Nobel author Gabriel García Márquez wins 17-year legal fight over murder classic
Colombian court rules against man who claimed author used his life story for main character in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

...In its ruling on Tuesday, the court agreed. "Hundreds of literary, artistic, and cinematographic works have had as their central story facts from real life, which have been adapted to the creator's perspective, without this being an impediment to [the author's right] to claim economic rights over them."
The court also dismissed Palencia's demand to be credited as a co-author. "Mr Miguel Reyes Palencia could never have told the story as the writer Gabriel García Márquez did, and could never have employed the literary language that was actually used. The work is characterised by its originality."

creator’s Family Reclaims the Rights to Superman -NY TIMES- March 29, 2008 - Time Warner is no longer the sole proprietor of Superman.

A federal judge here on Wednesday ruled that the heirs of Jerome Siegel — who 70 years ago sold the rights to the action hero he created with Joseph Shuster to Detective Comics for $130 — were entitled to claim a share of the United States copyright to the character. The ruling left intact Time Warner’s international rights to the character, which it has long owned through its DC Comics unit.
And it reserved for trial questions over how much the company may owe the Siegel heirs for use of the character since 1999, when their ownership is deemed to have been restored. Also to be resolved is whether the heirs are entitled to payments directly from Time Warner’s film unit, Warner Brothers, which took in $200 million at the domestic box office with “Superman Returns” in 2006, or only from the DC unit’s Superman profits.

(link thanks to Bob Morales)

From Bad Seed to post-punk doctorate - The Australian - March 29, 2008

THIRTY years after dropping out of university as a failed second-year art student more interested in drinking beer at the pub across the road, musician, writer and actor Nick Cave has been embraced by academia and presented with a doctorate. Cave, who quit uni to embark on what would become a seminal career as a young punk singer and later dark and brooding writer and performer, was awarded the honorary degree by the same institution he walked out of in 1978.

(link thanks to michael Evans)
I previously wrote about Cave here, and there's a portrait drawing too.

The Great Gatsby

The first time I saw Nicki Greenberg's little characters I thought they were surely too facile to bear the weight of a tragic novel from the canon of American Literature. But more and more they've come to remind me of a type of pictorial invention that goes back centuries. The first hint was when I found myself thinking of the grotesques you find in the fourteenth century Luttrell Psalter, which are highly particular even among their type. Describing the beings populating the margins of the psalter, the babooneries, or 'babewyns' as he called them, the late Michael Camille wrote:
'Created from a variety of textures- greasy, slimy, hairy, subcutaneous, phosphorescent. rubbery, metallic, velvety and vegetal- they exhibit every possible variation of malformation, often on one page. a pug-nosed piggish human face with speckled yellow legs stares in dismay as his own cabbage tail sprouts up from between his legs with a tentacular, ejacuatory gush. Above on the same page, a sneering hooded fellow with a metallic blue body and flippery feet wears a kitchen cooking pot with the aplomb of a fashonable hat.' (from Mirror in Parchment)
You may say that such grotesques are not apt in the context of a modern novel, but they were hardly appropriate to the psalms either.

Part of the catalogue of individuals seen at Gatsby's parties:


The book's major pictorial conceit puts it squarely in the twentieth century. It begins with Nick Carraway pasting photos into an album. In Fitzgerald's novel he simply narrates, reopening the wounds of the past.


It's one of those old fashioned photo albums with the matt black pages, and the photos are all in sepia. The book is printed in full colour in order to make this sepia, even though we never see a hint of colour in the story pages. Chapter headings remind us that a full range of hues is in use. As the stylistic device runs for the whole 306 pages, it is likely to slip your mind that you are ostensibly looking at photos, with their serrated edges and occasionally casting a shadow, until late in the book a character is removed by being literally torn out of the picture. A peculiar thing: the publicity dept. at Allen and Unwin sent clean jpegs of the above, but they seemed to me to lack some important ingredient by being removed from the actual paper of the book, so I scanned them myself. It's one of those packages where every detail is in harmony, including the binding and type of paper. It's pleasing to just hold it and contemplate it as an object.

