The Infinite Summer online book club, brain child of Matthew Baldwin, has finally completed Infinite Jest. To celebrate, they are reading Dracula. Steven Lowman briefly interviews Baldwin at the Washington Post blog Short Stack.
Infinite Summer: Reading D.F.W. in Concert
Burnt-out with Didion
Alice Bolin writes for The Believer about Joan Didion, Los Angeles, and Play It As It Lays. The novel was also listed as one of The Millions‘s “Burnt-out Summer Reads,” so if there’s ever a time to read it, it’s probably now.
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What Is Experimental Literature?
“I take to heart Percival Everett’s point that all writing begins as experiment. Experiments are hypo/theses; wagers; fermentations or useless admixtures; mud pies and blood pies.” Miranda Mellis talks with HTMLGiant’s Christopher Higgs in the next installment of Higgs’s essential “What Is Experimental Literature?” interview series. It’s worth perusing the the back catalog if you missed the first three, with the fabulous Debra Di Blasi, Danielle Dutton, and Bhanu Kapil.
The Bard of Florida
After passing through the House, a new bill establishing a four-year term limit for the state’s Poet Laureates is set to reach the Florida governor’s desk in the near future. The Sunshine State has been without a Poet Laureate since Edmund Skellings died in 2012.
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Jacqueline Woodson on the Joys of Reading Slowly
In a TED talk dedicated to taking the time to appreciate stories, Jacqueline Woodson extols the virtues of reading slowly.
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A Rush of Blood to the Head?
An intriguing pairing: Norman Rush tackles James Ellroy‘s Blood’s A Rover in the current New York Review of Books.