Even Brill and Carl Icahn Can’t Ruin My Summer
Recently, we had a couple of days that summed up everything June has been supposed to be since the poet laureate of the Olduvai first took a stick and scraped symbols for “What is so rare” on a flat...
View ArticleHe Who Wears Failure Shoes Succeeds
The excerpt from Jonathan Franzen’s forthcoming third novel that appears in the spring issue of Conjunctions brings to mind the 19-page essay that he wrote for Harper’s in April 1996. Many novelists,...
View ArticleBellow, Marvelous, Monstrous, Scores the Right Biographer
Bellow: A Biography , by James Atlas. Random House, 686 pages, $35. Writers’ lives are boring, the axiom goes. Maybe someone should have come up with a corollary about great writers, whose lives often...
View ArticleAbbreviated Span of ‘Penguin Lives': Viking Pulls Out
The Penguin Lives boutique biography series-a collaboration between Viking publishing, former New York Times Magazine editor James Atlas and former deputy mayor and financier Kenneth Lipper-is kaput....
View ArticlePoor, Fractured Atlas Shoulders Failure and Envy
My Life in the Middle Ages: A Survivor’s Tale, by James Atlas. HarperCollins, 240 pages, $25.95. James Atlas used to really annoy me. He was a trustee of my college literary magazine, memorable for...
View ArticleSaul Bellow (1915-2005)
Saul Bellow, Nobel laureate and dean of Jewish-American fiction, passed away on Tuesday, April 5. He was 89. Bellow, in such novels as Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King,...
View ArticleMr. Bellow’s Planet: Amis, McEwan Snatch Saul’s Herring Soul
One opened The New York Times expectantly, two days after Saul Bellow’s death, ready for the Op-Ed tributes that seemed as certain to appear as The Times itself: Surely one or more of American...
View ArticleThe Critic as Pugilist, Champion of High Art
The cultural critic Lee Siegel is known as something of a terror for his slashing, razor-sharp essays and reviews. His savage eloquence has ticked off a lot of folk, and his not entirely deserved...
View ArticleAtlas Plugged! Indy Publisher Takes On Spineless Giants
Most Americans don’t care who puts out the books they read. Sure, they might have heard of Random House, and Simon & Schuster probably rings a bell. But when it comes to brand loyalty, the thinking...
View ArticleAtlas Navigates Publishing World by Branding His House
"It’s as if the publishing house was an author in its own right," James Atlas told the Observer’s Leon Neyfakh for today’s article on Atlas & Co.’s quest to brand their books. Doree Shafrir told...
View ArticleAmid Financial Turmoil, Atlas & Co. Postponing All Books on Spring ’09 List...
Due to prohibitive financial circumstances, the independent publishing house Atlas & Co. will not be able to publish the books scheduled for its spring 2009 list as planned, and will aim instead to...
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