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From Author To Auteur
11/30/2000 12:00:00 AM
It seems appropriate to be meeting William Boyd in the "Pembroke Room" of the Lowell Hotel in Manhattan. It's the kind of genteel tearoom where the British expatriate characters from one of his novels might gather. The prize-winning novelist's books, such as "A Good Man in Africa," "An Ice-Cream War" and "The Blue Afternoon," have earned him well-deserved comparisons to Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. (Indeed, his latest project is an adaptation of Waugh's "Sword of Honor" trilogy for the BBC.)
BRITAIN
PAPERBACK RIDER

Now approaching the platform: the written word. Starting this week, vending machines in London Undergound stations will spit out short stories by classic authors such as Evelyn Waugh and P. G. Wodehouse, for just [Pound sterling]1. But will it catch on? After a trial run, one potential reading rider said: "They're a great idea, if the machine worked. It stole my pound!" It might be a good idea to bring along your own paperback until they smooth out the edges.
Battle Of The Books: The Controversy Over The 100 Top Novels

By the end of the week, reporters were trying to track down board members. (Besides Byatt, those who voted were William Styron and Gore Vidal; historians Daniel Boorstin, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; biographer Edmund Morris; art critic John Richardson, and board chairman Christopher Cerf.) And two counterlists had appeared. Students at Radcliffe College's summer publishing course picked "The Great Gatsby" first, "The Catcher in the Rye" second, "Ulysses" sixth--just after "The Color Purple"--and sneaked in "Charlotte's Web," "Winnie-the-Pooh," "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and "The Wind in the Willows," as well as three novels by Morrison ("Song of Solomon," "Beloved" and "Jazz"). And ordinary readers kicked in choices to the Modern Library's Web site; this list was continually updated, but when last we looked, Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" narrowly led Frank Herbert's "Dune" for the No. 1 spot; "Ulysses" was No. 15, just behind Charles Portis's "The Dog of the South," and well below "The Lord of the Rings" (No. 4), Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" (No. 8) and Stephen King's "The Stand" (No. 10). (Our favorite entry, now below No. 100, was "Only a Factory Girl," by Rosie M. Banks--both book and author invented by P. G. Wodehouse.) Cerf was delighted with all the carping and nit-picking. "It's a neat game," he said. "Here we are talking about it, and it's going in NEWSWEEK, so it's working."
BOOKS
ON PARNASSUS FOR 15 MINUTES
David Gates
In this fall's glut of literary biographies sex or substance abuse spices up most of the lives: even poor old Henry James's homosexual yearnings again come under scrutiny. But the appeal of these books isn't just the hot skinny on Denis Diderot's mistresses and marital rows, Evelyn Waugh's nth alcoholic embarrassment or what Allen Ginsberg did in bed with Neal Cassady 45 years ago. Nor is it just the weird little factlets: that Waugh aspired to be a cabinetmaker, that Stephen Crane's funeral was covered by cub reporter Wallace Stevens, that art critic Harold Rosenberg (Mary McCarthy's Partisan Review colleague) created Smokey the Bear and that Ginsberg spent a month as a NEWSWEEK book reviewer. No, we read these books the better to understand the creative process. Don't we, class?