a memorial service in Oregon for their friend and fellow prankster. A hippie impresario and author, filmmaker and actor, farmer and teacher, Kesey had died four days earlier at the age of 66. He had recently had an operation for liver cancer. The multimedia service in Eugene included a taped benediction from the Grateful Dead, a video tribute, music from one of his plays and a rambling eulogy, "Let's Make This Short," from his neighbour and fellow 'Merry Prankster', Ken Babbs. Best known for his novel, One Flew Other The Cuckoo's Nest, which became an instant best-seller in 1962, and later an award-winning film starring Jack Nicholson, Kesey was also a founder member of the counter-culture group, called the 'Merry Pranksters'. Travelling around the West Coast in a psychedelic painted bus, the 'Pranksters', who included other sixties luminaries such as Timothy Leary and Neal Cassady, handed out free LSD. In 1967 the law caught up with Kesey and he was jailed for six months for possession of marijuana. Kesey's adventures on the bus were later documented in Tom Wolfe's book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Links: Los Angeles Times - 'A Final Word From the Last Merry Prankster' The Register-Guard - Oregon newspaper pays write to one of their most famous sons Franzen wins National Book Award 
Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, won the National Book Award in the fiction category on November 14. There's been much speculation over whether Franzen's Oprah Winfrey fiasco (see last issue of 1Lit) would affect his chances to win this award � and Franzen was often reminded of it throughout the evening.Steve Martin, emcee of the ceremony in Manhattan, gently ribbed Franzen in his opening remarks, accusing him of sneaking into bookstores and putting Oprah stickers on another finalist's book. Martin then said Franzen would not be appearing on Oprah's show but rather on the Martha Stewart Good Morning Wisconsin show. When Franzen accepted the award, he said, "It's been a bad couple of months. I mean it�really bad." The audience tittered, thinking of his recent battering in the press rather than his true intention, the events of September 11. Franzen then said, "I feel as if I was the person providing blood sport to the literary community in this time of trouble." He did, however, graciously accept this award, which includes a check for $10,000, and even thanked Oprah for her advocacy and enthusiasm. The audience gave him a warm round of applause even though a few had booed his name earlier. Other winners include Andrew Solomon, in the non-fiction category for The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression; Virginia Euwer Wolff in the young people's category for True Believer; and Alan Dugan in the poetry category for Poems Seven. Arthur Miller was given the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for such classic American works as "The Crucible" and "Death of a Salesman." Franzen probably didn't need the $10,000 he received for winning the award. His novel was a best seller before Oprah's citation and film rights to Hollywood producer Scott Rudin had been optioned. According to his publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 780,000 copies are in print and at least 50,000 more will come out because of the prize. Links: Boston Phoenix - feature entitled 'An author�s story' Amazon / Chapters - buy The Corrections, with free delivery Barnes & Noble Chipping Away at Amazon's Dominance of Online Bookselling Not long ago, Amazon.com stunned the publishing industry by seizing a huge part of its business seemingly overnight. Now, as the company continues to struggle with a vastly expanded retail strategy that includes such mass-market stalwarts as Wal-Mart, the e-commerce pioneer from Seattle is losing ground in the business that the company was created for: selling books. According to estimates for the last quarter, the online retailer has lost significant market share to archenemy Barnes&Noble.com, whose parent company was at one time emblematic of the brick-and-mortar world's sluggish reaction to online competitors. Mark Rowen, the Prudential Securities bond analyst who has reviewed the combined U.S. sales for both companies, said he had seen indications of problems with Amazon's book business more than a year ago. "Amazon's books, music and video segment has exhibited deteriorating sales patterns for the past seven quarters," Rowen said. "We estimate Barnes&Noble.com's share this quarter is higher than ever." The increased competition in books could not come at a worse time for Amazon, which promised Wall Street that it would become profitable in this quarter. To reach that goal, the company has aggressively reduced expenses, no longer able to afford the kinds of advertising blitzes that helped turn it into one of the most recognizable names on the Web. Amazon attributes its revenue slowdown to recent price cuts designed to boost sales. On books that cost $20 or more, Amazon offers a 30 percent discount. "The important thing is that while the top line has suffered, the bottom line is much improved," Amazon spokesman Bill Curry said. "In absolute dollar terms, our pro forma operating profit was up 6 percent (for the books category) year over year. And we have said all year that our focus is getting to profitability." But others outside the company see a different, more troubling reason for the decline: Amazon's controversial expansion into general merchandise may have diverted its attention from books or, worse, spread the company too thin to compete effectively in any single area. Traditional retailers such as Wal-Mart and Kmart, as well as Barnes & Noble, present an increasingly difficult challenge as they become more adept at doing business online. "While these companies were