No the Times isn’t getting comics, but they are taking a cue from the New Yorker by adding a graphic novel-type comics section to the Sunday magazine. Everybody’s been saying for years that “graphic novels” are on the cusp of taking the book world by storm. Is this a step in that direction? The first artist to appear will be, you guessed it, Chris Ware. Get the gory details here.
The New York Times ‘Funny Pages’
New York Magazine Kicks Playa-tastic Game at World of Letters; World of Letters Says, “Uh…Thanks”; Good Time Had By All
The current issue of New York Magazine offers a typically glib handicapping of this summer’s debut novels and hot young fabulists, as well as surveys of overlooked books and of writers likely to stand the test of time. I’m least sympathetic to this American Idol style of journalism when it covers well-trod territory; New York’s a speculative “future canon” offers few surprises (Gary Lutz and Helena Maria Viramontes among them). But the lengthy “underrated” list does offer readers an introduction to new writers… as do the excerpts from works in progress by “tomorrow’s literary stars” (including my friend Maaza Mengiste.)It’s refreshing to read fiction in New York; perhaps they should do this more often. Anyway, if the endless brouhaha surrounding the Times’ attention-grabbing “Best Books of the Last 25 Years” failed to tire you out, click on over to New York and check out the offerings.
Jonathan Safran Foer is a Dog Person
As an urban dog owner I greatly enjoyed Jonathan Safran Foer’s article in the New York Times about the trials and tribulations of having a dog in a city. This op-ed piece is an argument against a plan to eliminate “off leash” hours in city parks. As someone who has many times appreciated the ability to let his dog “off leash” in parks in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia, I agree with Foer. I also enjoyed his musings on what it means for us (as in humanity) to have this desire to bring animals into unfriendly environs like cities. Kudos, as well, to Foer for letting his guard down in this piece in a way that many other writers might not have. (via Gwenda)
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Trillin On Parking
Millions contributor Garth pointed me to a funny little piece by Calvin Trillin in the New York Times in which the New Yorker writer is asked to test out the new Lexus “Advanced Parking Guidance System.” Perhaps you’ve heard of this; it supposedly enables the car to park itself. Trillin, as he indicates, believes that he has been asked to try this newfangled technology out because he was the author of Tepper Isn’t Going Out, “which is considered by most scholars to have been the first parking novel” and because in 1964 he was the founding co-editor of Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking, which, Trillin says, “I’ve seen referred to as a one-issue publication even though we prefer to say that the second issue hasn’t come out yet.” Indeed, Trillin views himself as something of a parking expert:If I were asked to name my talent – talent, that is, in the way the Miss America pageant uses the word talent, as in “Miss West Virginia will now do her talent” – I would say “parallel parking.” For the second issue of Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking, I’ve been preparing an article on how I came up with the term “slicing the bread” to describe maneuvering into a spot that leaves only the width of a bread slice between your bumpers and the bumpers of the cars ahead of and behind you. In a later issue, I intend to discuss “breaking the matzo” – getting into a spot so small that a matzo would crack if you tried to place it between the relevant bumpers. Just for the record, the last time I broke a matzo was May 1994, on Riverside Drive, between 83rd and 84th; unfortunately, there were no witnesses.Good stuff.
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New Narrative
Narrative, a great online literary magazine, has a new issue out featuring a new story by Rick Bass and a classic by Frank Conroy. You can sign up for a free “subscription” to get access to the above stories as well as everything in their archives.
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Books and Politics
Hillary Clinton may have bested Barack Obama at the voting box in New Hampshire, but Obama remains a big winner at bookstores, according to a recent report:According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 per cent of industry sales, [Clinton’s] Living History averaged around 1,000 sales a week in December and early January, compared with more than 7,000 a week for [Obama’s] Audacity of Hope and more than 2,000 for Dreams From My Father.Elsewhere, it turns out that recently assassinated former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto submitted her memoir to HarperCollins just days before her death. As the world watches Pakistan, the publisher is rushing to get the book out, according to Reuters:”No one could have known that these would be Benazir Bhutto’s final words, and somehow that makes them carry even more weight, especially at a time like this,” said Tim Duggan, the editor at HarperCollins who acquired the rights to the book.