The big debut this week is Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis. Also of interest is a new collection of essays by Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number. The much delayed U.S. edition of a controversial 2009 Booker longlister, Ed O’Loughlin’s Not Untrue and Not Unkind, is now out. As is this intriguing curiosity: Peacock and the Buffalo: The Poetry of Nietzsche, which purports to be the “first complete English translation of Nietzsche’s poetry.”
Tuesday New Release Day
Not as Scary as Meeting Norman Mailer
Readers of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature most likely have a good idea of just how much the late Norman Mailer was a wellspring of jokes about writers. The pugilistic novelist, journalist and failed mayoral candidate did choose to title a collection of his work Advertisements for Myself, after all. Yet as Andrew O’Hagan notes in the LRB, it's hard not to admire the cojones on a guy who once told a prominent editor he was “still too young and too arrogant to care to write the kind of high-grade horseshit you print in Harper’s Bazaar."
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Kids Leap to the Darnedest Conclusions
A mom sat her six-year-old daughter down in front of some classic books and asked her to guess the story based on the cover. The results are both charming and eerily accurate. I'm glad we at least now know what lies in the liminal space between Lev Grossman and kittens inspired by kittens.
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The Dead Author’s Home
J.D. Salinger's house is on the market and generating plenty of buzz, but before you make an offer consider "what does it mean to want to live in a dead writer’s house? When does fandom devolve into idolatry?"
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Holiday links
Hope everyone's holiday is going well. I'll be putting up one or two more "Year in Reading" posts and then The Millions will most likely be dark until the New Year. But first, a couple of links:One of my favorite end of year lists is the bookfinder.com "Top 10 out of print books": the main list and broken down into categories.Stephen King names his favorite reads of the year, including a forthcoming novel by A.M. Homes. His number one book, which he calls "the best mystery of the decade," is LBC pick, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.Millions Flashback: Tis the Season
It’s Not Fair
The Critterati pets-in-literary-garb contest ends at midnight tonight! You can view a gallery of the submissions as they appear, and some of them are phenomenal. I especially like Humbert Humbert. I don't know how these people got their animals to cooperate (drugs, probably). Big Ed and Nadine, aged six months, made it quite clear that under no circumstances would they be dressed up as Lata and Kabir from A Suitable Boy (what am I supposed to do with this tiny cardboard cricket bat now?) Henry and June was also a non-starter, but that might have been unkind to do to siblings, anyway. No one wants to see his sister chew up a garter belt. Evidently I'm not the only one to encounter massive opposition.
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Emerging Writer’s Contest
The Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest ends on May 15th! Check out the guidelines to find out more about how you can be published in the literary journal (and win a nice chunk of change).
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Also available today is Ben Greenman’s new story collection “What He’s Poised to Do” –
Yes, the Greenman book is great. Also paperbacks of Colson Whitehead and Dave Eggers.