Bob Dylan finally accepts 2016 Nobel prize

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — After months of uncertainty and controversy, Bob Dylan finally accepted the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature at a secret meeting on Saturday with the Swedish Academy, local media reported.

Asked by Swedish public broadcaster SVT if Dylan had received his Nobel diploma and medal on Saturday afternoon, Academy member Horace Engdahl said: “Yes”, without making any further comments.

The Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, had been tight-lipped about the prospective meeting and declined to comment on the report.

The first songwriter to receive the prestigious award, Dylan joins a celebrated group of laureates including Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Doris Lessing.

The meeting took place at a secret location ahead of Dylan’s first concert in Stockholm, the first stop on a long-planned European tour for his latest album of cover songs, “Triplicate”. His second concert is on due Sunday.

Dylan, 75, had not been expected to deliver his traditional Nobel lecture at the meeting — the only requirement to receive the eight million kronor (837,000 euros, $891,000) that comes with the prize.

He has until June 10 to provide his lecture, which could be anything from a short speech to a performance, a video broadcast or even a song. Failing that, he risks losing the prize money.

“The Academy has reason to believe that a taped version will be sent at a later point,” Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Academy, said on Wednesday.

No thank you

Several Academy members, including Danius, were present at the concert as Dylan, wearing a white hat, western-style black blazer and cowboy boots, performed “Love Sick” and “Full Moon And Empty Arms,” part of a playlist of standards and self-penned hits.

The American rock enigma’s performance was met with a cheering crowd, which gave repeated standing ovations, especially when he played a harmonica.

Dylan was tightlipped between songs and made no mention whatsoever about the Nobel prize.

Lars Sjoblom, a 65-year-old sound and light technician, said he had grown up with Dylan’s music but was “greatly surprised” that he had not said anything.

“I came here to listen to what he had to say about the Nobel Foundation and to the Swedish people,” Sjoblom told AFP. “I think he could have shown Sweden the respect to say ‘thank you’.”

But Dag Hanners, a 65-year-old logistician, said Dylan never speaks with the crowd during performances.

“You just have to live with that,” he said with a chuckle.

‘Senile hippies’

Dylan was honored “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” the Nobel committee said when the award was announced last October.

His long list of hits, ranging over decades, began in the early Sixties. He penned hundreds of songs in just a few years — an astonishing flurry that included “Blowin’ In The Wind”, “Hurricane” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

“Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?'” Dylan said in a thank-you speech read out by the US ambassador to Sweden during the December Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. He skipped the event due to “pre-existing commitments”.

Danius, a fervent Dylan fan, has defended her choice and that of her peers, but Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, author of “Trainspotting”, mocked the prize as “awarded by senile hippies”.

Dylan kept silent for weeks after he was announced as the winner and when he was asked at the time why he did not respond to the Academy’s calls, he told Britain’s Daily Telegraph: “Well, I’m right here.”

His mysterious reaction even provoked Academy member Per Wastberg to call him “impolite” and “arrogant”.

Dylan later apologized for not being able to attend the ceremony and expressed surprise over being chosen for an honor given to literature heavyweights like Ernest Hemingway and Albert Camus.

“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon,” he added. CBB

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

Dylan book sales soar after Nobel announcement

NEW YORK — He won his Nobel for writing songs, but Bob Dylan’s unexpected honor also is providing a boost for his books.

Dylan’s memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” and a bound compilation, “The Lyrics: 1961-2012,” were among two of Amazon.com’s fastest sellers Thursday. His book of lyrics jumped from No. 73,543 on Amazon’s best-seller list the night before Thursday’s announcement to No. 209. Over the same 24-hour period, “Chronicles” soared from No. 15,690 to No. 278 and was out of stock by the end of the day.

Not surprisingly, sales were up on Amazon for many of his albums. Two of them, “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits” and “Blonde on Blonde,” were in the top 25 for CDs and vinyl by Thursday night.

