Leon Neyfakh profiles “UK wunderkind” Mitzi Angel, who’s crossed the pond to rejuvenate the FSG-owned American cousin of venerable UK publisher Faber & Faber.

Peter Manso, who, as the Times today puts it, “has always courted controversy to promote his books,” finds himself in the middle of one he didn’t quite court. The story reads like a miniseries script: a murdered fashion writer, the (wrongly?) convicted trashman with a 76 IQ, the part-time-local writer accusing the police of corruption, finding himself at the wrong end of a weapons charge ... juicy stuff. But the best part is Manso’s explanation for the loaded assault rifle that might land him in jail. He calls it “a literary affection”: “Listen, [editor] Michael Korda had one, Hunter Thompson had one, I thought it would be cool.”

“I’d be willing to bet ... that not a single person anywhere has ever — EVER! — grown up dreaming of one day becoming a ghost-writer.” That’s from the opening paragraph of an insightful essay by author Steve Kettman for Powell’s about the role of a ghostwriter. His focus is what it means to do the job well, and he makes a great case for ghostwriting as a respectable craft in its own right.

Peter Austin, author of One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost, lists the top ten endangered languages in the Guardian. Many of the languages on the list are not related to any known language and have very complicated syntaxes and grammars. For example, take Yuchi (spoken in Oklahoma by five people all older than 75):

Yuchi nouns have 10 genders, indicated by word endings: six for Yuchi people (depending on kinship relations to the person speaking), one for non-Yuchis and animals, and three for inanimate objects (horizontal, vertical, and round).

Guugu Yimidhirr, an Australian aboriginal language, also sounds pretty complex:

Guugu Yimidhirr (like some other Aboriginal languages) is remarkable for having a special way of speaking to certain family members (like a man’s father-in-law or brother-in-law) in which everyday words are replaced by completely different special vocabulary. For example, instead of saying bama dhaday for “the man is going” you must say yambaal bali when speaking to these relatives as a mark of respect and politeness.

(But we all know one word of Guugu Yimidhirr: kangaroo.)

I’ve been waiting for this the way my son waited for the last Harry Potter: Robert Caro’s masterwork, his four-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, may be nearing completion. Caro, who published Master of the Senate (the massive third volume of the biography) in 2003, told the AP that he had written the opening section of the book:

The historian says he has completed the opening section of his fourth LBJ book, filling hundreds of pages just to tell of Johnson’s brief, unhappy vice presidency under John Kennedy, concluding with Johnson being sworn in as president after Kennedy’s assassination. The last book will be “very long,” although likely less than the 1,000-plus length of “Master of the Senate.” He is reluctant to reveal details, but says the Kennedys will be “more than characters; they are protagonists in this book.”

In painstakingly photographing the Dead Sea Scrolls for the purpose of making them available online, “scientists and technicians are uncovering previously illegible sections and letters of the scrolls, discoveries that could have significant scholarly impact.”

Salman Rushdie says he’s happy with the apology and rewrite that came of his lawsuit against Ron Evans —he was in it for the truth, not the money. In pursuing the case, he apparently made use of a British legal strategy called Declaration of Falsity:

“I hope that maybe this device of the Declaration of Falsity is another way of pursuing these matters. Instead of going for the mega bucks you simply go to court for the important thing which is to establish what’s true and what’s not. I think it’s a clearer and simpler way of dealing with this and I’m very pleased we’ve been able to use it in this way.”

OK, but can you imagine the caseload of US courts if we had such a thing? I wonder how it works.

Esteemed blogger Maud Newton makes the most interesting case yet—OK maybe the only interesting case—for republishing a lengthy text in Twitter-sized bursts:

So Paradise Lost, a sympathetic portrait of Satan, has always held a particular fascination for me. ... I’ve been wanting to do a close re-reading ... And because I want to revisit Paradise Lost as a writer — to try to understand exactly how Milton makes God’s nemesis so complex and compelling — I decided to experiment with the capsule dose.

She’s, of course, not alone. You can follow Paradise Lost, Moby-Dick and William Blake.

I guess I always assumed that funds raised through those Friends of the Library sales went toward new books for the library in question. But at least one library—in Newport Beach CA—is thinking outside that particular box. They’ve recently unveiled their Sun and Sea Discovery Garden.

Here’s the sort of thing you just don’t get to see often enough: Richard Dawkins reads his hate mail. Such language! (via)

The Boston Globe lists the top ten New England literary journals, two of which (Ploughshares and Redivider) originate at Emerson College.

A few good author links for you:

Rose Tremain talks to the WSJ about “immigration, dish washing and The Road Home.”

Ed Champion recently interviewed Paul Auster for his Bat Segundo Show. (via)

And if you didn’t already see it in the forum, don’t miss Joseph O’Connor’s tribute to John McGahern, with fantastic anecdote about his own “first story.” (For more on O’Connor, read the Readerville interview.)

I’m pleased to report that Blogs.com has posted its first book-related Top 10 list—mine! I’m so happy to see books making their way into the mix that I don’t even mind them misspelling my name. Thanks for listening, Anil et al.

As the pendulum swings back, and more and more human communication is once again done in some written form, new Utopian ideals seem to be forming. As recent news of the Stupid Filter and now YouTube Comment Snob demonstrate, many are those who envision a text world where the rantings of lunatics and trolls are automatically screened out, leaving only the reasoned voices to be heard. But how do you quantify reason? In the absence of “real AI,” these entry-level filters pick on spelling, capitalization and punctuation to decide what gets through. The pros and cons are fairly obvious: Sure, it would be great if people felt they needed to take grammar and spelling seriously if they want their ideas heard, but does the absence of those skills mean the speakers are incapable of contributing valuable thoughts? And if these filters take hold, how long before “real AI” starts getting applied to everyday conversation? 

The AP reports an interesting trend on campuses nationwide: the elimination of cafeteria trays. Motivated by Earth Day celebrations and cost-cutting mandates, schools are saving thousands of gallons of water a day (and a corresponding amount of detergent) while leaving it to diners to figure out how to get their meals from the line to the table. (One positive side effect is a reduction in food waste.) The most amusing sentence in the piece: “Students will have to find another way to sled in the winter.” But perhaps that’s the answer to the unasked question: What’s to become of all those abandoned plastic trays?