Ian McEwan pulls a Kaavya Viswanathan?

The Times reports today that author Ian McEwan is under scrutiny for passages in his bestselling Atonement that bear striking similarity to those from a memoir by romance novelist Lucilla Andrews, who died last month from cancer. The lines in question regard medical procedures -- check out McEwan’s take: “In the way of medical treatments, she had already dabbed gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on a cut and painted lead lotion on a bruise.” And now here’s Andrews’s: “Our ‘nursing’ seldom involved more than dabbing gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on cuts and scratches, lead lotion on bruises and sprains.”

Unlike this summer’s lit scandal involving Harvard freshman Kaavya Viswanathan, Opal Mehta, huge chunks of plagiarized young-adult copy, and a lost two-book deal for half a million bucks, this dust-up seems more apt to disappear. Everyone involved (publishers, agents, McEwan himself) is using words like “discourtesy” to describe the situation, rather than blatant, all-out plagiarism.

This isn’t the first time McEwan’s been accused of pilfering other people’s work, though. Critics suggested similarities between the plot of McEwan’s first novel, The Cement Garden, and Julian Gloag’s Our Mother’s House.

The Times calls the timing “tantalizing” as it coincides with the filming of Atonement, starring Kiera Knightley.

SO LONG, AND GOOD LUCK

Edward R. Murrow hosted the first This I Believe radio program in the 1950s, which he introduced by musing, “What truths can a human being afford to furnish the cluttered nervous room of his mind with, when he has no real idea how long a lease he has on the future?” So very Murrow. The program asked Americans to explain their most closely held beliefs; it was recently resurrected by public-radio guru JAY ALLISON and his producer, Dan Gediman. Allison solicits submissions from ordinary folks rather than limiting it to household names. The result is This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women — the NPR junkie’s version of Chicken Soup for the Soul. New essays are interspersed with original compositions, so the stories range from statements by a Burmese immigrant to a piece by Hellen Keller. WGBH’s TONY KAHN and author ALAN LIGHTMAN join Allison for a Books & Brews reading at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newtonville | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.

WHY SHE WAKES EARLY

It’s not that THOMAS CAHILL writes the Reader’s Digest version of history, but he does have the ability to cut through the doldrums of thesis speak and sprinkle in more than a few pop-culture comparisons. Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe offers an accessible journey through the development of early Roman Catholic thought. Scholarly without being stuffy is a tough line to draw — the book’s sweet color illustrations certainly help. Screw Medieval Times (the restaurant) — just grab a bloody leg of lamb and go hang out with Cahill at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St, Brookline | 6 pm | $2 | 617.734.2501.

It Came from Below the Belt is a book by Bradley Sands that falls into the fiction genre known as bizarro. It features a human-swallowing giraffe, time travel, and a penis with presidential hopes. Earlier this month, Bradley read at the Coolidge Corner Theatre as an opener to one of their midnight movie screenings. Ian Sands, editorial assistant here at the Phoenix, is Bradley’s little brother. He wrote about what it’s like to have your older bro come to town to give a reading. The essay begins here; you should read the whole thing.

“My brother wrote a book. It's a good book, especially considering it’s his first. But that’s not to say that it’s for everyone, most of all my mother, my father, my uncle, my grandmother, my aunt, and anyone else related to me. I won't go into great detail as to why it’s not for everyone, except to say the plot involves one Grover Goldstein who’s swallowed by a giraffe and finds himself in the future where he helps his severed, sentient penis capture the presidential election.”

Click here to read “Insects in my stomach: What it’s like to watch your older brother give a reading”

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Not happening

O.J.'s gag-inducing memoir If I Did It will not be in book stores. His interview with Judith Regan will not be broadcast on Fox, and the network loses an inch or two off its usual douchbaggishness. But best of all, the entire publishing industry gets to feel like moral code makers for a day. We rejoice.

LISA MOORE has already paid her dues in Canada, what with being a bestselling author and a columnist for the Toronto Globe & Mail. Now, she makes her American debut with Alligator, which follows 17-year-old Colleen, who dreams of becoming an eco-terrorist, Colleen’s grief-stricken mother, Beverly, and her career-obsessed Aunt Madeleine. Frank -- similarly preoccupied and heartbroken -- becomes enamored of Colleen and entangled with a Russian gangster, and that takes Alligator into full-on attack mode. Moore’s bold prose keeps the tension pulsing; she reads at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.

