A newly released Roald Dahl collection, The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets, includes a secret ending to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and excerpts from the author’s hilariously bad report cards. Wrote one teacher about Dahl in 1931: “A persistent muddler. Vocabulary negligible, sentences malconstructed. He reminds me of a camel.” (via Galley Cat)
Roald Dahl and the Hilariously Bad Grades
Is Social Publishing the Future?
Loudpoet has an interview with former Soft Skull Press publisher Richard Nash about his new social publishing venture Cursor. ““Social” is taking the book and making it much easier to have a conversation with the book and its writer, and have conversations around the book and its writer.” Is this a way forward for beleaguered publishers? (via The Lone Gunman)
The Value of Difficulty
“When we read a book that requires that effort — when the act of reading becomes rigorous and self-aware, rather than effortless and transparent — we get to have a history with what we’ve given ourselves to, a history etched into us by the demanding friction of its difficulty.” Zoë Heller and Leslie Jamison debate whether or not we overvalue difficult literature in The New York Times.
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The Case of Portnoy v. Feldman
At the Jewish Daily Forward, Neal Pollack — he of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature — takes on the retirement of his “contemporary,” Philip Roth.
Toole’s Place in the South
Did you really dig Cory MacLauchlin’s Millions article on The Lost Manuscript to A Confederacy of Dunces? If so, you’ll love this interview with MacLauchlin in Deep South Magazine.
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Critterati
Happy Halloween! At the New Yorker, the winners of the dress your pet as a literary character contest. Don’t miss the honorable mentions (I’m partial to the feline Moby Dick).
Tonight on 4th Avenue: Victor LaValle and Robert Lopez
Tonight at the Pacific Standard Fiction Series in Brooklyn, Victor LaValle, author of Big Machine (which, according to Edan boasts “one of the best voices to come out of literature in the last…oh, ever, probably”), will be reading with Robert Lopez, author of Kamby Bolongo Mean River. As usual, I’ll be hosting; it would be great to see you there. For more information, see Time Out New York.
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Watch me spit, classic lit
Based on a recent Jay-Z and Kanye West joint, La Shea Delaney and Annabelle Quezada bring you the addictive track “B*tches in Bookstores.” This all despite West being a confirmed, even proud, non-reader.
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