slow to move online, each has shown signs of starting to understand the Web better," Kristine Koerber, an analyst with investment firm WR Hambrecht. "In a market that's still expanding with new customers and Amazon can't get decent growth, it leads me to believe that there are other worrisome issues going on." As the cornerstone of Amazon's business appears to be suffering--the books, music and video category--competitors are taking advantage of the company's vulnerability. Amazon's total revenue growth, once in the triple digits, is now crawling at 1 percent. The company predicts that sales for the fourth quarter will be equal to 10 percent more than those in the like period a year ago. Still, the 6-year-old Amazon remains the Web's kingpin in book and related sales. The company has reported profits in its books, music and video segment for six consecutive quarters, and no other online company has more than Amazon's 29 million customers. But Rowen asserted that Barnes&Noble.com took "considerable market share" from Amazon in the third quarter, "an estimated 22 percent of the total." That's up from 18 percent in the second quarter. Links: Amazon.com - a confusing-looking site which has shifted away from its focus on books New York Times - Barnes & Noble blames Sept. 11 for poor sales figures ======= AUTHOR PROFILE ======= J. R. R. Tolkien It's taken half a century for a live-action version of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings to reach the silver screen, but fans will not have to wait much longer: the first movie in the trilogy is due to hit theaters on December 19. With $270 million dollars having been spent on the movies (all three parts were filmed together) and an army of obsessive fans, there is talk that The Fellowship of the Ring could rival Titanic and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as the most successful movie of all time. There is no shortage of information about the movie and Tolkein's books on the net, and so we thought we'd do something different and provide you with a biography of Tolkein. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, South Africa. At the age of four he returned home with his mother Mary and younger brother Hilary to England. After his father's death, Tolkien's family made their home at Sarehole in Birmingham. Tolkien had a happy childhood in the Sarehole countryside. His love of the countryside can clearly be seen in his work and in his pictures. Tolkien's mother died when he was 12. With his brother Hilary he became wards of a priest at the Birmingham Oratory. Both Tolkien and his brother attended King Edward's School in Birmingham where Tolkien achieved distinction in Classics and also encountered Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. It was at this time that he began to develop his linguistic abilities by inventing languages which he related to 'fairy' or 'elvish' people. After a first in English Language and Literature at Exeter College, Oxford, Tolkien married Edith Bratt. He was then commissioned in the Lancashire Fusiliers and served in the battle of the Somme where he lost three of his closest friends. After the war Tolkien obtained a post on the New English Dictionary and began to write The Lost Tales, which eventually became the legendary The Silmarillion. After having two children, Tolkien was appointed as reader in the English language at the University of Leeds, which led to a Professorship four years later. He distinguished himself by his lively and imaginative teaching and in 1925 was elected Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, where he worked with great skill and enthusiasm for many years. In fact he was one of the most accomplished philologists that has ever been known. His family, which now numbered four, encouraged Tolkien to use his mythological imagination. He wrote and illustrated The Father Christmas Letters for them, and it was to them that he first told the story of The Hobbit which was published in 1937 by Stanley Unwin. Stanley Unwin then asked for a sequel. It only took him 12 years to write Lord of Rings, now considered by many to be the greatest book in history. It was published after Tolkien retired and its huge popularity took him by surprise. Tolkien moved to Oxford where he died in September 1973 leaving his great mythological book The Silmarillion to be edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher. End-of-the-millennium polls by Amazon.com in the United States and Channel 4/Waterstone's in England crowned J. R. R. Tolkien as the most influential author of the twentieth century and named The Lord of the Rings as the book of the century. Links: Salon - derided by intellectuals as boyish fantasy, a scholar defends Lord of the Rings Amazon - buy Lord of the Rings with special movie art cover ============= AUTHOR PICTURES ============= Click here to view 1Lit.com's J. R. R. Tolkien picture gallery ============= BOOK REVIEW ============= 
