Robert: I still think the virtual American blackout on Susan Sontag's German Peace Prize Award runs second to the fact of the award itself. That is the story wasn't told, and then the story about why the story wasn't told, wasn't told. Really, isn't Sontag an important public intellectual? And doesn't the recognition of a major American public intellectual by a once and future ally, a significant European industrialized power warrant some attention?

I am currently working up a piece of ethnic paranoia which holds that there is something about intellectual Jewish women (Sontag, Hannah Arendt and to some degree Cynthia Ozick) that invites overheated, inordinate and vicious attacks. But I digress . . .

Alex: Clearly the media powers-that-be felt Ms. Sontag was out of line. It is impressive how completely that story was killed.

I'm disappointed there wasn't more attention paid to the work being done by the Dalkey Archive. Is it because they aren't a commercial press? Because they don't deal with celebrity authors getting huge advances? For some reason they just aren't considered a media story. And yet when you look over their catalogue and see all the titles they are keeping in print it's just amazing. They provide a genuine alternative to a lot of what's wrong with the publishing scene today, but I guess that makes them too "subversive" to bother talking about. They should be getting a lot more ink.

Michael: I'd actually expand on that: the Center for Book Culture (Dalkey Archive Press, Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Context) isn't the only worthy organization getting too little attention. New York Review Books (and their NY Review Classics list) has expanded impressively over the past few years and should surely be getting more attention - as should a couple of other publishers whose work has impressed me greatly over the past year: Green Integer, Hesperus, and Pushkin Press, as well as serious pamphleteers Prickly Paradigm Press.

As far as my under-reported choice: I could always complain about the many, many overlooked and ignored books and authors, but I'm afraid the situation in this regard is much the same as usual (i.e. neither appreciably better nor worse than in most years). So I offer instead:

- the $100,000,000 gift to Poetry. From the curious gift giving (by someone deemed not capable of handling her own affairs) to the lawsuit against the bank taking care of the money and investments to the re-formation of the non-profit institution into the Poetry Foundation, but without (as far as I can tell) much change in who sits on the board (despite the fact that the job has changed entirely - from a board whose main job was to raise funds to one that pretty much only has to spend them) there's a lot of playing with a whole lot of money going on - and there's been relatively outside scrutiny. I thought there would have been several major-magazine exposés already; instead, one barely heard about this. Several stories appeared marking the one year anniversary of the Poetry-bequest, including one in the Wall Street Journal; nevertheless, I still don't think this story has gotten near the attention it deserves

- Amazon.com's used book selling. They've been doing it for a while, but I haven't heard much about the consequences of the marketplace part of the business. With second-hand copies of many brand-new books available, I'm very curious to know whether this has had an appreciable effect on the first-hand market. From Amazon.com sales through links at the Complete Review I can see an incredible shift to marketplace purchases - total unit sales in November were up 50% over last year at the CR, but our earnings are down 20% (because so many of the sales earn the much lower marketplace commissions). I have no idea whether the increased sales are due to the availability of cheaper products, but I imagine that this is cutting into sales of new copies at least to some extent - and I haven't read much about this.

- The burnt books in Iraq. Yes, some of the lost museum treasures stories were apparently overblown - but the burnt libraries (not only in Baghdad) apparently were as catastrophic as first reported. And there's been little mention of how much and what was lost.

Maud: I wouldn't have thought of mentioning the Dalkey Archive Press, but Alex is right to applaud its noble efforts and to call for more attention to be devoted to it. In keeping with Michael's observation that other organizations are republishing important works of world literature and that the phenomenon should receive more press generally, I should mention that a friend recently alerted me to the outstanding New York Review of Books classics series and pointed me to Raymond Queneau's Witch Grass. I can't recommend the Queneau or the other NYRB classics I've sampled since highly enough.

I also agree with Robert that the U.S. press should have done a better job of covering the Sontag speech.

Perhaps this is my legal background talking, but the first underreported story that springs to my mind is the potential chilling effect of the USA Patriot Act on literature and journalism. I'll refrain from launching into a political diatribe here, except to say that I don't think comparisons to the Red Scare and the McCarthy Era are unwarranted.

Another semi-lawyerly concern of mine is the ever-increasing term of copyrights.  Lawrence Lessig has done an excellent job of arguing that works should be allowed to enter the public domain in due course, but the Supreme Court has said, essentially, that only Congress can stop the copyright-extension madness. I think the press should be doing more to make writers and readers aware of the corporate machinery behind the extensions, and of the traditional view that the public discourse and arts benefit when there is free access to public domain works and "products of
inventive and artistic genius."

Michael: I'm in (sad) full agreement with the concerns about the Patriot Act and it's possible consequences, and don't believe there's been nearly enough discussion about it.

Alex: I really should have mentioned the New York Review of Books series. Who let Joyce Cary's first trilogy, or A High Wind in Jamaica go out of print? Thanks to the NYRB for bringing them back.

And I couldn't agree with Maud more on the importance of copyright extension and the impact of the Patriot Act. Even the name should scare people. Since I'm the only non-American here I guess I can't say that much, but I think LeCarré got it right with his column earlier this year on how the United States has "gone insane."

I hope you people can work this out. I think most of the rest of the world is just looking on in horror.