A Conversation With Phillip Roth
Kafka in Myanmar
“On my manhood rests a tattooed / portrait of Mr. President. / My beloved found that out after we wed. / She was utterly gutted, / Inconsolable.” Poet Maung Saungkha may have to prove in a Myanmar courtroom that he doesn’t have a tattoo of the nation’s president on his genitals.
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What a Crack-Up
Did F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Crack-Up” essays — in which the author began to chronicle his mental collapse — usher in and anticipate the rise of autobiographical writing in America?
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A New Collection on Its Way from Junot Díaz
Here’s a book that will be on our July “Most Anticipated” list: a new collection of stories from Junot Díaz called This Is How You Lose Her. The Times has more.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Agee; Mann; Cowley; Virgil; Szybist
Out this week: The Complete Journalism of James Agee; Straight Razor by Randall Mann; The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley; The Virgil Encyclopedia; and a new e-book edition of Incarnadine, the poetry collection by Mary Szybist that won this year’s National Book Award.
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On a Different Note
And now for something completely different, a book review of Shaq’s new memoir.
Which Wilder?
We’ve written about the newly published Laura Ingalls Wilder memoir several times, but a new review in the LA Times calls attention to one of the most interesting questions raised by the work: how much influence did Wilder’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane, an accomplished author in her own right, have on the final Little House books?