“Perhaps I can’t fully feel empathy and emotion for characters when I feel nothing but disdain for them.” Pank Magazine’s Kirsty Logan (who wrote today’s piece on the joys of unread books) debates with James Kaelan about We’re Getting On.
Reviewer and Novelist Debate!
Review another day
Reviews are still in the literary news, and in the midst of all the nicey niceness and plentiful hot air, Alix Ohlin got a real smack down in the Times for her new novel, Inside, and her new collection of short stories Signs and Wonders. Which prompted J. Robert Lennon to consider: How does one even write a good "bad" review?
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The Illusion of Confidence
Over-confident people enter into our lives in many forms: military planners, Wall Street investors, that chick shouting *NSYNC into the mic at the back of the bar. Daniel Kahneman's new book Thinking, Fast and Slow, deals with this phenomenon of human nature. Read an excerpt here.
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Curiosities
An excerpt of the lost and recently found Alexandre Dumas novel The Last CavalierAn assessment of poetic cliches in VQR. The surprise: some actually improve your chance of getting published.Jennifer Gilmore interviews the criminally underrated Max Apple.That novelists' strike not working out so well.Despite some withering condescension, Robert Gottlieb has interesting things to say about John Steinbeck.Penguin UK offers up some alternative storytelling techniques with its We Tell Stories site. The first is a tale by Charles Cumming told by messages inserted into Google Maps. (Thx, Mrs. Millions)Books cops like. (Thx, Laurie)The trend of the massive hyper-expensive book continues.Daniel Radosh points out that the New York Times has, yet again, published a trend piece on bloggers getting book deals.And finally... The Catalog of Unfit Toys: Finding Delight in the Defective
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Anthony Shadid Dies in Syria
It was shocking to find that New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid had died, of an asthma attack of all things, while reporting in Syria, especially when he's put himself in harm's way so many other times and emerged unscathed. Tyler Hicks, the Times photographer who was with Shadid when he died and who escorted his body out of Syria was, along with Shadid, among of the four journalists captured and held in Libya less than a year ago in the early days of the uprising there. Shadid's reporting was brave and essential there and elsewhere. His death comes just weeks before the release of a memoir, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East.
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Translators Deserve More Accolades
Daniel Hahn reminds us that translators are vastly under appreciated. To help combat this, he created the TA First Translation prize, an award that will go to a translator for a book's English-language debut. "There are many prizes in the book world, perhaps too many. But some exist not merely to reward one individual per year, but also to make a statement about what should be valued, and what we need more of. "
Poets & Writers’ MFA Rankings
This week I linked to one poet's concerns about the top MFA programs ranked in Poets & Writers. Now, a pretty impressive list of creative writing instructors have some questions for Poets & Writers itself.
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Solzhenitsyn Stories
Nine stories by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn will be released in English for the first time. They are described by scholars as "ranking alongside his best work." The collection will be entitled Apricot Jam: and Other Stories.
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