The Korea Herald

Hwang to sue publisher over hoarding scandal

May 9, 2013

Author Hwang Sok-yong said he plans to sue Jaeum & Moeum, the publishing house accused of hoarding copies of his latest novel in an attempt to have it included in the bestseller list, for libel and financial and psychological damages, according to news reports.The author said he wants his best-selling novel “Yeowoolmoolsori” off the selves and that he is not involved with the publishing house’s alleged hoarding, after SBS current affairs show “In Depth 21” on Tuesday accused the publishing house
Author Hwang wants his book off the shelves after hoarding scandal

May 8, 2013

Celebrated author Hwang Sok-yong said he wants his best-selling novel “Yeowoolmoolsori” off the shelves after a TV program accused his publishing house, Jaeum & Moeum, of hoarding copies of the novel. Jaeum & Moeum CEO Kang Byung-cheol has offered to resign from his position. According to news reports, author Hwang said he was shocked and outraged to find out about the alleged hoarding and wants to cancel his deal with Jaeum & Moeum. “I wrote the novel ‘Yeowoolmoolsori’ to celebrate the 50th ann
Writing is like going to dark place: Murakami

May 7, 2013

KYOTO, Japan (AFP) ― Bestselling author Haruki Murakami said Monday that writing a novel is like descending to a very dark second basement of your psyche, when you are not even sure where the corridors are.In a rare public appearance by the publicity-shy but wildly popular writer, Murakami spoke at a seminar entitled “Observe soul, write soul” in the ancient city of Kyoto.“For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get in
Kentucky’s new poet laureate hears voices in sounds of silence

May 2, 2013

Writer Frank X Walker is driving to Alabama with a trunk full of books.The eight-hour trip is not out of the ordinary for Walker, who is promoting his latest collection of poems, “Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers” (University of Georgia Press, $16.95).Another job that will take him on the road starts this week: He is being installed as the 2013-14 Kentucky poet laureate, the first black writer and the youngest person to hold the post, in a ceremony as part of Kentucky Writers’ Day o
Grisham sequel to ‘A Time to Kill’ to be published in Oct.

May 2, 2013

NEW YORK (AP) ― The defense attorney in John Grisham’s first novel, “A Time to Kill,” is returning to the courtroom.Grisham’s new book, “Sycamore Row,” will be published Oct. 22, the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group announced Wednesday. Like “A Time to Kill,” it will feature Jake Brigance as a lawyer in a small Mississippi town. Knopf Doubleday promises a trademark Grisham tale of “intrigue, suspense and plot twists.”“A Time to Kill” was published in 1989 and sold modestly. But after “The Firm”
Mitch Albom switches publishers, has 3-book deal

May 2, 2013

NEW YORK (AP) ― Mitch Albom, one of the most popular U.S. authors, has a new publisher and a new novel coming this year.The author of “Tuesdays With Morrie” has a three-book deal with Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Albom’s previous publisher was the Disney-owned Hyperion.Harper told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Albom’s next book is called “The First Phone Call from Heaven.” The novel will tell of a small town where residents start receiving phone calls from those in th
Questions for author Ben Greenman

May 2, 2013

Have you ever seen a juggler on a moving sidewalk? Ben Greenman, whose latest novel, “The Slippage,” was published Tuesday, ponders this and other wonders of life.A novelist, short-story writer, humorist and magazine editor, Greenman has observed, proverbially speaking, all sorts of jugglers in all sorts of circumstances. The results of his observations earn him the on-spot tagline “a poet of romantic angst in contemporary American life.”“I want to run out onto the balcony of my apartment and ye
Resilience on, off the field

May 2, 2013

Hank Greenberg: The Hero of HeroesBy John Rosengren (New American Library)The game of baseball seemed grandly American in the 1930s. Players had cherubic names ― Birdie and Schoolboy, sounding like characters from a Broadway musical. Beneath the good times, though, breathed an awful hatred.In his new book, “Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes,” John Rosengren describes how the New York Yankees used to call up minor leaguers just to harass the Jewish baseball star from the bench.In the South, thin
Book offers glimmers of redemption

May 2, 2013

The Humanity ProjectBy Jean Thompson (Blue Rider Press)My friend Beth says that we are all “dented cereal boxes.” Even the best among us occasionally think dark thoughts, make bad decisions, hurt the people we love and turn a blind eye to the suffering of others. With godlike power, Jean Thompson, author of “The Humanity Project,” throws her dented (and entirely recognizable) characters into the crucible of the American recession to reveal what it means to be human: flawed, and yet somehow worth
Philip Roth receives ‘Literary Service’ award

May 1, 2013

NEW YORK (AP) ― Philip Roth’s latest honor was as much for what he has done for other writers as for his own work.Roth received the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award Tuesday night. He was cited for such novels as “Portnoy’s Complaint’’ and “American Pastoral,’’ but also for his advocacy in the 1970s and 1980s for writers in Czechoslovakia and other Eastern bloc countries during the Cold War. PEN, in the midst of a weeklong “World Voices Festival,’’ is an international writers’ organiza
Dramatist Stoppard says next play ‘may be my last’

Apr 28, 2013

PARIS (AFP) ― Tom Stoppard could call an end to his illustrious career as one of Britain’s leading playwrights, he revealed on Saturday, saying he was considering writing just one more play.“I might write one more play and give up because I am very slow...,” he told reporters at Paris’s Forum des Images cinema.“I am 75, I am 76 in a minute ... My brain cells are dying in their trillions,” he said, adding that he had started work on a new stage play. Stoppard, in addition to his critically acclai
Keeping up with California historian Kevin Starr

Apr 25, 2013

Asking Kevin Starr a question is like turning on a fire hose. First there’s a blast of erudition. Then, as his intellect gathers, information rushes out in a deluge. He’s talking, but it’s as if an invisible scholar inside his head is yanking books off shelves, throwing them open, checking the index, then racing off to find the next volume. On the outside, Starr is an avuncular 72-year-old, but his brain is sprinting like an Olympian.Amazingly, it’s possible to keep up.This may be Starr’s greate
Complex art of interpreting literature

Apr 25, 2013

In a comment on the art of reviewing and interpreting literary works, the English writer G.K. Chesterton wryly notes that “either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.” According to Chesterton, criticism either repeats something already said in the literary work, or reads something into the work that the writer never intended. In either case, the usefulness of critici
Elegant writing twists mark Rash’s stories

Apr 25, 2013

Nothing Gold Can StayBy Ron Rash (Ecco)When a prisoner on a chain gang is sent to the nearest farmhouse to fetch water in the backwoods of North Carolina, author Ron Rash sets the scene for a sterling collection of short stories in “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” They span a range of years and an even wider range of emotions.Rash’s 14 stories are broken into three sections and set in a variety of eras and places. He introduces a would-be hippie in the 1960s; college-bound sweethearts of today and their
Who should we blame for World War I?

Apr 25, 2013

July 1914: Countdown to WarBy Sean McMeekin (Basic Books)A Sarajevo chauffeur took a wrong turn, and Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip had his chance to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. In the resulting inferno of World War I, 9 million others died.The conventional wisdom of the last 100 years holds that Germany’s desire for empire and cultural hegemony turned Princip’s deed into an excuse for war. Barbara Tuchman’s famed history, “The Guns of August,” makes the most of this cas