Friday Finds

A few of my favorite things from the inter-webs I happened upon this week:

Russell Smith responds to the controversy around David Davidar's termination from Penguin Canada in "The Truth About Publishing: It's Full of Hotties". Don't let the title fool you. Smith is one of those guys who actually gets it: "But I have never in my whole career made a real pass at one of my colleagues or, I think, been flirtatious to the point of making someone seriously worried about my attention. Even when I was single. Perhaps I’m getting old, but believe it or not, I actually value my colleagues’ professional abilities more than their beauty. " How refreshing.

A big thank you goes to Carolyn Kellogg for writing such a great response to Lee Siegel's claim that fiction is dead. This article is full of solid arguments and witty responses; a must read. She picks apart Siegel's claims sentence by sentence. "Siegel: It is only when an artistic genre becomes small and static enough to scrutinize that a compensating abundance of commentary on that genre springs into existence." If writing critically about an art form indicates that it is in its decline, that means there hasn't been a rock song worth listening to since critic Lester Bangs died in 1982, and that filmmaking ended with the 1965 publication of Pauline Kael's "I Lost It At the Movies."

If you've ever had an intimate relationship with the slush pile (those of you who have know what I'm talking about) you will love Slush Pile Hell, where a literary agent posts the funniest bits of inquires and comments on them. My favorite so far:

Do you ever get the feeling that we are all machines being controlled by someone or something beyond our control?

Katie Holmes, I’m just a literary agent. I can’t help you with your husband issues.

Friday Finds is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.