This “book trailer” released by Gary Shteyngart for his upcoming book Super Sad True Love Story has been the cause of much recent hilarity. If you have yet to see it, look for appearances by Jeffrey Eugenides, Jay McInerney and actor James Franco.
Gary Shteyngart’s Book Trailer
The Wrath of the Translator
The English Illiad, compared: a look at the translations of Robert Fagles, Anthony Verity, Stephen Mitchell, and more.
The Essay Crown
Could James Baldwin be America’s greatest essayist? Ta-Nehisi Coates believes so — at The Atlantic, he argues that The Fire Next Time shows Baldwin committing “amazing acts of intellectual and emotional courage.” (Related: Buzz Poole paid tribute to Baldwin back in 2008.)
Fish Cop
Nobody likes to be critiqued. Lucas Gardener at The New Yorker would really like to assure all of his concerned Creative Writing workshop classmates that his most recent submission, “Creative Writing Beatdown,” is entirely fictional and has no basis in reality. Really.
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The Giver Trailer is Out
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Glad to hear they’re doing well.
Recommended Reading: “Patterns” by Kristiina Ehin, which has a better opening line than anything else you’re going to read this month, I promise.
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Writing the Body
Recommended Reading: E.V. de Cleyre explores the presence of the body in Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Freud; Seskis; Baxter; Vaillant; Puertolas; Oates
Out this week: Mr. Mac and Me by Esther Freud; One Step Too Far by Tina Seskis; Munich Airport by Greg Baxter; The Jaguar’s Children by John Vaillant; The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe by Romain Puertolas; and The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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