The Guardian offers a long, worthwhile profile of Dave Eggers, who suddenly is being considered and reconsidered seemingly everywhere. “The McSweeney’s empire… often gets characterised as a kind of cabal: a hip, young gang. [Eggers] and [wife Vendela] Vida, whose writerly circle includes Nick Hornby, Rick Moody, Jonathan Lethem and Joyce Carol Oates, tend to be seen as tastemakers. He thinks this is ridiculous.” (Thanks Emre!)
The Ongoing Reconsideration of Dave Eggers
Kesey Documentary
A new documentary on Ken Kesey and his band of Pranksters “presents the LSD-loving pioneers who spawned ’60s counterculture in their own words and images.”
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The Neglected Nobelist, Neglected No More
Henrik Pontoppidan, the Danish novelist, won the 1917 Nobel Prize for literature. His masterpiece, Lucky Per, has never been available in English. Now – lucky for us – it is. Frederic Jameson reviews it for The London Review of Books.
Eudora Welty: 27 Portraits
Before publishing her first story, Eudora Welty worked as a WPA photographer to document the effects of the Great Depression on rural Mississippi. Today, some of her portraits from this time are on display at the Wiljax Gallery in Cleveland, MS. You can take a look at some of them online courtesy of the gallery and The Oxford American.
Tuesday New Release Day: Desai, James, Gordon-Levitt, Beach, Mueller
New this week are Anita Desai’s The Artist of Disappearance and P.D. James’ Pride and Prejudice sequel Death Comes to Pemberly. Joseph Gordon-Levitt hangs up his acting duds to put out The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1, and, speaking of tiny stories, there’s Lou Beach’s 420 Characters: “these crystalline miniature stories began as Facebook status updates.” On the nonfiction side, there’s Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller.
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Breaking the English Ceiling
This year’s Forward Prize went to the poet Jorie Graham, whose collection The Dream of the Unified Field won the Pulitzer in ’94. Graham is the first American woman to win the prize.