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?)
The Lonesome Death of Lit-Fic
“YA fiction has blossomed outside the literary world’s prestige economy.”
In response to an article in the Atlantic observing that women dominate the world of YA fiction, Laura Miller wonders whether men avoid and women embrace YA fiction for the same reason: it offers little prestige.
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NaNoWriMo Author Scores Big
Erin Morgenstern‘s debut novel The Night Circus went from National Novel Writing Month project to 6-figure book advance after being rejected by more than 30 agents.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Boyle, Marai, Baseball
New this week in the fiction aisle are T.C. Boyle’s When the Killing’s Done (our review) and Sandor Marai’s Portraits of a Marriage. Also, baseball fans, the 2011 Prospectus is out today.
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Harry Potter V. Willy the Wizard
Lit crit becomes a legal matter: “The contrast between the total concept and feel of the works is so stark that any serious comparison of the two strains credulity,” wrote the English judge who has dismissed the case against J.K. Rowling brought by the estate of Willy the Wizard author Adrian Jacobs. Jacobs’ estate claimed that Rowling had plagiarized elements of Willy the Wizard‘s plot in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
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The Artist’s Guide to Parenting
“The physical purpose of reproduction is, obviously, the continuation and renewal of genetic continuity, human survival. Its psychological purpose seems to me to be a particularly poignant kind of mutual learning and, matters being equal, ineffable comfort.” What is the relationship between being an artist and being a parent? Maria Popova at Brain Pickings takes a look at sculptor Anne Truitt’s collected journals, Daybook, to try and suss out an answer.
Publication Studio Does NYC
Portland-based Publication Studio is hosting a whirlwind series of events in New York next week. They kick off the weekend with an evening mixer at the Museum of Modern Art on Thursday, April 19; continue with a conversation between landscape architect Diana Balmori and PS co-founder Matthew Stadler at Printed Matter, on Friday, April 20th; and end with a lavish sit-down dinner, cooked by Ben Walmer of the Highlands Dinner Club in the Harlem speakeasy where HDC got its start, on Saturday, April 21.
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