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

India’s demonized mothers-in-law get bad rap in new book

NEW DELHI - Young Indian women fear and loathe her. Soap operas showcase her iron-fisted rule. And sociologists spend hours debating the torment she is accused of unleashing across the country.

Mothers-in-law have long been demonized and parodied all over the world. But they have an especially fearsome reputation in India, where stories of bitter and abusive struggles with their daughters-in-law abound.

According to a new book, relationships between mothers-in-law and their son's wives have never been more dysfunctional in India, where it says rapid modernization has collided with staunch family traditions.

"It's a phenomenon that started around the year 2000 and has been building ever since," said Veena Venugopal, author of "The Mother-in-Law: The other woman in your marriage."

"This is the worst generation for mother and daughter-in-law conflict," she told AFP.

Women, especially in isolated, rural India, have historically married young and joined their husband's family under one roof—where they were placed at the bottom of the pile and often relegated to performing household chores.

India's economic liberalization in the 1990s brought double-digit growth coupled with social progress that allowed legions more women to pursue higher education and a career in cities.

Like their peers in the Western world, these middle-class urban Indian women have also started delaying marriage and having fewer children.

But such social changes are often not accepted by their mothers-in-law many of whom are stuck in a different age, Venugopal argued.

"Daughters-in-law are more educated and have more options and want to make more decisions for themselves and yet they are trapped in these marriages," said Venugopal, an editor at The Hindu Business Line newspaper.

The book details 11 cases of middle-class women across the country and their relationships with their husband's families.

One bride, a television journalist, was forced to hand over her salary every month to her mother-in-law who also forcibly took charge of bringing up her two young children.

She was never allowed to sit on a couch, chair or bed, only a concrete surface in the home that she shared with her husband's extended family, for whom she was expected to cook and clean after finishing her day job.

"These are people you come across in your professional life and never imagine that they live such traumatized lives behind closed doors," Venugopal said.

Men 'do nothing' to resolve conflict

Venugopal, whose book was published by Penguin in May, said she hoped to kickstart a national debate about the changing roles of husbands, wives and their families which remain cornerstones of Indian society.

"I also hope that men feel slightly embarrassed about all this and get into the act. Most do nothing to resolve these conflicts, their way of dealing with it is to ignore it," she said.

For generations, boys have been favoured over girls who are less likely to receive a decent education, medical care and even food, according to governments and research groups.

Men, considered the bread winners, wield the power while the women are married off.

"The daughter traditionally is never part of the house because she is something to be gifted away," said New Delhi-based social scientist Shiv Visvanathan.

"We are a deeply patriarchal society."

Numerous soap operas on Indian television show the domineering mother-in-law battling with her younger, prettier daughter-in-law who always loses the fight over money, her husband, food and space in the home.

The shows have long been wildly popular particularly among women, many of whom can sympathise with the struggles and torments being played out on screen, Visvanathan said.

"It's very therapeutic for them."

Venugopal argued that such dysfunctional relationships appear to be passing from one generation to the next. Instead of bonding with her son's bride, the mother-in-law seizes the chance to unleash her own kind of repression and anger.

"The mother-in-law herself has been a repressed daughter-in-law. She has waited 20 years for the chance to be the powerful one in a relationship," she said.

Unfairly demonized

Not surprisingly, mothers-in-law reject the bad rap detailed in the book and are fighting back against such negative stereotyping.

Neena Dhulia said a string of laws have been introduced to protect daughters-in-law from dowry-related and other abuses, which in turn are being misused to help them obtain divorces and persecute mothers-in-law.

"Women these days are better educated. They know how to manipulate these laws," Dhulia said.

"Women are also very independent [these days], they have no tolerance and they have high ambitions."

"For them, it's as easy as ordering pizza. They ring up, file a complaint and the mother-in-law is arrested," she told AFP.

Dhulia runs a forum in southern Bangalore and other several cities for mothers-in-law who are being victimized by their families, a service that attracts 15 to 20 phone calls a week.

