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 Lonesome Death of Lit-Fic
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?)
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Dark Thoughts
If you know that Patricia Highsmith wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley, you know that she’s an exceptional authority on the workings of the criminal mind. At The Paris Review Daily, Dan Piepenbring digs up an old interview with the author, in which she describes the act of murder as “the opposite of freedom.” You could also read Tana French on Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train.
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DARE, Hear Americans Talk
In 1965, researchers set out in campers to hear Americans talk. The Dictionary of American Regional English is a road trip of the mind. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
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Jonas Take Me Somewhere We Can Be Alone
We knew she was trouble when Taylor Swift joined the cast of the Weinstein’s adaptation of The Giver. Billboard reports that Swift has signed on for an unspecified supporting role along with Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, and Alexander Skarsgard. The movie will start filming in Cape Town next week.
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Smile More
Recommended (Frustrating) Reading: “Men Explain Submissions To Me,” an eye-opening new piece from Sarah Blake at The Rumpus.
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