In the new issue of Open Letters, “Sam Sacks tours the city with E.L. Doctorow, Colm Tóibín, and Colum McCann.”
New Open Letters Monthly
Tuesday New Release Day: Oyeyemi; Leyner; Spiotta; Lee; Parker; Greenridge; Baume; Tsabari
Out this week: What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi; Gone with the Mind by Mark Leyner; Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta; High Dive by Jonathan Lee; Crazy Blood by T. Jefferson Parker; We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenridge; Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume; and The Best Place on Earth by Ayelet Tsabari. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
An Interview With Marilynne Robinson
Read here, in the University of Washington’s alumni magazine, about how Marilynne Robinson approaches a book’s essence as “an elaborate needlepoint of decisions and observations”; how novels visit upon her as surprises; and how her recent move to New York might spawn yet another gift to readers.
●
●
Cockroaches in Skinny Jeans
Is that an iPod Nano? And a fixed gear bike? Uh-oh: you might have hipsters (via).
●
●
Sterling Cooper Draper Time
“According to the biography, Hadden designed the fact-checking system with the thought that putting a male writer and a female researcher together in a quasi-adversarial situation would create a sexual dynamic that could lend energy to the process.” Calvin Trillin’s memories of the Time offices in the early 1960s are at times more Mad Men than Mad Men.
●
●
Joan Didion: Model
Joan Didion: celebrated essayist and author, subject of upcoming crowd-funded documentary, style icon and model?
●
●
The Alice Munroonie
Indie in the Age of Amazon
“Independent bookstores are intellectual centers of a city.” Our own Bill Morris, who’s currently on tour for his latest book, Motor City Burning, writes for The Daily Beast about the importance and continued relevance of bookstores in the age of Amazon.
●
●
Leave It To TV
Recommended Reading: this piece from Electric Literature on how 80s television broached topics that we’re still afraid to talk about today. Here’s a bonus piece on reality television, as well.
●
●