"We have spent 30 to 35 years taking care of our children. Are we really demons or monsters?" she said. — AFP

source: gmanetwork.com

Naturalist author Peter Matthiessen dies at 86

NEW YORK - Globetrotting US naturalist and writer Peter Matthiessen, known for books such as "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," has died at his New York state home, his publisher said Saturday. He was 86.

"Peter passed away this evening. We are honored to have known him and his beautiful and wild mind," his publisher Riverhead Books said in a statement.

Matthiessen, who reportedly had been treated for leukemia in the past year, had been awaiting publication of his final novel, "In Paradise," April 8, Riverhead confirmed.

Matthiessen was among the founders of the prestigious literary magazine The Paris Review.

In 1961, Matthiessen, a wilderness trekker and liberal environmentalist, raised his profile as a novelist with "At Play in the Fields of the Lord." The story of missionaries in the crosshairs of indigenous people and mercenaries in Brazil's Amazon jungle was made into a Hollywood film starring John Lithgow and Daryl Hannah.

He also earned National Book Awards for "The Snow Leopard," about a spiritual trip to the Himalayas, and for "Shadow Country."

Though he grew up a child of privilege, his life took dramatic turns as his personal adventures took him from Asia to Australia to New Guinea and South America; he was even a CIA spy in Paris in the 1950s.

While he wrote more than 30 books, the peripatetic Matthiessen—arguably better known for his non-fiction—called fiction his greater calling.

Yet they were complementary talents, among many. Indeed, he was the only writer honored with the National Book Award in both fiction and non-fiction. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Joe McGinniss, author of ‘Fatal Vision,’ dies at 71

Journalist Joe McGinniss, an author who got up close to his subjects for revealing books such as "The Selling of the President" and "Fatal Vision," died on Monday at age 71, his friend and attorney said.

McGinniss died of complications from prostate cancer at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, lawyer Dennis Holahan said in an email. The author had announced last year that he was in the advanced stage of the disease.

His 1983 book "Fatal Vision" became a classic of the true crime genre and was based on unlimited access he gained to former Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald and his attorneys during MacDonald's 1979 murder trial in the deaths of his pregnant wife and two young daughters in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

MacDonald, who at the time of the 1970 killings was an Army doctor, was found guilty and is serving three life sentences.

He has maintained the murders were committed by drug-crazed intruders. McGinniss had begun by expressing support for MacDonald but ended by concluding in his book that he was guilty of killing his family.

"I kept trying to find any reason I could to believe that he was not guilty," McGinniss testified at a 2012 court hearing where MacDonald sought to be granted a new trial.

New Yorker magazine writer Janet Malcolm, in a 1989 article, accused McGinnis of displaying the underside of journalism by deceiving MacDonald with a show of support and then betraying his confidence, an argument McGinnis vehemently denied.

Born in New York, he attended college in Massachusetts and early on became a sports reporter before winning a job as a columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer.

He gained national attention with the 1969 publication of "The Selling of the President."

The bestseller gave a behind-the-scenes account of how advertising and media professionals packaged Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon in his successful 1968 campaign for the White House.

One of the main subjects of Nixon's team portrayed in the book was television producer-turned-media-strategist Roger Ailes, who is now chairman of Fox News Channel.

McGinniss is also the author of the 2011 book "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin," an unflattering portrait of the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee. For the book, he took up residence next to Palin's home in Wasilla, Alaska.

The author had in 1980 published a book about Alaska, titled "Going to Extremes", that explored the vestiges of the state's frontier culture and gave personal descriptions of everyone from bush pilots to teachers. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

US library offers glimpse of bookless future

SAN ANTONIO — The future of the public library looks a lot like an Apple Store. Rows of glossy iMacs and iPads beckon. Hundreds of other tablets stand ready for checkout to anyone with a borrowing card.

This $2.3-million library in Texas has no actual books. That makes BibiloTech the US' only bookless public library, a distinction that has attracted people from as far away as Hong Kong who want to learn about the idea and possibly take it home.

