• maud newton

    Professor Busted For "Pussy" Search

    Good news fusspots: The internet has brought everyone a new thing to get offended about! Editor and blogger Maud Newton (pictured) was today shaken up that someone arrived at her personal website by "searching for a colleague’s name + 'pussy.'" In case you don't already know, when you search for something in Google or Yahoo or whatever and click on one of the hits, your browser forwards the search terms to the destination site (by sending the whole referring Web address). Usually this isn't a big deal, because you're searching for something innocent, or sitting at home behind a quasi-anonymous internet connection. But the professor who hit Newton's site was not so careful: his first initial and last name are part of his internet address (let's just assume he's a dude), along with the name of the university where he works. Whoops! Luckily for the prof, Newton has not outed him, at least not yet. But she is all in a snit: More »
    06/25/08
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    Comment by MoeGolden: I'm not about to admit to being responsible for all of the Lockhart+Steele+nude searches on google. more » | Other threads

  • ask an expert

    Should Authors Hold Copyrights Forever?

    Sunday's Times featured an op-ed by author Mark Helprin arguing that authors (and their descendents) deserved copyrights in perpetuity for their work. While Helprin has written what is by far our favorite novel of all time, we are extremely wary of his political views, which can be found frequently on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, if that gives you any idea. Still, something about his argument seemed plausible, which deeply disturbed us. Knowing very little about the law, we turned to Maud Newton, who possesses the three most important qualities we look for in an expert on the subject: she is a writer, she is a former tax attorney, and she answers our e-mails. The discussion follows. More »
    05/24/07
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    By abalk

    Comment by Seeräuber Jenny: @sloppy_seconds: I'm well aware of the situation with "Happy Birthday." But I never actually noticed that the song was... more » | Other threads

  • the print v. web wars

    Book Folk Terrified Of Blogs On The Internets!

    Can print book coverage and literary blogs ever find a way to get along? Book blogger Maud Newton thinks so: "I find it kind of naïve and misguided to be a triumphalist blogger," she told Times book reporter Motoko Rich. "But I also find it kind of silly when people in the print media bash blogs as a general category, because I think the people are doing very, very different things." A good point, and one that's entirely lost on novelist Richard Ford.
    Mr. Ford, who has never looked at a literary blog, said he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. "Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership," Mr. Ford said, "in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn't."
    At least Richard doesn't pretend that he knows what he's talking about! That totally sets him apart from Washington Post book columnist Michael Dirda, who contributed a screed about his anti-blog feelings to his boss Marie Arana over on the National Book Critics Circle, uh, Blogspot blog. More »
    05/02/07
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    Comment by novelgobbler: Michael Dirda's diatribe has given rise to another loathesome internet venue. Although it didn't exist at the time of his comments,... more » | Other threads

  • books

    Someone Paid $1.8 Billion For A Company People Call "Hufty Mufty"

    We learned yesterday that Houghton Mifflin, the textbook publisher that also has a backlist of greats like Emerson and Thoreau, agreed to a nearly $1.8 billion buyout by Riverdeep Inc., a smaller firm whose complementary strength is in educational software. "They could have bought YouTube for that kind of . . . zzzzzzzz," we thought to ourself. Seriously, bo-ring. And then today, venerable litblogger Maud Newton shared this gem with us, courtesy of a fired Houghton Mifflin employee:
    Even though the company dropped me like a creepy date when [expurgated], I feel a certain loss every time I see Hufty Mufty, Old Mother Mifflin, get passed around like some pimp's tired goods.
    More »
    11/30/06
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    Comment by no diggity: wall street urinal more » | Other threads

  • books

    Gore Vidal: Luckily, No One Knows How To Edit Anymore

    You've gotta love cranky literary gay Gore Vidal. Even though he is 80,000 years old, he isn't afraid to stir up some shit, courageously calling out people who have been dead for way too long to talk back, and celebrating the fact that (he thinks) editors don't edit anymore because editing makes writers — that hack Fitzgerald, for example — worse:
    Along came in the '20s a bunch of near-illiterates, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, who couldn't spell. Max Perkins, his hack editor at Scribner, would help him turn his prose into recognizable English. Somehow in the world of hackdom it's got out that every writer needs a stern person as teacher behind him, who will tell him 'i before e except after c.' I've never known a good writer who needed an editor. Many of them have been destroyed by good editors. Luckily, no one knows how to edit anymore either, so I think that phase is over.
    On second thought, maybe you don't have to love him. We sure don't. More »
    11/29/06
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    Comment by Swordfish: Old Hag, bravo. Great TV. Now if Fox could only bring Buckley back... more » | Other threads

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