The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk Harcourt $16 The recent release of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red has afforded the literary community a welcome opportunity to reflect on the author's corpus of work published in English thus far. Undoubtedly the most accomplished of his books, and the one which established him in America, The Black Book is technically a detective story set against the backdrop of clashes between Marxists and nationalists which afflicted Turkey during the late 1970s and early 1980s; however, attempting to categorize the work is a thankless task. Pamuk's prose, a stunningly interwoven tapestry of immense quality, transports the reader from the steps of a modern block of Istanbul apartments to the psyche of a thirteenth-century Sufi mystic in the blink of an eye and with immaculate poise. As such, conventional notions of literary narrative are rendered meaningless. Furthermore, when the novel's chief protagonist, Galip, pays tribute to his wife in an extraordinary testimony of love - a leitmotiv of Pamuk's - near the end of the book, one is torn between labeling The Black Book a historical novel or a romance. Yet whatever angle one approaches it from - with the eye of an historian, perhaps, or the yearnings of a seeker of wisdom - The Black Book does not disappoint. Pamuk's depiction of Sultanahmet - the part of old Istanbul where much of the action takes place - is atmospheric, oozing architectural and emotional detail. The most impressive aspect of the characterization is that the people described, unlike so many in modern novels, are capable of transcending their everyday frustrations and experiencing something ethereal, and therefore seem genuinely developed. Febrilously written, this fastest-selling novel in the long history of Turkish literature (within weeks over 100,000 copies had left the bookstores) will reward the adventurous reader with a depth of insight into the human condition that exceeds all expectations. Links: Amazon - find out more/buy the book The Nation - detailed review of The Black Book >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SPONSOR <<<<<<<<<< 
Do your Christmas shopping from home. It's faster, safer, cheaper - and more fun! Go here to visit The Christmas Shopping Boutique� and save $$$s! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SPONSOR <<<<<<<<<< ======= POETRY ======= HAIKU XP Reader Rob Marshall has discovered that in Japan they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry messages. Haiku poetry has strict construction rules. Each poem has only three lines, 17 syllables: five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third. Haikus are used to communicate a timeless message often achieving a wistful, yearning and powerful insight through extreme brevity - the essence of Zen. Here are some examples: Your file was so big It might be very useful But now it is gone. The Web site you seek Cannot be located, but Countless more exist. Chaos reigns within Reflect, repent, and reboot Order shall return. Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on You ask far too much. Windows NT crashed I am the Blue Screen of Death No one hears your screams. Stay the patient course Of little worth is your ire The network is down. A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone. ========== COMPETITION ============ Monthly Subscriber Prize Draw Our winner this month is Edson Garcia from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He'll receive the top ten bestsellers at Amazon. ========== RECOMMENDED WEBSITES ============ Last month's issue of 1Lit recommended online bookstores worth visiting if you wanted to buy books as Christmas presents and this month we promised to provide you with some advice on where to look for general last-minute gifts for the holiday season. When shopping online most people understandably head to the giants of e-tailing such as Amazon or the websites of established offline retailers such as Walmart; after all, you want to make sure your order arrives. But not only do these tactile stores lack the more unusual and enchanting items you ought to consider giving at this magical time of year, their prices can sometimes be beaten by more specialised merchants. We have found three little stores that between them are sure to have something for everyone on your gift list, from that spoilt-brat of a niece of yours to good-old Grandpa Albert. GiftTree GiftTree has been an online florist and gift provider since 1995. Their extensive catalog of products includes handcrafted, professionally designed gift baskets, hand-delivered floral designs, fruit baskets, and balloon bouquets, as well as many other creative gift ideas for the holiday season. This could be just the place to do your last-minute Christmas shopping. Their live online help facility didn't work despite half a dozen attempts. GiftTree - link takes you directly to their holiday specials AllWineBaskets This little store has elegant wine and champagne gifts. Give someone a basket with premium wines and ambrosial gourmet items this Christmas and they will really appreciate it! The only downside is they only ship within the United States. AllWineBaskets - elegant wine and champagne gifts Walter Drake Walter Drake has been selling personalized and hard-to-find products for inside and outside the home since 1947. Items range personalized stationary, cards, address labels and hand crafted gifts, to useful personal care, kitchen, and other useful household products. They are currently offering $5 off any online order over $25. The only downside is that they only ship within the United States. Walter Drake - receive $5 off any $25 order now through Jan 31, 2002 If you're looking for literature sites we would recommend you visit LitVillage.com or use the search box below.
We have decided to list our subscribers' websites in the first two issues of next year. One issue will feature literature-related websites and the other will review homepages about any subject. So if you have a website you would like us to recommend in 1Lit then send the URL to >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SPONSOR <<<<<<<<<< 
2001 Picks - Amazon.com editors' and customers' picks of the best books of the year Charity products - publishers, artists, and authors donating the profits or proceeds from the products listed to relief efforts relating to the September 11 attacks >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SPONSOR <<<<<<<<<< ========== FEB/MARCH ISSUE ============ IN THE NEW YEAR ISSUE OF 1LIT, NORTH AMERICAN EDITION OUT SOON
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