Who Wrote Obama's Book?

There's a bit of a fuss in political circles about whether President Obama wrote Dreams of My Father. Generally I don't bother with squabbles over writing by politicians because they rarely write their own stuff so the issue is ridiculous. But I'm not sure about Obama. He might have strong feelings about authenticity. Anyway, here's one interesting analysis in favor of his authorship. If that's too technical, another discussion of the same topic appears here, also favorable to Obama. And here's the guy who started the ruckus by contending that Bill Ayers wrote the book.

Vanity Press for Scholars?

The editor of the publication in question has resigned, according to a Guardian report. This outfit offers to print your research paper in their scholarly journal, for a fee ... and got hoaxed by this prankster who submitted a gibberish paper. My LiteratEye column on the subject can be found at ArtofthePrank.com

Salinger Goes to Court

Ron Rosenbaum takes a look at how things stand with reclusive J.D. Salinger, including the lawsuit over use of his Catcher in the Rye characters in a novel by another author.

UPDATE: The new novel's author responds. Meanwhile a judge is holding up release of the book in the U.S. while the case is under study. UPDATE: A very interesting story from a Swedish newspaper. Update: Publication blocked.UPDATE: The appeal.

UPDATE: So long, Salinger...

The Marlowe-Shakespeare Conspiracy

I shy away from most items on the Shakespeare controversy because it's generally so well covered elsewhere but this site is intriguing, very well done, and the unrelated addenda is, to me, quite interesting. I ran across it while looking for a good solid site on Shakespeare as a Sufi poet; haven't found that one yet.