Thursday, June 07, 2012

Authors hail Teddy Roosevelt, rip ‘mommy porn’ at annual gala


Trust-busting and 50 Shades of Grey were hot topics at last night’s annual Authors Guild Dinner where famous writers read modern-day rejection letters to Homer, F Scott Fitzgerald and others.
New Yorker stalwart Calvin Trillin presided over the midtown Manhattan event which commemorated the Guild‘s 100th anniversary of standing up for the country’s writers. The group’s opponents have changed significantly in recent years.
I never guessed that among our antagonists would be the US Department of Justice,” said Guild president Scott Turow in a broadside against the government’s decision to sue publishers and Apple over price-fixing. 
Turow also suggested the Guild’s founding vice-president, President Theodore Roosevelt, would today have taken action against the growing dominance of Amazon. The online retailer has lately become a bete noire for many literary types.
A number of the evening’s speakers, who also included writers David Rakoff and Sarah Jones, made obligatory digs at 50 Shades of Grey, an erotic work derived from Twilight fan fiction and derided as “mommy porn” that has inexplicably topped the New York Times bestseller list.

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