OR Books — 2010 — September

Latest News: September, 2010

Doug Rushkoff talks about why he chose OR Books to be his publisher in Arthur Magazine

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Why I Left My Publisher in Order to Publish a Book, Doug Rushkoff

I’m getting more questions about my latest book than about any other I’ve written. And this is before the book is even out—before anyone has even read the galleys.

That’s because the questions aren’t about what I wrote, but about how I ended up publishing it: with an independent publisher, for very little money, and through a distribution model that makes it available on only one website. Could I be doing this of sound mind and my own volition? Why would a bestselling author, capable of garnering a six-figure advance on a book, forgo the money, the media, and the mojo associated with a big publishing house?

A rave review for Eileen Myles‘ novel INFERNO in the current Bookforum

Friday, September 17th, 2010

“It’s a novel in the way Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights and Renata Adler’s Speedboat are–that is to say, on its own terms. With Inferno, Myles has written…a meditation on hatching a writing life. …The book, in other words, is packed. Throughout, Myles moves smoothly between her numerous themes: discovery, emergence, memory, and, most important, the lurching ambition to have a life of the mind and the body.”

Chris Lehmann chats with Bookforum about RICH PEOPLE THINGS.

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Chris Lehmann is a conspicuously over-employed editor and cultural critic. He’s a co-editor of Bookforum, a deputy editor for the Yahoo news blog The Upshot, a columnist for the Awl, a contributing editor for The Baffler, and a guitarist and singer for the band The Charm Offensive. He’s also just penned a book, Rich People Things, which will be published this fall by OR books. We recently caught up with Mr. Lehmann via email to discuss the how his blog column became a book, why he considers himself an economic populist, and what we talk about when we talk about class in America.

Mischief+Mayhem’s partnership with OR Books, starting with the launch of Lisa Dierbeck’s THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JENNY X: A NOVEL, is featured in the New York Observer.

Friday, September 10th, 2010

“I think that we recognize that we’re way past the moment of panic,” said the novelist DW Gibson yesterday. “And it now sort of feels like a land of opportunity.”

Mr. Gibson was explaining why he and four of his friends— Choire Sicha of the Awl and fellow novelists Dale Peck, Lisa Dierbeck, and Joshua Furst— have decided to get into the book business.

“We’re a publishing collective,” Mr. Gibson said. “The motivation is to reinstall a notion of editorial process that’s all but vanished from the traditional corporate structure of publishing that’s out there now.”

(Read more in the New York Observer)

Moustafa Bayoumi, editor of MIDNIGHT ON THE MAVI MARMARA, and the Brooklyn College controversy, in the New Yorker

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

In New York City this week, an institution is being accused of using Islam to subvert American culture—but this time, it’s on the other side of the East River. The controversy over Brooklyn College’s Common Reader program doesn’t hold a candle to the Ground Zero mosque debacle—thankfully, Sarah Palin has yet to tweet on the subject—but it’s gotten more than a few people riled up in the past few days. The most riled might be Bruce Kesler: the conservative blogger and Brooklyn College alum wrote the college out of his will when they assigned Moustafa Bayoumi’s “How Does It Feel To Be A Problem? Being Young and Arab in America” to all incoming freshmen.