The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
A Chicago man who co-authored a book about how not to be gored by bulls in the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, has been gored by a bull. On Wednesday, Bill Hillmann, one of the authors of Fiesta: How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona, was reportedly gored in the leg. According to the Associated Press, "The six fighting bulls run along a 930-yard (850-meter) course from a holding pen to Pamplona's bull ring in a tense and dramatic few minutes immortalized in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises." The news service notes that so far, the 32-year-old American and four Spaniards have been gored in this year's festival. One of Hillmann's co-authors was Hemingway's grandson, though he did not run. Another co-author told The New York Times,"We will probably need to update the book."
Police arrested a man named Michael Mott in connection with an attack on novelist Colum McCann late last month in New Haven, Conn. According to news reports, local police said Mott turned himself in and confessed to assaulting McCann. The author reportedly intervened in a dispute between Mott and his wife, stopping to ask the woman if she needed help. After she declined, Mott is said to have followed McCann and attacked him, leaving him with a concussion and serious facial injuries. In a statement released last week, McCann called the attack "shocking" and "cowardly."
"What happens when artists gravitate to places where they can make art only with great financial effort; where writers have to be journalists, adjunct professors, or work in cafés to pay the rent, leaving little time to write their novel, while learning every few months that one of their herd has secured a six-figure advance for their first book? What do their relationships and values look like, and how do their love stories unfold?" Sheila Heti considers the literary culture of Brooklyn and Adelle Waldman's novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
For Pacific Standard, Ted Scheinman asks his favorite writers what they do about writer's block. Margaret Drabble says she walks: "The best remedy is walking. An evening walk can work wonders. I often think of the Latin tag, solvitur ambulando — it will be solved by walking."
For years, Hitler's Mein Kampf has been kept out of print by its copyright holder, the German state of Bavaria. But in 2015, the copyright will expire and the book will be allowed to be published in Germany once more. Peter Ross Range writes that it will be good for Germany to have access to the Nazi leader's "dreary and often incomprehensible diatribe." He says, "The inoculation of a younger generation against the Nazi bacillus is better served by open confrontation with Hitler's words than by keeping his reviled tract in the shadows of illegality."
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