Gatsby is to be released in September here in Australia. It may not be available where you are until 2008 (UK) or even 2010 (USA) as copyright restrictions on Fitzgerald's novel run out at diifferent times due to varying international legalities and original publication dates. Greenberg is a qualified lawyer who explained it all to me carefully, but she did so in a bar, and if you find my version unconvincing, get a better one later.
I like her book a great deal; it is a singular achievement. She puts her little cast of 'babewyns' through a faithful if slightly condensed version of the text, and by the time you finish, her cast seems neither more nor less up to the task than the one that includes Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

Nicki has a website.
and a blog too.
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And speaking of Australian women:
Australian Woman Killed By Amorous Camel
(thanks hayley)
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And of beings that are half human and half something else:
Dwarf's penis gets stuck to vacuum cleaner
The attachment broke before the performance and Blackner tried to fix it using extra-strong glue, but unfortunately only let it dry for 20 seconds instead of the 20 minutes required. He then joined it directly to his organ. The end result? A solid attachment...
(thanks Gareth)

"Kiss my backside." (wrote Mozart.)

The confluffle over cartoonist Bill Leak's appropriation of Tintin in his caricature of Australian politico Kevin Rudd has been resolved.
The Australian, Jun 04, By Peter Wilson in Brussels:
THE Belgian firm that owns the copyright on Tintin has conceded Bill Leak is free to portray Labor leader Kevin Rudd as the cartoon character in The Australian, but says he cannot "commercialise" the image by selling copies to the public. Leak last night responded to Moulinsart's latest statement saying: "I'm not a lawyer, I'm a cartoonist. I poke fun at people for a living. I'm sure Herge would have approved".

The incident has reminded me of one of my favourite CDs. It's Mozart Unexpurgated, an Australian recording by The Song Company on the Tall Poppies label, 1991, with a cover by the same cartoonist showing Mozart sitting on the dunny with his breeches around his ankles, while scrawling on the wall. The disc gathers together all of Mozart's rude songs, and other songs in no way rude, which he composed for singing among his friends and family. They are translated to English and fit the tone of his letters, which are delightfully peppered with scatalogical nonsense (well served by Spaethling's recent translation).
The disc opens with these lines in gorgeous six-part haromony:
Kiss my backside
Goethe said it in his drama,
second act, you know the scene quite well!
Here's a catchy commentary,
Mozart now is literary!
And the words crap, fuck, fart and shit all put in appearance. It's all beautifully musical of course, and the 12 part harmony of "V'amo di core teneramente" (nothing rude in this one) never fails to reduce me to tears of joy even though it is only 1.12 minutes long.

