MacArthur Genius™ Deborah Eisenberg, whom we’ve often celebrated here, publishes her 1,000-page Collected Stories this month – we ardently commend it to your attention. If you’ve read ’em all already, get your Eisenberg fix at the NYRB, where she reviews Dezsõ Kosztolányi‘s “quiet, shattering, perfect” novel Skylark.
A Double-Shot of Deborah Eisenberg
iDentity
“Up until very recently, I’d recount my online experiences with some degree of shame or sheepishness, but in this apocalyptic year of 2012, that embarrassment is beginning to fall by the wayside. I’ve been having more and more conversations with people grappling with what is gained and lost by how some of our most meaningful musical discoveries– not to mention life experiences– have happened in front of, or facilitated by, screens.” Over at Pitchfork, a new column dedicated to the intersections between digital and ordinary life – and the art these interactions can produce.
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Litquake’s Lit Cast
Litquake, the West Coast’s largest literary festival, now offers downloadable bi-monthly podcasts via their website and iTunes. On the site presently are episodes with Geoff Dyer, Carolyn Burke, Adam Johnson, Joshua Cohen, and Molly Ringwald, and the group plans to livestream and post events from their upcoming festival (Oct. 5-13) as well.
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Other Ventures
What’s it like being a young journalist in a turbulent time for the business? Some of my fellow Medill grads and I have created a blog to discuss that and other pressing matters. If you’re a journalism junkie like I am, you’ll enjoy The Newshole. Check it out.Longtime Millions contributor Emre has started a blog called Live from Gybria, where he will chronicle his travels, his life as a Turkish expat, and his studies at my illustrious alma mater, the Medill School of Journalism. Luckily, Emre will still be posting here, too. In fact, we’ll be putting up some more of his reading journals here in the next few days.And congrats to Anne Fernald (proprietor of the litblog Fernham) whose book Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader has just been published.
Dictionary Don
He grew up in Edinburgh, wears sharp suits, and added the entry for “phat” to the Oxford English Dictionary. Meet the new editor in chief of the OED, Michael Proffitt. Tom Rachman profiles him at The New York Times.
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Memory, Sorrow, Thorn, Etc.
Back in 1988, Tad Williams published the first book of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, which inspired George R.R. Martin to start writing A Song of Ice and Fire. Now, more than twenty years after publishing the last installment (and just as the new season of Game of Thrones begins), Williams announced that he’s writing a sequel, The Last King of Osten Ard. You could also read our own Janet Potter’s review of the first Game of Thrones book.
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Stieg Larsson-mania
Proof of a publishing feeding frenzy: It’s big news that a bunch of manuscripts that the late Stieg Larsson wrote when he was 17 have turned up.
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