Literature

John Foley figures he has pretty much maxed out on explaining to African American mothers why it's OK to call a black man the N-word -- as long as it's in a novel that is considered a classic. For years, English teachers have been explaining away the obvious racism in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Shakespeare, Edith Wharton and Internet poetry were supposed to be among the main topics of discussion at the largest gathering of humanities professors in the nation. But the sour economy and shrunken job market for academics proved to be more dramatic than any novel or play. An estimated 8,500 professors and wannabe professors of English literature, composition and foreign languages gathered for the annual meeting this week of the Modern Language Assn.

An ordinarily staid book fair in France has become the subject of international controversy because of a boycott by several Muslim nations and organizations over a decision by organizers to honor Israeli writers and history. Iran on Saturday became the second Middle Eastern country to officially opt out of the annual Salon du Livre, the largest of the Paris book fairs. The festival draws thousands of writers and hundreds of publishers from around the world.

Every summer, the announcement of the Man Booker Prize long list kicks off a conversation that lasts until October, when a winner is named. So it's no shock that this year's slate, announced Tuesday, has done exactly that. What is surprising is the presence of one name among the 13 long-listed authors: Tom Rob Smith, a 29-year-old London screenwriter who made a critical and commercial splash earlier this year with his debut thriller, "Child 44."

Those on the list know exactly what to do the day the invitation arrives. Unsung and unadvertised, the women's book festival in Long Beach typically sells out the next day. So local women frantically fill out the forms and rush to the post office, preferably the big one on Redondo Avenue, to make sure their registration gets hand-stamped and dispatched in that day's mail.

Acclaimed author Luis J. Rodriguez and his wife, Maria, had a dream of bringing art and culture to a community long ignored by theaters and bookstores. So they took out a second mortgage on their San Fernando home and began renting what was once office space in a small strip mall. Thus was born Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural in Sylmar.

Neville Jason can claim he's read every word, pondered every pause and mulled the inflection of every line of "War and Peace," and it would be unwise to call him a liar. That's him, carefully enunciating each syllable of Leo Tolstoy's 560,000-word epic in an audiobook recently released by Naxos, an English publisher. Fifty-one CDs, roughly 70 hours of death, drama, history and philosophy. It took 23 days in the studio to record.

Word has spread fast among the tweed-clad Steinbeck scholars, the rare booksellers, the well-heeled collectors. One of John Steinbeck's least distinguished works, "Cup of Gold" -- with prose that one critic calls more purple than the California Sierra -- will be sold to the highest bidder today for $20,000, $30,000 or even more.

Robert Crais is 20 years into an acclaimed career built around a fictional private detective named Elvis Cole. Elvis is easy to like, friendly and wisecracking. His only bad qualities are a corny sense of humor and a fondness for loud shirts. The Cole books have become bestsellers, earning their author a reputation as heir to the great California detective writer Ross Macdonald. But lurking at Elvis' side for 10 books has been a laconic, deadly sidekick named Joe Pike.

TEACHING high school chemistry, she was the picture of propriety, not an inch of flesh exposed except her hands and a cheerful face framed by a tightly pinned head scarf. Her students were separated according to the Islamic school's strict rules: boys on one side of the class, girls on the other. Lessons stuck to dry theory, like rote explanations of the periodic table and how atoms and molecules bond.