All-digital libraries have been on college campuses for years. But Bexar County, which runs no other libraries, made history when it decided to open BiblioTech. It is the first bookless public library system in the country, according to information gathered by the American Library Association.

San Antonio is the nation's seventh-largest city but ranks 60th in literacy, according to census figures. In the early 2000s, community leaders in BiblioTech's neighborhood of low-income apartments and thrift stores complained about not even having a nearby bookstore, said Laura Cole, BiblioTech's project coordinator. A decade later, Cole said, most families in the area still don't have wi-fi.

"How do you advance literacy with so few resources available?" she said.

Residents are taking advantage now. The library is on pace to surpass 100,000 visitors in its first year. Finding an open iMac among the four dozen at BiblioTech is often difficult after school lets out, and about half of the facility's e-readers are checked out at any given time, each loaded with up to five books.

Head librarian Ashley Elkholf came from a traditional library and recalled the troubles of her old job: misshelved items hopelessly lost in the stacks, pages thoughtlessly ripped out of books and items that went unreturned by patrons who were not intimidated by measly fines and lax enforcement.

But in the nearly four months since BiblioTech opened, Elkholf has yet to lend out one of her pricey tablets and never see it again. The space is also more economical than traditional libraries despite the technology: BiblioTech purchases its 10,000-title digital collection for the same price as physical copies, but the county saved millions on architecture because the building's design didn't need to accommodate printed books.

"If you have bookshelves, you have to structure the building so it can hold all of that weight," Elkholf said.

Up the road in Austin, for example, the city is building a downtown library to open in 2016 at a cost of $120 million. Even a smaller traditional public library that recently opened in nearby Kyle cost that city about $1 million more than BiblioTech.

On her first visit, 19-year-old Abigail Reyes got a quick tutorial from a librarian on how to search for digital books and check out tablets.

"I kind of miss the books," Reyes said. "I don't like being on the tablets and stuff like that. It hurts my eyes." — AP

source: gmanetwork.com

Britain's Hilary Mantel tops women's fiction prize shortlist

LONDON - British novelist Hilary Mantel's "Bring Up the Bodies" tale about Thomas Cromwell will take on five challengers in the Women's Prize for Fiction award in 2013 as she attempts to add to her groaning trophy cabinet.

The historical bestseller set in Henry VIII's court has already won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Costa Book Award. If she takes the Women's Prize, Mantel will become the first person to win all three of Britain's top literary prizes.

The shortlist for the 30,000-pound ($45,900) literary prize released on Tuesday also included two former winners: fellow Briton Zadie Smith for "NW" and American writer Barbara Kingsolver for "Flight Behavior".

The other three books were "Where'd You Go Bernadette" by U.S. author Maria Semple, "May We Be Forgiven" from American A.M. Homes and "Life After Life" by Briton Kate Atkinson.

"The shortlist for 2013 represents six tremendous writers at the top of their game," chair of the judging panel Miranda Richardson said.

"Their individual novels are flawlessly presented, they contain a heady mix of ideas and without exception take the reader on a unique and deeply satisfying journey."

"Bring Up the Bodies" is the second book in Mantel's trilogy about Cromwell's rise to power. The other novels on the shortlist included Smith's look at characters in north London, a darkly comic novel about 21st century domesticity from Homes and Kingsolver's exploration of climate change and rural poverty in America's Appalachian region.

Atkinson's tale follows the turbulent events of the last century in Britain through the constantly reincarnating character of Ursula Todd. Semple sets her story in Seattle, where 15-year-old Bee searches for her missing, wealthy and erratic mother Bernadette Fox.

Set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote international fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible, the Women's Prize for Fiction is awarded annually for the best novel of the year written by a woman.

Any woman writing in English - whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter - is eligible.

The award ceremony will take place in London on June 5.

Previous winners besides Smith and Kingsolver include Madeline Miller for "The Song of Achilles" last year, Rose Tremain for "The Road Home" in 2008 and Lionel Shriver for "We Need to Talk About Kevin" in 2005. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com