Neil Miller Gunn (November 8, 1891 - January 15, 1973) was a prolific novelist, critic, and dramatist who emerged as one of the leading lights of the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. With over twenty novels to his credit, Gunn was arguably the most influential Scottish fiction writer of the first half of the 20th century (with the possible exception of Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell)). Like his contemporary, Hugh MacDiarmid, Gunn was politically committed to the ideals of both Scottish nationalism and socialism (a difficult balance to maintain for a writer of his time). Gunn's fiction deals primarily with the Highland communities and landscapes of his youth, though the author chose (contra MacDiarmid and his followers) to write almost exclusively in English rather than Scots or Gaelic (a language he lamented never having learned).

Early life

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Neil Gunn was born in the village of Dunbeath in the county of Caithness, the northernmost county of mainland Scotland. His father was the captain of a herring boat, and Gunn's fascination with the sea and the courage of fishermen can be traced directly back his childhood memories of his father's work. His mother would also provide Gunn with a crucial model for the types of steadfast, earthy, and tradition-bearing women that would populate many of his works.

Gunn had eight siblings, and when his primary schooling was completed in 1904, he moved south to live with one of his sisters and her husband in St. John's Town of Dalry, Kirkcudbrightshire. He continued his education there with tutors and sat the Civil Service exam in 1907. This led to a move to London, where the adolescent Gunn was exposed to both the exciting world of new political and philosophical ideas as well as to the seamier side of modern urban life. In 1910 Gunn became a Customs and Excise Officer and was posted back to the Highlands. He would remain a customs officer throughout the First World War and until he was well-established as a writer in 1937.

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L.A. Times - Books & Talks

Author Nina Revoyr goes Hollywood
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700
Her third novel, "The Age of Dreaming,' YOU don't hear folks touting the virtues of Compton too often. But where some might view the city as an incubator of crime and poverty, Nina Revoyr sees a land of comity and cultural richness.
Denise Hamilton enters Raymond Chandler territory
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700
Her upcoming 'The Last Embrace' is set in 1949. DENISE HAMILTON writes bestselling crime novels featuring reporter Eve Diamond ("Prisoner of Memory," "Savage Garden"), although her next book (due July 1) takes her back in time. Hamilton also is the editor of the anthology "Los Angeles Noir."
Literary fiction gets kinky
Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700
Sex in literary fiction is going far beyond the missionary position. Witness Melanie Abrams' 'Playing.' It's hard not to judge Melanie Abrams' recently published debut novel by its cover.

NYT > Books

Books of The Times: Hit Man’s Dilemma: Sly Widow, Nasty Boss
Thu, 15 May 2008 02:49:35 -0000
In Thomas Perry’s new mystery a killer frets over a job that’s gotten out of hand.
Newly Released
Thu, 15 May 2008 02:43:31 -0000
May’s list of new books comes weighted with accolades, from within publishing and without. Reviews of works by Inger Ash Wolfe, Aleksandar Hemon, Chris Knopf, Stephenie Meyer, James Meek and Elizabeth George.
Domestic Lives: A 30,000-Volume Window on the World
Thu, 15 May 2008 07:54:10 -0000
The author of “The Library at Night” writes about finding a place to keep his library of some 30,000 books.

Fiction & Poetry

Young Orchard
Richard Wilbur Mon, 12 May 2008 04:00:00 -0000
These trees came to stay. Planted at intervals of Thirty feet each way, Each one stands alone Where it is to live and die. Still, when they have grown To full size, these trees Will blend their crowns, and hum with Mediating bees. Meanwhile, see how they Rise against their . . .
East Wind
Julian Barnes Mon, 12 May 2008 04:00:00 -0000
The previous November, a row of wooden beach huts, their paintwork lifted and flaked by the hard east wind, had burned to the ground. The fire brigade came from twelve miles away, and had nothing to do by the time it arrived. “YOBS ON RAMPAGE,” the local paper decided, though . . .
A Primer
Bob Hicok Mon, 12 May 2008 04:00:00 -0000
I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go to be in Michigan. The right hand of America waving from maps or the left pressing into clay a mold to take home from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan forty-three years. The state bird is a chained factory . . .

