If you’re not watching Masterpiece Theatre’s toothsome Emma on Sundays, Jane Austen enthusiasts, you should be. No zombies. We promise.
The Brits Are Wrong…
Author as Commercial Mechanism
Has Edward St. Aubyn killed the existentialist novel? Jacob Kiernan at Full Stop Magazine has a few ideas about it. If it’s existential quandary you’re after, this essay for The Millions on the beautiful afterlife of books–which may not be so much of an afterlife, after all–will be perfect for you.
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The Lonesome Death of Lit-Fic
Guernica picks a scuffle with the VQR‘s Ted Genoways over what’s killing literary fiction. (Writers? Editors? M.F.A.s? How about late capitalism? Or the term “literary fiction?” Or the surfeit of articles about its demise?)
Charlestopher Ditchkins
Hitchens + Dickens = Ditchens. (Or is that Hickens?)
Tuesday New Release Day: Messud, Ausubel, Hill, Sjón, Powers
New this week: The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel, NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, and three newly translated books from by Icelandic author Sjón: The Blue Fox, The Whispering Muse, and From the Mouth of the Whale. New in paperback is The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers.
Not Very Titillating
Those of you who know the joy of reading romance novels with your friends have probably wondered at some point what people who write erotica are like. Are they bankers and professionals? Housewives and mistresses? Are they some combination of all of the above? At Slate, a chaste look at the lives of unchaste writers.
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