glossary: The phrase 'tall poppies' is worth a word of explanation: "The tall-poppy syndrome refers to the behavioural trait of Australians to cut down those who are 'superior' to them. It is used to explain why most politicians, some academics, and the occasional millionaire, command a level of community admiration inferior to that of a toilet cleaner."
I and the boon companion of my self publishing years, Pete Mullins, once conceived a chronically self-defeating character whom we named 'the small poppy', and we went so far as to draw a few sketches. But we dropped the idea on the grounds that the greater part of our market, the USa, would probably not 'get' the phrase, and furthermore that from the way we'd drawn it, the person it was based upon would more than likely recognize himself.
'dunny' is self explanatory, but I'm amused to see it has a Wikipedia entry.
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Allan Holtz has some grand old Los Angeles political cartoons from 1906 by George Herriman, after finding a microfilm stash at his library. I expect there will be a few who will complain that they don't mean anything if you don't know about the parties being ridiculed, but I always find that those complaints come from folk who also need today's paper explained to them. The art of political cartooning has been using the same kinds of meatphors for centuries. The appeal is seeing the variations, and the additions. Did you need to know who Kevin Rudd is, or who Bill Leak is to enjoy the snippet of the Tintin story above? Politicos are much the same then and now, here and there and if you can get a good batch of stuff from a period, the players become almost like fictional characters whose exploits you can follow from page to page. And if you look long enough and have an enquiring mind, you end up learning something about some obscure corner of history. I've put my name down in in the comments box to encourage him to show as many of these as he can lay his hands on.
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Let unexpurgated be our word of the day!
Jack Kerouac: On the Road. It's the fiftieth anniversary of its publication in October!
Penguin Classics: To celebrate this seminal novel, we’re bringing out an exquisite hardback edition of the UNCENSORED MANUSCRIPT, unexpurgated, and that means with all of the sex and drug references that were considered too explicit at the original publication. We’re publishing it as the original 'scroll'.
surely not actually literally?
(link via michael Evans)
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Leif peng has life story of now-obscure artist Fletcher Martin (1904-79)
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Just in. Australian site, Stagenoise: their 30th podcast focusses on the "Graphic novel". A good half hour interview with Campbell. This has come out all right. I explain a few things quite lucidly. In fact, I only half recall doing this interview, perhaps because I didn't say anything stupid, and when the interviewer emailed this morning to say it was up I was taken by surprise. Then Shaun Tan, author of the superb The Arrival, follows me.
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The Black Diamond Detective Agency should be in Specialist comic book stores TODAY!!
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update: mr j in comments below directs you to a
gallery of the offending Bleak cartoons at the Australian.

An owl.

Looking at the Bacchus Color Special cover a couple of days back, I was trying to remember how I'd been introduced to Teddy Kristiansen. And it's just come back to me. He painted this gorgeous Christmas card for me at the end of 1992 and sent it via Diana Schutz, with whom he was doing some work at the time, perhaps on Grendel. Teddy has his own blog here, but I think i visit it more than he does.
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In other News:
Scotty safe! No need to Worry!
James 'Scotty' Doohan's Ashes Found in New Mexico Mountains- Friday, May 18, 2007
The payload container carrying experiments and the cremated ashes of some 200 dearly departed people — a cargo that includes remains of the beloved "Scotty" of "Star Trek" fame — has been recovered in the New Mexico mountains...
(thanks to Hemlockman)
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In comments, Bat Masterson linked us to this.Hijacked Disney Characters Explain Copyright--FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2007
"Disney lawyers' heads must be spinning over this one. A movie posted on Stanford University's site called "A Fair(y) Use Tale" mashes up all your Disney favorites to humorously and effectively explain copyright law. The ten minute movie, directed by Eric Faden, came out of Stanford University's Fair Use Project Documentary Film Program. Stanford's Fair Use Project--to which Stanford Law professor, Copyright guru, Creative Commons advocate and Wired writer Lawrence Lessig contributes--was founded last year to "support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom." And, well, the movie is damn sure creative, and certainly seems to take the boundaries of fair use about as far as they can go."
It’s very funny. Do watch it.
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And drjon noted this for anyone following our occasional references to The Codex Seraphinianus: This fellow cracked the page numbering system a couple of years ago.
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Blogger still won't let me have a preview so I'm just guessing what this post will look like and can't test whether the links work in advance of posting. At least now it's letting me save stuff.
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The wife of my bosom is away for a couple of days and when I went to go to bed last night I found there were no sheets on it. I remembered they'd just been washed and went out to fetch them off the line in the dark. Sitting in the middle of the 'lawn' (we're in a drought so there's no grass on it) was Monty the dog, out of his bed, and he was looking at something sitting on top of the hoist at my eye level. It was a huge big Tawny Frogmouth owl. I stood in a state of wonder and looked into its eyes for about five minutes. I've never been this close to an owl before. It sat still and looked back at me. I left it undisturbed and went in and put something else on the bed

The Villains in my Home Town. part 1.

