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Have faith, publish with passion and know that ideas matter. Reading has always been a minority taste. Yet books often have an impact disproportionate to the actual number of copies sold. In 1953, for example, Alfred A. Knopf published Czeslaw Milosz's THE CAPTIVE MIND, selling fewer than 3,000 copies. Nearly 30 years later, Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize. Barely a decade later, communism collapsed and the Cold War was over. History is full of surprises. Books are the foundation of civilization. In these matters, I remain something of a Leninist: Better fewer, but better.
-Steve Wasserman (LA Times) [They did it their way: hmmms and aahs between best record covers]

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: So Much Cold River, So Close to My Second Home
So much plot so far from home . . .
A new movie based on the Raymond Carver story "So Much Water, So Close to Home" is to star American actress Laura Linney and be called Jindabyne. As an Agence France Press story explains, the story is set in Australia and it tells the story of a group of men who discover the body of an Aborigine girl in the water while fishing. But instead of notifying authorities of the murder immediately, they decide to proceed with their fishing trip, igniting a tremendous scandal in their town. Of course, the Carver story was set in California, had nothing to do with Aborigines, and never took the men to a town.
• Linney to star in film of Raymond Carver Australia tale: report Jindabyne [Investors Czech out the Public Ruling on the ATO website: PR 2004/111 Film Investment - Jindabyne ]
• · As my Uncle Joseph liked to say - for people like us, the malere, the poor, the future was not a given. It was something to be clawed from the edge of despair with sweat and blood Uncle of Edwidge Danticat dies in custody of Homeland Security after seeking asylum; [I was born in the house which used to be old mortuary going back to the black death era Like Moyers, I have never as a grown-up visited a cemetery without realizing how brief the time we are here, or how much we crowd into it ]
• · · They don't have enough space, or they might just not feature particular titles Land o' Books New Mexico Books & More ; [ Lit Idol begins search for author ]
• · · · Let us pretend we are Sophie Masson (link coutesy of troppoarmadillo); [Search Of Stories Where is the best storytelling today? Not in books, alas]
• · · · · Mother is the most beautiful word in the English language, followed by passion, smile, love and eternity (Father didn't make the list at all.)
• · · · · · Damien Parer Most of those who identify as filmmakers are emotionally truncated, personally immature and have no burning spirituality to take a chance Feature films produced in Australia today are mediocre and lacking in passion