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The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Chris Sprouse, the illustrator slated to work with author Orson Scott Card on an upcoming issue of DC Comics' "Adventures of Superman," has dropped out of the project because of controversy over Card's views on gay marriage. Card has said in the past that homosexuality is "deviant behavior" and that same-sex marriage could lead to the end of civilization. In a statement, Sprouse said, "The media surrounding this story reached the point where it took away from the actual work, and that's something I wasn't comfortable with." The project will be put on hold.

A 9-year-old Australian boy saved himself and two friends from sinking into quicksand after reading a kids' travel book called Not-for-Parents: How to Be a World Explorer: Your All-Terrain Manual, which he got for Christmas. The Lonely Planet guidebook written by Joel Levy also includes tips about fighting bears, building igloos and climbing volcanoes.

The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson on the death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez: "[Chavez] acknowledged that he had come to [socialism] late, long after most of the world had abandoned it, but said that it had clicked for him after he had read Victor Hugo's epic novel Les Miserables."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush caused a stir this week with his shifting stances on immigration. Bush's new book, Immigration Wars, came out Tuesday, and in it, he writes that "those who violated the laws can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship." But in an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe the same day, Bush said his views had changed and that "we wrote this book last year, not this year."

"Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir!" Schroder author Amity Gaige on literary influences, in an interview with The Millions.

House Speaker John Boehner held a press conference the day after the November election.

"The American people have spoken," he said. "They've re-elected president Obama. And they've again re-elected a Republican majority in the House of Representatives."

But last Thursday, when the House of Representatives passed the Violence Against Women Act, it did it without a majority of Republicans. Only 87 voted for the bill; 138 voted against it. The rest of the yes votes came from Democrats. The speaker brought a bill to the floor knowing it didn't have the support of the majority of his caucus, which upset conservatives such as Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.

"Many people in conference expressed their concern publicly and privately about that," he said. "So why would the Republican House pass a Democrat priority bill? I don't know. It was set up to pass that way. We weren't given advance notice it came out. And it's a real concern."

Hastert Rule

The Violence Against Women Act, a disaster-relief bill for victims of Hurricane Sandy and the "fiscal cliff" deal — all three violated what's known as the Hastert rule: For a bill to be brought up for a vote in the House, it has to have the support of the majority of the majority.

"The 'majority of the majority rule' was more of a guideline for speakers in how to keep their jobs," says John Feehery, who was a spokesman for former Speaker Dennis Hastert, for whom the rule is named.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, mostly followed this rule. Boehner did, too, until recently. Feehery says Boehner made a cold, hard calculation and decided that letting these bills pass was best for the party.

"You know, it's not an easy decision because you don't want to alienate a majority of your majority," says Feehery, now the president of QGA Public Affairs. "I mean that's just kind of common sense. But there are also times where the majority of the majority may not like pieces of legislation but they are fine letting it go because they know it is better for them to allow things to pass."

Fears Of A Primary Challenge

New York Republican Rep. Peter King puts it this way.

"Sometimes you have to do what you have to do," he says. "It happened with the fiscal cliff. It happened with Sandy."

Why this happens isn't obvious just looking at the numbers. There are 232 Republicans in the house; 217 votes are needed to pass a bill. But a lot of Republicans don't vote the way leadership wants them to.

Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says these members are afraid of getting hit with a primary challenge.

"The good of the Republican Party as a whole is not something that necessarily resonates with a lot of individual members whose constituents back home don't feel the same way," he says.

As a result, Ornstein says bills that can pass the Senate and be signed by the president often don't have the support of the majority of the majority in the House. Recently, rather than stopping these bills, Boehner brought them to the floor, knowing conservatives would vote no.

"They'll come urge me to vote their way, but they've never insisted I compromise my principles," says Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, who was elected as part of the Tea Party wave. "And that's something I respect the speaker for."

A New Rule?

But that goodwill has its limits, Ornstein says.

"There are only so many times you can do this without damaging your standing as speaker," he says. "And doing things that basically bring votes from more of the other side than your own erodes your authority after a while."

When asked whether the Violence Against Women Act vote was part of a trend, Boehner's answer seemed to be aimed at reassuring his occasionally restive conference.

"We tried everything we could to find, to get the differences in our conference resolved. And the fact is they couldn't resolve their differences," he said. "It was time to deal with this issue and we did. But it's not a practice that I would expect to continue long term."

Maybe there's a new rule. The Boehner rule would be more pragmatic: something like only voting on bills that have the support of the majority of the majority, when possible.

But don't let the vampire distract you from a more central character in The Accursed: M.W. van Dyck II of Eaglestone Manor, a historian so passionate about the "Crosswicks Curse" and its victims that he can't always distinguish the narrative forest from the trees. With van Dyck, Oates slips from pastiche to parody, for he is a cartoon of a historian, one drawn along bumbling, antiquarian lines. As a result, readers are treated to seemingly irrelevant plot detours and labyrinthine discussions of family trees, real estate transactions and arcane source materials. In one chapter, the dismayed historian cannot help enumerating all that he has had to leave out of his account. In another, van Dyck contemplates the work of the historian (which he sees as the recording, assembling and interpretation of facts), and laments its failure to help him understand what really happened in his hometown of Princeton back in 1905.

One of the reasons our fictional historian remains mystified is that he fails to appreciate what Oates and so many other writers before her have discovered: Vampires and other supernatural beings are useful monsters to think with. These otherworldly creatures illuminate the darkest corners of the human mind and spirit, put flesh and bones on our nightmares, and encourage us to explore issues of difference and deviance. Running like a black thread throughout the many stories in The Accursed are disturbing accounts of racial violence, class warfare, religious prejudice and misogyny. Oates' real monsters are not the rulers of the Bog Kingdom or even the mesmerizing Wallachian count (whom the reader cannot help but compare to Dracula), but the members of Princeton's beau monde, who preach from their pulpits and judge without compassion. The curse that afflicts the town did not begin with the abduction of a young bride on her wedding day, but with the secrets these monsters keep.

“ Vampires and other supernatural beings are useful monsters to think with.

July 1, 2005