IN MAKING THE LIST, his 2001 book about best sellers, former Simon & Schuster editor in chief Michael Korda recalls that the publishing house once commissioned a study of which books made the most money. After a detailed presentation, the consultant said to the editors, "Do you guys realize how much money the company would make if you only published best sellers?" He might as well have told them that they'd do better playing the lottery if they picked the right numbers. Trends come and go, but the best seller remains essentially serendipitous. An editor can be no more certain of finding the next one than a writer can be assured of writing it. "As a rule of thumb," writes John Sutherland, an English scholar who has studied the phenomenon, "what defines the bestseller is bestselling. Nothing else."

via bookforum.com.

I'm slouching comfortably at the Polaris Barnes & Noble, reading, thinking, writing, enjoying the pleasant company of Micah & Hannah. Our typical Saturday morning routine. Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, peculiar muzak, stacks of books, quiet conversation:

can we buy this book? no maybe next week? maybe but it's 20% off and another 10% off for members yes, I realize that so can we buy it? no ok, can we stay longer so I can finish it? of course

In front of me are the displays for New Fiction. I am intrigued by the titles:

Long Drive Home

Started Early, Took My Dog

Who Shot The Water Buffalo?

The Sly Company Of People Who Care

A Day In The Life Of A Smiling Woman

The Final Testament Of The Holy Bible

Satan's Sisters

To Be Sung Underwater

The Butterfly's Daughter

The Tiger's Wife

At the age of 80, with almost 40 books behind him and nearly as many accumulated honors, Harold Bloom has written, in “The Anatomy of Influence,” a kind of summing-up — or, as he puts it in his distinctive idiom, mixing irony with histrionism, “my virtual swan song,” born of his urge “to say in one place most of what I have learned to think about how influence works in imaginative literature.”

via NYTimes.com

“For me, Shakespeare is God,” he declares at one point, and in other places he says much the same thing, in much the same words, a reminder that to read Bloom once is in a sense to reread him, so often does he repeat himself. Twice he asserts that Shakespeare’s greatest creations are Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago and Cleopatra; twice that “The Tempest” and “The Winter’s Tale” are tragicomedies and not ro­mances; three times that “Titus Andronicus” parodies the tragedies of Shakespeare’s defeated rival Marlowe. Prospero, Bloom shrewdly observes, “is one of those teachers who is always convinced his auditors are not quite attentive.”