Nothing better to start our Monday than this SNL parody of departing Seventeen mag editor Atoosa Rubenstein gobbling makeup and telling teen girls to stop eating for charity. (via Gawker)

Frequent readers of this literary blog know that we are somewhat, ehem, fixated and irrevocably OBSESSED with the Harry Potter series and its accompanying films. While the books have never failed to disappoint us, we've had lots of issues with the movies -- especially the last one, Goblet of Fire. Don't get us started.

And yet...

With word that the latest Hary Potter film installment -- that would be The Order of the Phoenix, in case you care -- is in now in post-production, we can't stop ourselves from getting all hopeful and misty-eyed at its potential to win us over. Especially since Harry is finally going to get some.

To wit:

Holy shit, it's the first screen cap of Harry and Cho kissing! It makes us weep with the suggestion of their fleeting innocence. But what the hell is up with the lack of tongues?! Doesn't Harry realize he's got CEDRIC to compete with? Jeez.

Now that we got that out of our system, we can go back to dreading how director David Yates will butcher this one.

Thanks for indulging us.

In between trying really hard not to nod off (whoever cranked up the heat at the Brattle, heads up -- it was hella sweaty in there), we took a general sense of great pleasure in sitting in a big room full of New Yorker dorks last night. Ah, NYer-heads are a great breed. The jolly Matthew Diffee, Drew Dernavich, Eric Lewis, and we <3 him long-time Phoenix cartoonist David Sipress were on hand to showcase the cream of their crap. (And make poop jokes.)

They answered lots of questions during an ongoing Q&A session:

Q: How do you know when Bob Mankoff likes your stuff?
A: If he spends more than two seconds looking at it. Literally.

Q: How do you get your cartoons into the magazine (basically a cloaked version of the real question: Why The Fug are my Cartoons Still Sitting in the Slush Pile of Doom?!!!!!11)
Answer: The New Yorker is very particular. Keep trying! <evil laughter>

They showed us witty slides of what The New Yorker's Cartoon Bank should sell (Cartoon casket liners, artificial hearts, etc. etc). They made more poop jokes. They screened an INSANE video made by Mankoff that ended in him dying from a rejected liver transplant. That man adores being a grump.

They did some ridic improv cartoon drawing (Jews against Christians -- their idea) which involved pigs, lawyers, and shopping gurus.

Oh, and they presented us with the best of their rejected cartoons, which you will not, at any point, be seeing in The Magazine. Weeee!

 We have to go turn 40 years old now. Later younguns.

Hey, wanna hear something absolutely repulsive?

Via The Book Standard: 

"Simpson is indeed publishing a book, O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened, which will be released on Nov. 30, the New York Times reported yesterday. Fox will also take advantage of the scandal by broadcasting two one-hour interviews with Simpson during the last week of sweeps, on Nov. 27 and 29. The television special is being produced by Regan publisher Judith Regan, who is also conducting the interview.

'This is an interview that no one thought would ever happen,' said Mike Darnell, executive vice president for alternative programming for Fox, as quoted in the Times. 'It’s the definitive last chapter in the trial of the century.'"

Gawker notes that the "working title" isn't "working so well."

Is this guy actually getting $3.5 million for this trash, as The National Equirer scooped? Judith Regan, wtf do you think you're doing? Have fun trying to live your life after this.

We don't want to post a pic of O.J., so here's one of Arrested Development's Gob Bluth doing a magic trick instead. We heart him. Enjoy.

Aside from the Steve Almond/James Joyce dirty business at Great Scott that Nina will be attending (and we can't wait to hear what she thinks of Almond's recitation), here are four more options for your Wednesday. Two of them are naughty omg!

How did Tom Brady go from being a sixth-round draft pick to the Patriots’ star quarterback and one of football’s most celebrated players? Ah, the warm-fuzzy story of the underdog. Sports journalist, former Phoenix staffer, and NPR contributor CHARLES P. PIERCE tells the tale in Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything, and he reads (did we mention that he’s a totally funny guy?) at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.