London Review of Books

Dead Not Deid · James Meek: A Great Radical Modernist
The opening story in James Kelman's 1998 collection, The Good Times, is called 'Joe Laughed'. It's nine pages long and is told from the point of view of a boy who plays football on a patch of waste ground among derelict industrial buildings by the river in a large, unnamed city which British readers are bound to assume is Glasgow. You don't find out the boy's name, or his age, although hints and the boy's style of reflection encourage you to guess he's between 14 and 16. At half-time, the boy and two friends start exploring an abandoned factory. After a bit, the boy's friends hit him and run away laughing.
Unhoused · Terry Eagleton on anonymity
All literary works are anonymous, but some are more anonymous than others. It is in the nature of a piece of writing that it is able to stand free of its begetter, and can dispense with his or her physical presence. In this sense, writing is more like an adolescent than a toddler. I might pass you a note at a meeting, but a note is only a note if it can function in my absence. Writing, unlike speech, is meaning that has come adrift from its source. Some bits of writing - theatre tickets or notes to the milkman, for example - are more closely tied to their original contexts than Paradise Lost or War and Peace.
Diary · Kevin Kopelson: Confessions of a Plagiarist
I quote too much. Give me a good line - what am I saying? Give me a good paragraph - even a Proustian one - and I'll shove it into my own prose regardless of how tiresome that is. Take my last book, on the satirist David Sedaris. Not only do you get more Proust than you'd ever care for, you get an awful lot of Sedaris - pure, unadulterated Sedaris. It's not that I'm lazy. Or rather, it's not just that I'm lazy.

Guardian Unlimited Books

True lives
Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 -0000
A warts-and-all biography of VS Naipaul leads the field in the shortlist for the prestigious Samuel Johnson prize
Affairs of the heart
Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 -0000
Annie Proulx, Ludmilla Ulitskaya, Nicolas Fargues and Alissa York in an exclusive debate on the power and purpose of love in fiction
The appliance of science
Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 -0000
News: Astronomy, romance and 'molecular autobiography' collide in this year's Royal Society prize shortlist

NPR Topics: Books

How to Defuse Explosives in Iraqi Heat
Thu, 15 May 2008 08:04:00 -0400
Chris Hunter served in the British military in Iraq in 2004, performing arguably one of the most dangerous jobs out there. He was a bomb-disposal operator — responsible for taking apart IED's before they exploded. He discusses why, though he left the military 18 months ago, he plans to go to Afghanistan.
Suze Rotolo: Of Dylan, New York and Art
Wed, 14 May 2008 10:29:00 -0400
Artist Suze Rotolo — the woman walking beside Bob Dylan on the album cover for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan — was Dylan's girlfriend in the '60s. She's written about the relationship, and about that era's New York, in a new memoir.
In 'Spies for Hire,' U.S. Security Gets Outsourced
Tue, 13 May 2008 16:28:00 -0400
It's become a $50 billion a year industry: Corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, and IBM are being paid to do things the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Pentagon usually do, including analysis, covert operations, electronic surveillance and reconnaissance.

Slashdot: Book Reviews

Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5
samzenpus Wed, 14 May 2008 18:21:00 -0000
Michael J. Ross writes "Web developers are oftentimes under pressure to build attractive sites as quickly as possible, and thus they are increasingly making use of content management systems (CMSs), which offer most of the functionality typically needed in a site, such as user authentication, site-wide styling, and of course managing content contributed by site owners and users. Joomla is an extremely popular and heavily-used CMS, partly because it is one of the easiest to install, configure, and use as a starting point for a new site. But with all CMSs, Joomla's online documentation and forums can prove frustrating to the new developer. Books such as the recently published Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 are intended to fill that gap." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Terrorist Recognition Handbook
samzenpus Wed, 07 May 2008 18:36:00 -0000
Ben Rothke writes "There are two types of writers about terrorism, experts such as Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who write from a distance and others that write graphic tales of first-hand from the trenches war stories. Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, is unique in that author Malcolm Nance is a 20-year veteran of the U.S. intelligence community and writes from a first hand-perspective, but with the organization and methodology of writers such as Pipes and Emerson. Those combined traits make the book extraordinarily valuable and perhaps the definitive text on terrorist recognition." Read below for the rest of Ben's reviewRead more of this story at Slashdot.
Second Person
samzenpus Mon, 05 May 2008 18:15:00 -0000
Aeonite writes "As we all learned in English class, there are three points of view one can employ when writing: first person ("I learned"), second person ("You learned"), and third person ("He learned"). You are about to read a review of Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, a book that addresses the use of second-person narration in games and related media. You are also likely to be eaten by a Grue." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Christian Science Monitor | UNKNOWN

Hot on the paper trail to the Iraq war
Douglas Feith's Pentagon memos trace the origin of the current US predicament.
Memoirs: whose truth – and does it matter?
Fri, 09 May 2008 01:00:00 -0500
Two years after the James Frey scandal, a still-roiled genre thrives.
The frisky art of Cynthia Ozick
Tue, 06 May 2008 01:00:00 -0500
In four lively tales, Ozick takes a playful route to serious points.

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