Laura Miller at Salon explains why she would choose the novels and stories of Shirley Jackson to be stuck with in an isolated cabin over those of Roth, Cheever or Carver.
Shirley Jackson: Great American Novelist?
The Great Vietnamese Novel(s)
“The literature by Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans is out there for anyone who knows how to use Google. But so many here and abroad would rather not know, or when a new Vietnamese author is published, would prefer to say, ‘At last! A voice for the Vietnamese!’ In fact, there are so many voices, for the Vietnamese people are very loud.” Pulitzer Prize winner and Year in Reading alumnus Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer) writes in The New York Times about the diversity of Vietnamese writing, too often ignored in favor of war narratives and the voices of American veterans. (For an incredible syllabus of books to fill in the gaps, see the middle of his piece.)
Word comics of the day
Recommended RSS-ing: A better word of the day from artist Tory Hoke, who pairs each unusual word with a hand-drawn comic. Friday’s entry, “spurcitious,” is charmingly defined in relation to a thumb and a hammer. Hate pictures? Other tried-and-true options include curators at Merriam-Webster, The New York Times, and this guy on Twitter.
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A Bumpy Flight
Sick of Delta delays? Take one of Mallory Ortberg’s literary airlines listed in her humor post at The Toast. “Thanks for flying Jane Air. Are you escaping for business or for pleasure? Will you be stowing any wives today?”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Zink; Gates; Gornick; North; Perry; Dimechkie; Leipciger; Swift; Robinson; Kovite
Out this week: Mislaid by Nell Zink; A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me by David Gates; Odd Woman in the City by Vivian Gornick; The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North; The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry; Lifted by the Great Nothing by Karim Dimechkie; The Mountain Can Wait by Sarah Leipciger; England and Other Stories by Graham Swift; and War of the Encyclopaedists by Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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The Artist of the Deal
“’I put lipstick on a pig,’ he said. ‘I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is’ … If he were writing The Art of the Deal today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, ‘The Sociopath.'” Donald Trump’s ghostwriter from The Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz, expresses some remorse and tells what it was like to write Trump.
Serializing in the Digital Age
The University of Michigan Press will be serializing two novels on their Facebook account. Previously, authors such as Brandon J. Mendelson have experimented serializing their novels 140 characters at a time. He even has some tips for doing so.
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NBCC Finalist Party
The NBCC finalists will be announced tonight at an event in New York City, and you’re invited! The event will feature drinks, hors d’ouevre, and (probably) a lot of reading glasses.
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