Sure, sad little electronica musicians cum pseudo-social-justice bloggers (we’re looking at you, Moby) sometimes think they know how to inspire change through the written word, but the “AMERICAN PROTEST LITERATURE” panelists actually do. British author ZOE TRODD discusses her American Protest Literature (leave it to the Brits to know us better than we know ourselves), TIMOTHY PATRICK MCCARTHY reads Eugene V. Debs’s Statement to the Court, JOHN STAUFFER presents the images and photos that have altered public opinion, and playwright DORIC WILSON discusses excerpts from his Street Theatre. Cause a stir at the Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington St, Boston | 6:30 pm | free | 617.428.6439.

Remember that Seinfeld episode where Elaine doesn’t get the joke in a New Yorker cartoon and asks an editor and he doesn’t get it either? Could the ones they turned down have been better? A 90 percent rejection rate of submissions (even for regulars) prompted contributor Matthew Diffee to salvage lost gems scribbled by the mag’s top 30 cartoonists in The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker. He’ll present them as part of a live comedy show with colleagues Drew Dernavich, David Sipress, and Eric Lewis at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 7:30 pm | $15 | 617.876.6387. (We'll be there, probably not in the front row because there are rumors of audience participation and we tend to have a blushing problem. Report tk next week!)

Last but not least, the superfresh Boston Phoenix Author Series continues with GEORGE PROCHNIK's Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam, and the Purpose of American Psychology. In other words? More sex talk. Lots of it. The reading, signing, and reception is at the Burren, 247 Elm St, Somerville | 6:30 pm | free | 617.776.6896.

In letters to his wife Nora, James Joyce addresses her as “my naughty little fuckbird,” “my little cuntie,” and “my sweet little dirty farter.” And that’s the G-rated stuff. Tomorrow night, Steve Almond (who else?) leads a reading of Joyce’s filthy letters with a team of local writers and musicians; Hallelujah the Hills frontman Ryan Walsh, Hands and Knees, and the Juliet Kilo provide musical interludes to the literary raunch. That's at Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, in Allston.

In the spirit of politics and exhaustion, today's Publisher's Lunch newsletter threw another hissy over this brief New York Times piece on Barack Obama's "surprise best seller," entitled The Audacity of Hope.

Says the Times:

"But its rapid rise to the No. 1 spot on the New York Times nonfiction list next Sunday, placing the author, the freshman Democratic senator from Illinois, ahead of heavyweight authors like John Grisham, Bill O’Reilly and even Bob Woodward, is something of a publishing stunner."

Pub Lunch retorts:

"More Cutting-Edge NYT Journalism: Obama a 'Surprise Best Seller'; 'A Stunner'
Barack Obama's previous book was a NYT bestseller for over 40 weeks (including 4 consecutive weeks at No. 1) in 2004 and 2005. After his election to the Senate, Crown and Random House Children's made a $1.9 million deal with him. Three weeks ago he was adored on Oprah, featured on the covers of major magazines, and booksellers across the country were selling thousands of tickets to signings and turning away customers (breaking records set by Bill Clinton). Now, finally, the NYT takes notice. But that's not enough. They conjure it as 'a surprise best seller' and 'something of a publishing stunner' (And they credit reviews from likes of their own Michiko as having 'certainly helped drive sales.')

And they wonder why newspapers are in trouble."

Pub Lunch, you're usually so perky and upbeat. What's with all the NYT haterade?

Also, thanks to the Bookslut blog, we've only just discovered The Guardian's Digested Read feature. It's hilarious. Here's a stunning excerpt from the latest, concerning Victoria Beckham's new book, That Extra Half an Inch. Posh, we had no idea you were such a cad!

Quoth The Guardian:

"I have no qualifications to write this book; that's why I've got someone else to do it for me. But let me share my insights anyway. First I'd like to knock something on the head. The idea that, once you have a bit of money, you start wearing couture and stilettos all day and live on caviar and champagne is just nonsense. They've both got far too many calories."

