The second issue of Chicago’s crackerjack The Point, having thrown caution to the wind, tackles the prickly genius of Michel Houellebecq: “Houellebecq has published four novels, all of them bitter and miserable.”
The Miserable Wonderfulness of M. Houellebecq
Urvashi Butalia on Indian Small Presses
Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon founded India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali For Women, in 1984. In 2003, they parted ways to start their own projects: Menon began Women Unlimited; Butalia founded Zubaan Books. Now, in a compressed and edited interview for Mint, Butalia discusses some of the challenges she faces in India’s publishing ecosystem, and also notes, “in my 40 years in publishing, things have never felt as exciting as they are now. It truly seems there are infinite possibilities.”
Recommended Reading
Elissa Schappell’s quick-witted book criticism now has an online presence with the debut of her Vanity Fair column, Just My Type. First up: a look at new fantasy fiction and a consideration of genre-bending novels, with a winning recommendation of Ann Beattie’s Mrs. Nixon.
A Proofreader’s Value Summed Up
Jim Romenesko’s page dedicated to humorous typos might be the best Pinterest board ever created.
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AWP Events You Can’t Miss
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“The quality of detaching itself from its period”
“For a man who is making his living as a critic to write about Scott Fitzgerald without mentioning The Great Gatsby just means that he doesn’t know his business. Many people consider The Great Gatsby one of the few classic American novels. I do myself. Obviously such a judgment is debatable.” The New Republic digs up a tribute by John Dos Passos.
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Archiving the Internet
“Our contemporary analogues to the personal notebook now live on the web — communal, crowdsourced and shared online in real time.” Jenna Wortham writes on how archiving the Internet would change history. We’ve written about the implications of the Internet more than once.
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