Paper roundup

There is a very interesting piece in The Guardian by Milan Kundera about the novel as an art form and the dangers of it running its course and being deflated by being stripped back as an art form just to a story that can be used for film adaptations. There are lots of other comments but those stood out for me, as did the idea that Albertine was a man not the inspiring woman Proust paints her out to be in Remembrance of Things Past.

In the same paper James Fenton talks about the price of books with a first edition signed copy of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake going for £8,500 being used as an example. he doesn't buy books based on monetary worth but feels that it is wise to have some idea of the value of old books.

The Times has an interesting article by London's biographer Peter Ackroyd on the Jerusalem vision William Blake had of the capital and it adds its own spin to the Independent's Banned book promotion with books starting at 99p in the paper from next week.