Adam Levin, author of the years-in-the-making The Instructions, steps into the spotlight.
A Modest Debut
Raunchiness in YA
Tracy Clark-Flory has written a defense of "raunchy" teen literature for Salon.
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Bookstore Pricing Wars
E-book pricing wars continue. Sony tries to hit the Kindle where it hurts by offering cheaper e-books. Meanwhile, $0 is becoming an important price point at the Kindle store.
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The Great Gadsby
"The entire manuscript was written with the E-type bar of the typewriter tied down; thus making it impossible for that letter to be printed. This was done so that none of that vowel might slip in, accidentally; and many did try to do so!" Abe Books tells the tale of Gadsby, a self-published 50,000-word novel written without using the letter "e." Its author, Ernest Vincent Wright, won some notoriety when he accomplished the feat – called a lipogram – in 1939, although it's unlikely Wright could have foreseen that individual copies of his book would eventually fetch prices upward of $1,200. And if it's literary hijinks you're after, definitely read our own Anne Yoder on the work of Georges Perec, who wrote a lipogram of his own in 1969.
Pulp and Not
Is “literary” fiction just a product of clever marketing? Elizabeth Edmondson thinks it is. At The Guardian, she argues that classically literary authors like Jane Austen had no idea they were writing Literature -- posterity classified their work as such later on. Her essay dovetails nicely with our own Edan Lepucki's argument that literature is a genre.
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“Media hype and unusual advertisements”
The Los Angeles Review of Books interviewed Xujun Eberlein, a “China-born and now Boston-based” short story writer, essayist and blogger about recent literary happenings in her native country. The first question they asked has to do with Finnegans Wake, which is selling surprisingly well in Chinese bookstores.
“What they are, what they should be”
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Africa’s 54th State
The Republic of South Sudan has declared independence. Just three years ago, Dave Eggers published Out of Exile: Narratives from the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan (Voice of Witness). The Guardian has an excerpt. A year later, Jamal Mahjoub foresaw the secessionist fervor south of Darfur.
“On the Internet, no one has stationery”
Back in July, Patricia Lockwood lit up the Internet with “Rape Joke,” a harrowing poem. Now, at The Rumpus, Lauren O’Neal interviews Lockwood, who talks about “Rape Joke,” the subsequent reaction and her 2012 book, Balloon Pop Outlaw Black. You could also read Elisa Gabbert on Lockwood’s Twitter followers.