The Politico reports that Rudy Giuliani’s moderate views are a hit with “youth”:

According to a Nov. 1 Rock the Vote poll of 18-to-29-year-olds, for example, Giuliani led former Sen. Fred Thompson by 12 points — around the same advantage Giuliani averages in polls among all Republicans nationally. …

Giuliani has better prospects in the general election than his GOP rivals. Pollster Scott Rasmussen says the New Yorker has consistently outperformed other Republicans among voters ages 18 to 29.

Various observers raise their votes in protest that the only reason the yute like Giuliani is a) because they know his name and b) they know him from 9/11, when the world began. Plus, scoffs one observer,

“The idea they’ve got [about Giuliani] is about celebrity rather than politics.”

Younger voters are more likely to get their political information from television and less from newspapers than older voters, [he] added.

[e.a.]

Now, I have no idea why Giuliani is popular among young people, but I have another idea—the idea underpinning this blog—that in today’s world (and until further notice) politicians, and anyone else seeking to have an effect in today’s complex world, which is united by instant communication of information across the globe, are exactly the same as celebrities.

Politicians are just a bunch of actors waiting in the wings for their opportunity to perform on the world stage. Could it be that the “yute” are wiser than the rest of us?

Just as one literary giant dies—Norman Mailer, who wrote in 1959 in Advertisements for Myself that he was

imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of [his] time

… another literary giant rises. GalleyCat’s Ron Hogan explains:

Last week, a literary agent sent out the following letter to an unknown number of editors:

“Today you will be receiving via messenger a package containing two completed works of non-fiction, and four proposals for non-fiction works-in-progress. They represent the work of author [redacted], whose disruption and transformation of the non-fiction form will, we believe, one day garner him the highest literary honors. His works will sell millions of copies, and will be translated into hundreds of languages. His name will register in the lexicon of American literature and cultural studies. And his work, by its revolutionary character, will permanently alter the landscape of publishing and the consciousness of the Western reader.”
The author is a former Rolling Stone and Village Voice contributor

Quite the sales pitch, eh?

Oh horrors! British literary fiction is going directly-to-paperback at one publishing house:

From spring, Picador will use paperbacks to launch new books from all of its literary fiction writers, unless they have a guaranteed profitable hardback market. It estimates that 80% of its literary fiction will be published in this way.

Rival publishers described it as “a seismic change”.

“Hardback then paperback has been the model for 60 years,” said Dan Franklin, the veteran publisher at Jonathan Cape. “I would be worried about the call to Cormac McCarthy to tell him he’s going straight into mass-market paperback. I think he’d say no thanks.”

McCarthy might argue his hardbacks make money. Since it was published last November, The Road has sold almost 1,000 copies a month in Britain, earning £156,221.

Kirsty Dunseath, publishing director of Weidenfield & Nicholson, said the move could lessen the prestige of the novels. “Coming out in hardback is a statement of confidence in a novel and gets the reviews,” she said. “It doesn’t say much for your confidence coming out in paperback. Anyway, £12.99 isn’t such a high price to pay - you’d happily pay that for a CD.”

But Andrew Kidd, the publisher at Picador, is convinced the hardback’s primacy is over. “Over the last few years publishers have witnessed sales of literary fiction in hardback reaching new lows,” he said. “All of us find that depressing, and there are, frankly, no reasons to think the situation might soon reverse itself.”

To the dolt who’s worried about the “loss of prestige” that accompanies paperback-only publication, I say: where’s the prestige in failing to offer the public works that capture their imagination?

If you publish the right books—the truly excellent books—readers will come.