Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker comments on why we still write to win prizes (and hails Mario Vargas Llosa for having “a lively personal life that includes once punching out another future laureate…Gabriel García Márquez, reportedly over something to do with Mrs. Vargas Llosa. The Nobel thus not only crowns a career but provides the basis for a fine future Javier Bardem/Antonio Banderas movie.”)
Writing to Win
Why America Needs Indies
Farhad Manjoo thinks corner bookstores are simply comfy and quaint. According to a response by The Christian Science Monitor, he couldn't be more wrong.
Talking with Matthew Weiner
Just in time for the new season of Mad Men, The Paris Review unlocked their interview with Matthew Weiner from the new issue. The showrunner talks, among other things, about his father's love of Swann's Way and his own adolescent love of Winesburg, Ohio. You could also take a look at our own Hannah Gersen's list of books to read when the season winds down.
Literary Daddy Issues
Writing in The Guardian, Colm Tóibín explores the "inspiring, rivalrous, Oedipal" relationships between authors and their parents. The article's been adapted from his forthcoming book, New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families
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Tuesday New Release Day: Volodine; Norwich; Gonzales; Nganang; Brooks; Ulin & Kolsby
Out this week: Bardo or Not Bardo by Antoine Volodine; My Mrs. Brown by William Norwich; The Regional Office Is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales; Mount Pleasant by Patrice Nganang; The Houseguest by Kim Brooks; and Ear to the Ground by David L. Ulin and Paul Kolsby. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Poetry As a Response to Sexual Violence
"Most poems are rooted in a powerful emotion. With visuals and details of violence against women being flashed every second on TV and debated by different groups, it is only natural that such incidents become themes in our writing," says Bindya Subba, who is one of several Indian poets writing response pieces to the recent rape incidents in Delhi and Mumbai.
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