I just had my the old videotape of my courtroom sketch- stories from 1997, ten years ago, converted to disc, thanks to Michael Evans. Thus I can now make jpegs and get a few blog stories out of it. I told the anecdote in After the Snooter of how My pal Pete Mullins got me involved in doing the court sketching for Channel Ten News here in Brisbane (Ten was trying to poach him fron Seven for whom he was occasionally doing it). That first one was a humdinger, with five villains on trial all at once, and somehow I failed to record it from the television that evening. The ringleader had a word tattoed on his forehead and I couldn't get close enough to read it and every time I tried he gave me an evil eyeful. I was called upon perhaps twenty five more times over an 18 month period and I found it all quite educational. We 'graphic novelists' don't get out of the house all that often, so these excursions gave me a healthy dose of reality with which to temper my fictional inventions. I don't have all of the cases recorded, only around eighteen, and I didn't go up to the station to get any of the artwork back, but there should be enough here to work with, and I think you'll be surprised by some of it. I started the work a little hesitantly as you can imagine, but before long the villains in my home town were starting to look like comic book baddies.



This smouldering hulk was out of jail for a counselling session. He missed that and instead separately abducted and raped two women. He’s back in for thirty years now. Well, twenty remaining. Ten's camera zooms...



This school teacher had sex with an underage pupil. His wife dobbed him in, as they say here in Australia (dictionary of Australian slang: dob). In my sketch he looks like he wouldn’t be out of place in the Batman animated tv show. Except I draw better shirt collars than those dudes.



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I was sitting on this to see if it connected up with some other things, but my brain is heading off in another direction, so I'll menton it here at the foot of this post.
On the subject of Copyright once again, thanks to Ben Smith for the heads-up. John Lanchester covers the whole history of copyright in one sweep of the hand, takes a disparaging look at eager litigation in the USA and assesses the possibilities of Google Book Search. This article is a must-read.
It's a steal
The Guardian --Saturday April 7, 2007
"Many of us take it for granted that we can download films or music without paying. Now, new projects such as Google Book Search will make millions of books available too. What will this mean for authors and the publishing industry? John Lanchester asks who owns what in the digital age
Google never gives out figures about anything, but I was told that the Book Search programme already includes more than a million books; and the number is growing daily. Only the world's very biggest libraries are bigger than that. Ovenden said: "I think in the 21st century Google Book Search will be regarded as one of the great historical enterprises. It's not the only one, but it's up there."

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If you have ever heard me talk, you know that I have a Scottish accent. It presents no impediment to communication whatsoever unless you have previously plied me with alcohol, after which all the sounds become exaggerated in their distinctive colourings. An 'E' becomes excessively E-ish and the same for all the other sounds, and such clarity is usually more than the human ear can withstand. While googling myself this morning I followed a link to a transcript of a talk I once gave where I am introducing 'The History of Ron Howard". I can only presume it was the History of Fom Hell. Given that Howard doesn't show up again for the rest of the duration one would have expected the transcriber to have questioned it. On the other hand, i was indeed improvising, which is why ah canna stand to read it all throo to see if wee Howie does turrn up agen or no.

pour me another sherry, maude.

"I'm a very lucky artist. I make my living from it."

The copyright/plagiarism issue has been shuffling along since we last spoke of it here, when I linked to Jonathan Lethem's article in Harper's of January 30.

Writing in the free world : Jonathan Lethem explains why copyright laws stifle creativity and why he's giving away the film rights to his new novel.---Salon.com March 25 (link via Neil Gaiman)
In response to an observation about the meagre $6,000 dollar advance for his first novel: " Sure, but it wasn't strengthening of copyright control that allowed me to make more money after that; it was because I found some readers. Even if my rights were Kryptonite and lasted 1,000 years, if no one read my books, they wouldn't be worth a penny. The economy of human attention is a very precious one, much scarcer than any other. I'm lucky to be in the position of having anyone notice that I've given something away in the first place."
"I'm a very lucky artist. I make my living from it. I didn't know if I ever would. I'm very persuaded by the image that Lewis Hyde offers of an artist who is, by definition, in whatever medium, or whatever level of success or whatever culture, in the practice of culture-making; participating in culture by making stuff is inherently a gift transaction and a commodity transaction. And it always will be. The question is how do we affirm and clarify this relationship? Because it's a very weird one -- making commodities that are also gifts.