And what sound advice! We heart bargain shopping, too!

"I'm a great fan of vintage T-shirts. A word about vintage, though: it's easy to get confused about the difference between vintage and second-hand and that's because they're basically the same. If you want to be safe, look for something that's ridiculously overpriced. Blouses and halter-necks don't really do it for me, though you can wear them if you want to look like you shop at Primark, but nobody should be without a £1,000 Chanel cardigan. Have a look in charity shops if you can't afford a new one."

Now, if only we had your motivation when it comes to not eating and looking like a living corpse and befriending Katie Holmes for NO APPARENT REASON except to suck her into your creepy fembot cult. Oh, we're just jealous? Well, maybe we are, Mrs. Becks. But just remember how you used to roll:

Enough said, yeah?

THE HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST

Not everybody hearts AMY SEDARIS (particularly reviewers of her latest film, Strangers with Candy), but we’ve been glued to the trajectory of her career ever since reading about her bizarre lifestyle in brother David’s essays. Amy’s first solo book project, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, harks back to the days when a hostess’s duties were “charmingly old-fashioned, like courtship or back-alley abortions.” Her tongue may be stapled to her cheek, but I Like You does come with practical advice and recipes -- even if some etiquette not-to-dos would make Ms. Emily Post roll over, and then projectile-vomit, in her grave. You can ask her about that and about her imaginary live-in boyfriend, Ricky, when she reads at Borders Books and Music, 10-24 School St, Boston | 5:30 pm | free | 617.557.7188, or at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 9:30 pm | $3 | 617.499.2012.

FACIST DREAMS

Leslie Epstein, director of the Boston University Creative Writing Program and an wonderful novelist in his own right (we lurved San Remo Drive but unforch don't have time to tell you more about the dude right now -- Google him, the answers are all on the Internets) will be reading from his latest, The Eighth Wonder of the World, at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | Free | 617.566.6660. Read Dana Kletter's Phoenix review here.

Seventeen EIC Atoosa Rubenstein is leaving the girlie rag to "launch her own teen-centered Web business, write a book and start a consulting firm specializing in the youth market."

We don't mourn her departure, seeing as we stopped reading Seventeen when we were 13, and realized that life would never been as bubble gum sweet as its editors kept saying it could be. We thumbed through a recent issue in CVS -- with Lauren "LC" Conrad on the cover -- and aside from her juicy insider tidbits about her relationship with Jason, nothing wowed us. Not the fashion. Not the rest of the features. In fact, we were completely turned off by the voice, supposedly one of its biggest strengths. Does talking like a self-entitled adolscent therapist, with a pip-squeaky, pep-talking OMG YOU CAN DO IT tone really come off as accessible to teen girls? Really, it shouldn't.

Alternative suggestion?

Read JANE. Yeah, we know it isn't Sassy. But since Brandon Holley took over, we've been hardcore loving on it. Except for that whole get the virgin laid blog. That shit's just sad.

Anyway, go read the JANE editors' ridiculously useful fashion tips on the Dress & Primp blog. But don't do it because you have to. Do it because you know you really you want to.

Option I:

AMONG THE BELIEVERS
In the vibrant San Francisco literary scene, you haven’t made it unless you can play six degrees (or less) to David Eggers. HEIDI JULAVITS can do it in just two. She edits the Believer with author Vendela Vida, who’s married to Eggers, the force behind McSweeney’s and the student writing center 826 Valencia. Anyway, Julavits’s third novel, The Uses of Enchantment, traces the aftermath of 16-year-old Mary’s alleged abduction from a New England prep school and her subsequent push into therapy. Everyone from Michael Chabon to A.M. Homes praises Julavits’s gifts as a prose stylist and says this book is her best yet; find out for yourself when she reads at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.

Option II:

GIVE IT YOUR BEST
Another year, another “best of” essay collection. Yawn. Well, Best of American Essays 2006 guest editor LAUREN SLATER has selected “birthing, dying, and all the business in between” as the theme this go-round, so this isn’t your usual batch of self-reflective reflections. Contributors include newcomer Laurie Abraham and her “Kinsey and Me” plus guaranteed-to-please veterans like SUSAN ORLEAN, who chronicles her hunt for a stolen border collie. Orlean will read along with Slater and series editor ROBERT ATWAN at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Now at your local Urban Outfitters

Jessica Crispin's latest Book Standard piece, which questions Borders' refusal to stock a promising YA title by Aury Wallington, is interesting.

But not nearly as interesting as Selling Literature to Go With Your Lifestyle. Non-bookstore stockage of niche titles hits the NYT's front page today. Did anyone else know that you can buy trendy hipster tomes in Urban Outfitters? Who would've thunk. If your kitchy gift book doesn't sell well in an actual bookstore, just ask your publisher to have it stocked in a place where you can also purchase an insanely overpriced pair of skinny jeans and pre-torn "Everybody Loves a Whatever Girl" tees. Hooray!

This quote is just psychotic:

"At Anthropologie on Sunday, Ruth Rennert lounged among the throw pillows on a mustard-yellow sofa -- not far from that display of yellow sweaters and books -- leafing through Jackie: A Life in Pictures, about the former first lady. Shopping for books in a setting like this, she said, is preferable to enduring the hustle and bustle of big bookstores."

Hey Ruth, ever heard of an independent bookstore? We hear they're the new Barnes & Noble, except you can't buy your Starbucks there. Darn that hustle and bustle!

Another winner that chills us to the bone. Very Chuck Palahniuk:

 “You walk into Restoration Hardware and you want the couch and the vase and the nightstand, and then you want the two books that are on the nightstand. The books complete the story.”

Not surprisingly, Publisher's Marketplace freaks out:

I Can't Believe this is a Front Page Article In the Paper of Record
The specious passing off of a long-term business development as a recent "trend." The attempt to build a causal link to "statistics" that don't mean anything anyway. The age-old pejoratives (why are publishers always "pushing their books" and "peddling"?) And what high school English wouldn't go to town with a clause like this by itself: "even chi-chi clothing boutiques where high-end literary titles are used to amplify the elegant lifestyle they are attempting to project."

And yet, there is still a graph or two with some facts: "Simon & Schuster is urging its sales representatives to punctuate their bookstore rounds with impromptu pitches at promising shops and markets they spot in their travels.... And HarperCollins plans to design books for its spring catalog in shades of 'margarita and sangria,' greens and reds that store owners have told the publisher will dominate that season's color palette. At Penguin Group, sales representatives have begun pushing into rural areas that are short on big bookstores, selling at cattle auctions, among other places."

Counterbalanced, still, by this note, which gives you the impression that anyone can call up and order new jackets: "The Time Warner Book Group routinely changes the color or design of book jackets at a store's request so the book will color-coordinate with merchandise."

Seriously, we're LOLZ about that jacket art comment as well. It's like calling the TWBG the publishing version of a junior's department store sale rack where everything magically comes in various shades of mint green, bright pink, black (think: classy, not sleazy), and powder-puff blue. What if the merchandise looks like crap? Should the books blend with that, too?

From the inbox:

Quick Fiction, a magazine of tiny stories, releases its tenth issue in style on Thursday, November 9 at the Enormous Room in Cambridge at 7 pm. Dubbing the event "Double-Digit Debacle," the magazine celebrates five strong years in publishing with a release party featuring readings by Quick Fiction authors James Grinwis, Amy L. Clark, and Michael Thurston.

Previously: Quick Ficiton: Doing Good
Also: http://quickfiction.org/

A supergroup of writers get thoroughly nostalgic over food in Death By Pad Thai: And Other Unforgettable Meals. DOUGLAS BAUER edited this collection of essays by the likes of Andre Dubus III, Sue Miller, and Amy Bloom. Tonight, hear from Bauer and three other contributors: CLAIRE MESSUD has a sudden jolt of selective-memory when it comes down to telling a story about an incredible French meal, and local foodie/short-story eroticist STEVE ALMOND describes a dish of homemade pad thai made with Maine lobster, which, apparently, tastes amazing. MARGOT LIVESY discusses her distaste for mutton and mint sauce when she joins the rest for a masticating reading tomorrow night at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | 7:30 pm | Free | 617.244.6619.