Notes in the Margin Weblog

Books | “State by State” takes readers on an offbeat road trip across the country | Seattle Times Newspaper:

‘State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America’ is an intriguing collection of essays and snapshots on the 50 states as seen through the eyes of 50 writers.

In a modern update of the series referred to in the previous post, Jeffrey Burke reviews the book State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey.

Weiland’s preface helpfully defines the intent: “a road trip in book form,” written by “our finest novelists and reporters.” Wilsey then goes on for 13 pages about a road trip he made in 2002 and makes no attempt to connect explicitly to the book’s mission. It’s a perfect warmup for the motley assemblage that follows.

Burke passes out several awards in the process of highlighting the eccentricities in this book–all of which make the book look like one well worth reading.

Going Down the Road - In a Town Apart, the Pride and Trials of Black Life - Series - NYTimes.com:

Eatonville, the first all-black town to incorporate in the country and the childhood home of Zora Neale Hurston, is no longer as simple as she described it in 1935: ‘the city of five lakes, three croquet courts, 300 brown skins, 300 good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools and no jailhouse.’ It is now a place of pilgrimage. Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Ruby Dee have come to the annual Zora! Festival in Eatonville to pay their respects to Hurston, the most famous female writer of the Harlem Renaissance.

This article is the sixth in a NY Times series highlighting the American Guide Series of travel books written during the Depression by the Federal Writers’ Project.

Just in time: Banned Books Week | csmonitor.com:

Given the recent public scuffle over Sarah Palin’s conversations while mayor with a Wasilla librarian about the possibility of banning books, there probably couldn’t be a better moment for the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, which begins tomorrw, Sept. 27, and runs through Oct. 4.

Inside Google Book Search: Book Search everywhere with new partnerships and tools:

Google makes it even easier for readers to part with their hard-earned cash:

Today, we’re taking a big step towards bringing more books, across more sites, to more people online.

We’re launching a set of free tools that allow retailers, publishers, and anyone with a web site to embed books from the Google Book Search index. We are also providing new ways for these sites to display full-text search results from Book Search, and even integrate with social features such as ratings, reviews, and readers’ book collections. By providing tools that help sites connect readers with books in new and interesting ways, we hope publishers and authors will find even wider audiences for their works.

Books | A list of 40 upcoming fiction and nonfiction books | Seattle Times Newspaper:

Just in time to distract you from all the election mud-slinging comes this list, from the Seattle Times, of books being published this fall.

Stephen King turns 61 today. Long live the King.

Update - Hartford - Writers Unite to Keep Twain House Afloat - NYTimes.com:

The Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT, has for some time now been in financial trouble. The New York Times reports on the latest fund-raising effort aimed at saving it: “On Tuesday, Tom Perrotta, Tasha Alexander, Phillip Lopate and at least seven other nationally best-selling authors will gather in the auditorium to read Twain’s works.”

If you’ve never seen the Twain House in Hartford, don’t miss these photos.

James Crumley, Crime Novelist, Is Dead at 68 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com:

James Crumley, a critically acclaimed crime novelist whose drug-infused, alcohol-soaked, profanity-laced, breathtakingly violent books swept the hard-boiled detective from the Raymond Chandler era into an amoral, utterly dissolute, apocalyptic post-Vietnam universe, died on Wednesday in Missoula, Mont. He was 68 and lived in Missoula.

The Scout Report, a fine weekly newsletter from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin, offers this roundup of stories about the recent death of author David Foster Wallace:

Friends and colleagues remember author David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at 46 [Free registration may be required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html

Wallace Invented ‘New Style, New Comedy’
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94629055

Author created ‘Jest’ in Syracuse
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf?/base/news-15/122155534751021.xml&coll=1

In Memoriam: David Foster Wallace [pdf]
http://www.pomona.edu/ADWR/president/dfw1.shtml

Considering David Foster Wallace [iTunes]
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/pc080916considering_david_fo

David Foster Wallace: Harper’s Magazine [pdf]
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557

David Foster Wallace: Commencement Speech at Kenyon College
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

Friends, acquaintances, fellow writers, and others all offered memories of author David Foster Wallace this week in articles, online treatises, weblog posts, and editorials. Wallace, who was perhaps best known for this sprawling masterwork “Infinite Jest”, was thoroughly catholic in his interests, and his work was peppered with references to everything from Continental philosophy to the behavior of cruise line passengers. Writing in this Tuesday’s New York Times, fellow writer Verlyn Klinkenborg commented, “His writing could subsume the DNA of any language, any form it encountered, while remaining completely his own.” During his 46 years, Wallace was awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant”, and also taught at Illinois State University and Pomona College. While many websites offer a way to comment on Wallace’s work and life, the “In Memoriam” site created by Pomona College provides a fine glimpse into the effect he had on those he taught and influenced. One comment offered by Sean Pollack is particularly poignant: “We mourn for a humane and generous teacher and lover of the language.” [KMG]

The first link will take interested parties to the New York Times’ obituary for David Foster Wallace which appeared in print this Monday. The second link will lead visitors to a remembrance of Wallace from fellow writer David Lipsky. Moving on, the third link leads to a Syracuse Post-Standard piece from this Tuesday about Wallace’s time in Syracuse in the early 1990s. The fourth link leads to the previously mentioned Pomona College “In Memoriam” site created for Wallace. The fifth link leads to a special edition of “Politics of Culture” hosted by bookworm Michael Silverblatt. Joined by book critic Anthony Miller they discuss Wallace’s impact on fiction, his generation, and American culture. In addition, a collection of interviews with Wallace culled from the archives of KCRW’s “Bookworm” program is also available. In terms of celebrating Wallace’s life and writing, the sixth link is a very welcome find indeed. It contains links to many of his non-fiction pieces, including his very observant and wonderful take on a cruise-line adventure, “Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise”. The last and final link leads to a transcript of the honest and insightful commencement address that Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005. [KMG]

>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2008. http://scout.wisc.edu/

What’s the Funniest Novel Ever? - Paper Cuts Blog - NYTimes.com:
“In Rolling Stone’s new comedy issue, prominent comedians are asked to name the ‘funniest movie ever’ and the ‘funniest TV ever.’ “

And so, asks David Kelly on the New York Times book blog, what’s the funniest novel ever?

Here are some of the books nominated by the editors of the Times’s Book Review:

• “Lucky Jim” (which got the most votes),
• David Lodge’s “Small World”
• “The Code of the Woosters”
• “Leave It to Psmith”
• “Bech: A Book”
• “Sabbath’s Theater”
• Carl Hiaasen’s novels
• Jim Harrison’s early novels (“Warlock,” “A Good Day to Die”)
• Richard Russo’s “Straight Man”
• Michael Chabon’s “Wonder Boys”
• “Catch-22″
• “Candy”

Of course, Kelly points one, we must differentiate between “the greatest comic novel (“Don Quixote”? “Tristram Shandy”? “Ulysses”?) and the novel you find the funniest.” He adds that, while “A Confederacy of Dunces” isn’t great literature, Ignatius J. Reilly cracks him up.

So, what’s the funniest novel you’ve ever read? Post a comment here.