In 2004, Nicola Nikolov, an émigré to the U.S. in 1976 from communist Bulgaria, walked into William Dailey Rare Books in Los Angeles with a small archive of letters.Briefly recounting a dark biography past and reduced, if freer, circumstances present, he told of his life as a published Bulgarian author and his difficulty establishing a writing career for himself in the United States. It was extremely important to him that his writing be accepted.In August of 1978, he wrote, heart in hand, two-page long, well-written, typed letters to a small number of American novelists, with full, dire biographical details, limning...
J.D. Salinger Files Lawsuit From Grave
BOOK PATROL ALERT: SALINGER DIES, FILES LAWSUIT.Reclusive and litigious author J.D. Salinger, just hours after having been reported dead by the New York Times, appeared in ethereal form in New York Superior Court to file suit against the Times and a number of other major media outlets for the unauthorized reporting of his demise. Cornered in a men's room stall shortly thereafter, Mr. Salinger responded by sliding a written mimeographed statement under the door to waiting reporters, in which he stated:"Reports of my death are MINE and MINE ALONE, and any unauthorized reporting of this alleged event will be considered...
When "Little Women" and "Little Men" Get Together, Hubba-Hubba
True first editions of Little Women and Little Men in the publisher's original cloth.“I plod away, through I don't enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls, or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it... Sent twelve chapters to Mr. N [Thomas Niles, her editor at Roberts Brothers]. He thought it dull; so do I. But I work away and mean to try the experiment; for lively, simple books are very much needed for girls, and perhaps I can supply the need.” - Journals of Louisa May Alcott, 1868.Another...
Albert Camus in Grave Condition, France Holds Its Breath
The author at rest.Albert Camus is in the midst of a post-existential crisis.President Nicolas Sarkozy of France wants to transfer the remains of the writer and Nobel-laureate to the Panthéon, the Paris monument to some of the great men and women of France and one of the nation's most hallowed burial places. Camus is currently residing in the cemetery of Lourmarin, in the Luberon area of Provence, his birthplace.The gall, says Camus’s son, Jean, who asserts that interring his father’s remains at the Panthéon would be contrary to his father’s wishes and does not want to have his legacy put...
When Did Walt Disney Write A Christmas Carol?
Disney's A Christmas CarolWalt Disney has gotten a bad rap.We now know that “The Great Homogenizer,” who, as master of The House that Mouse Built, rose to fame by smoothing out the difficult and potentially offensive edges to any story he came into contact with lest anyone's sensibilities be injured, led a double life.Recent advances in forensic bibliography, as reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Dubious Literary Scholarship, have definitively proven that Walt Disney was an honest-to-gosh litterateur.Walt Disney's Mary PoppinsLong thought to be a mere animator (though he, in reality, didn’t do much, if any, of...