L’Exception Française — The Guardian on an exhibition in Paris celebrating the centenary of French publisher Gallimard:
Gaston [Gallimard] himself always protested that he had never had any ambition or even vocation to be a publisher. And when in 1910 he was invited to join the “adventure” of the Nouvelle revue française (Nrf), it was an example of what became a rule, letting his friends “guide his life”. Modest, somewhat detached, well turned-out and above all, perhaps, “without side”, he was to prove a magnet for writers of violently contrasting aesthetic and political allegiances. He had charm, and he had luck. He drew towards him, and elected to that most exalted of circles, the comité de lecture, such arbiters of literary taste and intellectual vigour as Jacques Rivière, Jean Paulhan, André Malraux, Albert Camus and Raymond Queneau.
Gallimard, 1911-2011: Un siècle d’édition is at the Bibliothèque nationale de France until 3 July, 2011.
Dry Eyed — David L. Ulin revisits James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce for the LA Times:
“Mildred Pierce” is less a work of noir than it is a straightforward realist novel: dry-eyed, unsentimental, in which a woman finds grace, of a kind, first by surpassing her limitations and then by recognizing them. That’s a metaphor for what it means to be a grown-up, for what it means to have to take care of a family, to sacrifice in the name of a greater good. It’s also an acute portrait of a society in transition — that of Los Angeles between the wars.
A Map of Wrong Turns — Robert Darnton breaks down why the Google Books settlement failed for the NYRB:
The cumulative effect of these objections, elaborated in 500 memoranda filed with the court and endorsed in large part by Judge Chin’s decision, could give the impression that the settlement, even in its amended version, is so flawed that it deserves to be pronounced dead and buried. Yet it has many positive features. Above all, it could provide millions of people with access to millions of books. If the price were moderate, the benefit would be extraordinary, and the result would give new life to old books, which rarely get consulted from their present locations on the remote shelves or distant storage facilities of research libraries… How can these advantages be preserved without the accompanying drawbacks?
See also: John Naughton on the settlement in The Observer.
Geographic Ingredients — An interesting article by Alison Arieff on communities of local manufacturers for The New York Times:
“For decades we have developed a culture of disposability — from consumer goods to medical instruments and machine tools. To fuel economic growth, marketers replaced longevity with planned obsolescence — and our mastery of technology has given birth to ever-accelerating unplanned obsolescence. I think there is increasing awareness that this is no longer sustainable on the scale we have developed.”
Interestingly, one of the companies Arieff mentions is DODOcase who use traditional bookbinding techniques to make beautiful cases for iPads and e-readers.
And finally…
A quick reminder that tomorrow, Thursday March 31st 2011, is the deadline for AIGA’s 50 Books/50 Covers competition. You can enter online here.