R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut

Literary legend Kurt Vonnegut has died at 84 years old. There comes a time when great authors will all leave us, but it is always a sad day and fills us with great loss.

Two great pieces:

KURT VONNEGUT: 1922-2007
Darkly comic novelist a counterculture hero
San Francisco Chronicle

Novelist Vonnegut Remembered for His Black Humor
NPR

Writer Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84
BBC News

Writers Rooms

Ever wanted to take a peek into the offices/writing spaces of beloved authors? Check out the UK Guardian's page featuring various writers' rooms with commentary by each author. I am a little surprised at how neat nearly all of them seem to be, but it could be they just tidied up before the photographer came.

The Champion is Revealed!

Check out the final results of The Morning News Tournament of Books.

It isn't any surprise and sure didn't feel like any competition was actually occuring. With words like "trounced" being used and some of the best bloggers, reviewers (and even a few authors) weighing in on the final match-up with wit & without holding back, the summaries are worth reading even if you weren't already convinced that The Road is one of the greatest literary masterworks of all time, let alone of last year.

The Morning News Tournament of Books, sponsored by Powell’s Books, is an annual battle royale amongst the top novels in “literary fiction” published throughout the year. (Source)

The Road and O!? Really?

Wow. Oprah's announcement today may have been missed by indie booksellers, but it was impossible to not see the paperback copies of Cormac McCarthy's The Road with the highly-recognizable sticker stuck on the front cover. We were joking today that when the housewives come in to pick up the book, be sure to suggest they also purchase a copy of Blood Meridian. Yes, we can be evil. But seriously folks, as incongruous as it might seem for these two names to be connected in perpetuity, the attention that will be brought McCarthy as a literary master is priceless.

My 10/3/06 review of The Road

Two other great links:
CormacMcCarthy's Venomous Fiction, 4/19/92 New York Times Interview
The Cormac McCarthy Society

William Styron Dies at 81

Prize-Winning Novelist William Styron Dies at 81
by Renée Montagne

Morning Edition, November 2, 2006 · Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Styron died Wednesday of pneumonia at a hospital in Martha's Vineyard, Mass. . He was 81.

Styron won the Pulitzer for The Confessions of Nat Turner, a fictional account of Nat Turner and the slave revolt of 1831. As a white, Protestant Southerner, Styron was criticized widely for his portrayal of the black hero.

His other works included Sophie's Choice, the award-winning novel about a Holocaust survivor from Poland, A Tidewater Morning, a collection of fiction pieces, and Lie Down In Darkness.

Styron also published a book of essays, This Quiet Dust, and a best-selling 1992 memoir, Darkness Visible, that chronicled his suicidal depression.

The liberal ex-Marine was also well-known for his advocacy of human rights.

SOURCE

Christopher Moore redux

The big Mooron himself on Talk of the Nation. After he is done with his current project, a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, he mentioned he's thinking it is time to take on Shakespeare. I am having a near-post-orgasm shiver just thinking of that pairing. That would be bloody marvelous!