The Faster Times recaps James Wood‘s recent lecture on David Foster Wallace‘s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.
“First Reads with James Wood”
Poetry After the Windfall
The Chicago Tribune looks at Poetry magazine ten years after the tiny publication received an astonishing $200 million donation. How’s the magazine doing? “The answer is complicated.”
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“Rote lessons before the air raid drill”
At The Atlantic, Caleb Crain (of Necessary Errors and n+1 fame) writes about the galvanizing effects of memorizing his favorite poem. (If you’re wondering, the poem in question is W.H. Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone.”)
Tuesday New Release Day: Ball; Vásquez; Samson; Ginsberg & Ferlinghetti; Kushner
New this week: A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball; Lovers on All Saints’ Day by Juan Gabriel Vásquez; The Kindness by Polly Samson; a new book of correspondence between Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and Apollo in the Grass by the Russian poet Aleksandr Kushner. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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Adventures in Publishing
Ted Thompson, whose novel The Land of Steady Habits was released earlier this year, writes for Salon about his experience publishing his first book. Pair with this conversation between our own Bill Morris and Edan Lepucki, who both have novels coming out this month.
Lynne Tillman Doesn’t Write About Art
For the Los Angeles Review of Books, an interview with Lynne Tillman on her relationship with art historian, critic, and theorist Craig Owens, who died 29 years ago at the age of 39.
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Zeitoun Charged with a Murder Plot
Abdulrahman Zeitoun has been charged with plotting to kill his wife, her son and another man. The protagonist of Dave Eggers’s bestselling (and Millions Hall of Famer) Zeitoun has had a spate of legal troubles since the book’s 2009 release, most of which related to charges of domestic battery. You can read Eggers’s statement on the matter over here. One has to wonder how these ongoing arrests will affect the forthcoming animated film based on Eggers’s book, which was scheduled for a 2014 premiere.
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