Helen DeWitt's Blog, page 58

Award in Environmental Journalism for Ilya Gridneff

Ilya has just received an award in environmental journalism for his reporting on the carbon trading market, story here.

unaccustomed as i am

TARARTRAT has posted an audio clip from John Chris Jones' talk about the Internet and Everyone at café ck on 2 October, with a brief introduction by me. John Chris is poised, self-possessed, articulate; I, on the other hand, seem to have entered the 2-minute 'you know I mean' babble competition. (Just how many times is it possible to say 'you know' in a single sentence? Hard to say, but I think Caroline Kennedy's record has been beaten handily.)

So this is, of course, horribly embarrassing - I...

the 140-character solution

Alan Rusbridger on Twitter and Trafigura and John Wilkes. (Trafigura tried to have the Guardian silenced by injunction.)

But the plan began to unravel rather rapidly on Monday when it transpired that an MP, Paul Farrelly, had tabled a question about the injunction and the awkward document in parliament. That was bad enough, what with the nuisance of 300-odd years of precedent affirming the right of the press to report whatever MPs say or do. There was a tiresomely teasing story on the...

Camfed

Got this email today from Camfed

Dear Helen DeWitt,

On Wed., Oct. 7, the Case Foundation, Parade Magazine and Causes.com launched America's Giving Challenge, a competition designed to encourage more people to participate in philanthropy. Don't worry, you don't have to be in America to participate, and we're calling on our supporters worldwide to join in!

The terms are simple: The charity on Causes.com with the most individual donations by Nov. 7 wins the $50,000 prize. In order to send more...

Sweet Thames, flow invisibly

Design Observer on the Tube map sans Thames. Ken Garland's book, Mr Beck's Underground Map, is one of my favourites, by the way - a must-have for design fanatics.

bleg

Does anyone know what the hourly rental charge would have been for an IBM Selectric Composer?

sweetness & light

Mithridates Agonistes.

not in the room

A C Danto has a new book out on Andy Warhol, review of this and others by Richard Dorment at the NYRB.

someone is WRONG on the internet...

(I'm couchsurfing chez TARARTRAT because John Chris Jones is in town, so yes, a rare chance to right wrongs on the Internet instead of, you know, finishing a book...)

Andrew Sullivan is attacking my former editor, Jonathan Burnham, for, he claims, lying about Sarah Palin's contribution to her new book. A 400-page book has been handed in, turnaround 2-4 months (accounts vary). SP 'worked with' a ghostwriter, Lynn Vincent. Dirty work at the crossroads. Why not just come out and say that SP didn...

lists

Edmond Caldwell on Contra James Wood has a piece on The Millions' new Top 20 list for the new millennium.

I think EC has slightly missed the problem.

I got an email a while back from The Millions asking me to nominate my top 5 books for the new millennium, with the following constraints: they must be fiction, they must be available in English. The idea was, The Millions would then tabulate all votes and come up with a top 20.

So. If some of the most interesting writing I've read has been in a ...