Joe Allstons diary
By Joe Allston Published: 5:06PM GMT twenty-five February 2010
* Salman Rushdie is to write a book about the 10 years he outlayed avoiding Iranian genocide squads. He says that usually right away his repository is accessible at the Emory University in Atlanta, where he is writer-in-residence, can he begin. The muster that non-stop this week provides a glance of the treasures: letters and emails from the last thirty years (with correspondents together with Bono and Barack Obama); Rushdies "doodles"; and photographs of him with Hollywood celebrities. Not usually that, the Emory whizzkids have combined simulations of Rushdies strange computers, so readers can try the authors "frequently used applications and printed matter structures". Was he a Personal Computer or Mac man? Says Rushdie: "From the impulse I concluded to do this, I knew it was going to be sort of embarrassing".
Why is sex so tough to put in to words? Literary Life Hugh Leonard The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri - examination Most homes have a computer. How most can exaggerate a book?* Whatever else isnt function in an additional still week for book deals, publishers still have an ardour for the present book. David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, voiced that his autobiography of Obama will be published in May, as will John Blakes book about the Cheryl/Ashley Cole marriage/divorce. Next to be announced: Andrew Rawnsley on the choosing result.
* Its calming to see a book catching the seductiveness of readers by the elementary action of being published rather brilliantly. Hamish Hamilton has brought out Paul Murrays 660-page second novel, Skippy Dies, in a box of 3 paperbacks, elegantly written by Leanne Shapton, herself the writer of a novel told in the form of an auction catalogue.
* Interview of the year so far: Susan Mansfield in Scotland on Sunday asked the producer Robin Robertson about his new collection, The Wrecking Light. "The themes are the common happy ones," he said: "Murder, rape, revenge, a flog in the genitals, diseases, witchcraft…" Except he did not contend "a flog in the genitals, diseases" but "congenital diseases".