Lethem already made special reference to Lewis Hyde, and his concept of 'the gift economy' in the Harper's essay. This review (I think nov 2005) by JoAnn Schwartz of Hyde's The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Vintage Books, 1983) goes a long way to explaining what Hyde was talking about.
"Hyde is deeply interested in the transformative gift: the gift that changes us profoundly, often received in the form of psychological healing or spiritual teachings. An important aspect of a transformative gift is that the transformation is not instantaneous; it requires the recipient to undertake some extensive and often difficult inner work in order to effect the transformation completely. What motivates us to undertake this labor? In general, it is a feeling of love and gratitude toward our teacher or therapist. This can lead to problems in today's market economy, where healing and teaching are frequently sold rather than freely given. After all, even a gifted teacher, therapist, or spiritual guide must eat! It is nonetheless possible for an element of the gift economy to circulate above the cash.

In science, as elsewhere, the circulation of gifts produces and maintains community, whilst the conversion of gifts to commodities fragments or destroys that same community. However, we are now witnessing the commodification of ideas within the scientific community. Universities and industrial laboratories, which used to produce basic research that was released into 'the public domain' now patent and otherwise protect their research. Discoveries emerge not as contributions but as proprietary ideas for which users must pay a fee, a usury. This trend began in the late 1970's and early 1980's with biotechnology, but here and now, at the end of the millennium, it seems to have spread to most fields of scientific inquiry. How does the "group mind" necessary to produce theoretical physics/chemistry/biology survive the free-market?"

Patent Office (UK) wants evidence to justify new copyright exceptions for artists. (again via Neil)
The Open Rights Group (ORG) is corralling information.
contribution from one John Harding, mar 22: "The conventional publishing industry does a valuable job, but only where there is large money to be made to fuel its necessarily ponderous machinery. A few years ago a friend of mine who was running a chamber music summer schools for amateurs wanted to let them play a pleasant little work by, I think, Panufnik, or possibly Penderecki. They contacted the publishers, asking to buy parts, but were told that the parts were not on sale, but could be hired. The cost would be £100. The work lasted perhaps five minutes. It is not a work that any string orchestra would think of scheduling into a programme. The publishers have effectively killed it.
The internet, software, desktop publishing and the existence of people like the founder of Merton Music, have made possible the creation and dissemination of work that would never bring profits to traditional publishers. We are living in exciting times, whose surge of intellectual activity will be seen in retrospect as putting the Renaissance in the shade.
Of course the corporations want to keep a strangle hold on it.
The move towards criminalising copyright violation significantly changes the picture. A single fine at the level sought by corporate lobbyists could ruin someone who would currently be able to achieve amicable settlement of an honest mistake under civil law. There will be people who will no longer dare act on common sense."

Joyce letters court case settled--BBC News Sunday, 25 March 2007
"A US university professor has won the right to quote letters between Irish writer James Joyce and his daughter in a book after settling a court case".

I got the link for that one at Ownit- The creative London Intellectual Property Advice Service where you can find regular updates on such matters as
Will Charwoman take Family Guy to the cleaners?--19 Mar 2007
Disney gets tough with students acting as nuns this week... etc

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more on 300, the movie, (via Heidi) Men Gone Wild by David Denby in this week's New Yorker:
"...perhaps the nuttiest film ever to become an enormous box-office hit. Based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, the movie is a porno-military curiosity—a muscle-magazine fantasy crossed with a video game and an Army recruiting film."

"Pop has always drawn energy from the lower floors of respectability; this movie, in which fan-boy cultism reaches new levels of goofy chaos and sexual confusion, draws energy from the subbasement."

Made in a time of frustration, when Americans are fighting a war that they can neither win nor abandon, “300” feels like the product of a culture slowly and painfully going mad."
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via circulating email of notable quotations.
"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." --Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst.