Between the Lines

Between the Lines

The inside scoop on the book world

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By Matthew Flamm

-- BREAKING REPORTS... In case you haven't heard enough about Eminem, Crown has cut a six-figure deal with Rolling Stone writer Anthony Bozza for an unauthorized biography of the rap star. ''It's not a cut-and-paste story,'' says Crown editor Carrie Thornton. ''It's really examining him as a cultural phenomenon.'' Whatever You Say I Am (the line comes from the track ''The Way I Am'' on The Marshall Mathers LP) will be out next fall.... Yet another roman a clef about the inner workings of the media industry is making the rounds with publishers, though this one is not about the magazine world. Veteran journalist Hilary deVries is sending up celebrity culture in her first novel, So Five Minutes Ago, about a publicist in L.A. who, according to agent Brian DeFiore, ''runs into a lot of Hollywood celebrity types.''

-- TO SPEECH HIS OWN No one would ever mistake the National Book Awards ceremony for the Oscars, but ever since Steve Martin stepped in as host, the literary event has become decidedly more entertaining. ''If he's so great,'' Martin quipped when introducing Philip Roth, who was receiving a medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, ''where's his hit sitcom Philip?'' Martin also complained about not having time to read or even to listen to audiobooks. ''I recently bought War and Peace in the convenient suppository.... That seems to be working out.'' There were no real surprises at the Nov. 20 event: The fiction category, made up of relative unknowns, had no front-runner (first-time novelist Julia Glass prevailed for Three Junes), and nonfiction winner Robert Caro had been considered a shoo-in for his LBJ bio, Master of the Senate. But there were some eloquent speeches: ''This is for everybody who blooms late in life,'' the 46-year-old Glass said. ''Because you never, never know.'' And 87-year-old poet Ruth Stone, who won for In the Next Galaxy, spoke more truthfully than she might have realized, given the current state of sales. ''Sometimes you think [publishers] do it for money,'' she told the appreciative industry crowd, ''but they don't make that much money.''

Posted Dec 06, 2002 | Published in issue #685 Dec 06, 2002 | Order Article Reprints