NY Press has a long look at the history of iconoclastic indie press Soft Skull, which recently shuttered its New York office, effectively ending the publisher’s run as a standalone press and making it just an imprint of California-based parent (and, it should be noted, rescuer from financial straights) Counterpoint. Incidentally, I’ve had a front row seat for all this, as, for the book I’m co-editing, I was initially working with the good folks in New York and then everything was suddenly (and thankfully without a hitch) transferred to the folks in Berkeley. (Thanks, Craig)
The Too-Short History of Soft Skull
On Cocktails, Camaraderie, and Chaos
Times drink columnist Rosie Schaap discussed Drinking With Men in the pages of The Observer. Meanwhile, Derek Brown has some advice for bartenders across the country: for the love of all that is holy, stop inventing so many new, wild drinks!
No Lie
“One lie I tell is that we care, generally—human beings—about each other. We could not, I tell myself in the moments just before the night’s dark hour, create The Odyssey or King Lear or Thomas and Beulah without a profound sense of The Other. Surely, were it true this thing’s a joke, nothing more, and a cruel one at that, we’d have no Dickinson, no Yeats, no freakin’ Rumi, read by Bly, loud on an old tape deck while I shower.” Pablo Tanguay on the art of lying.
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Dark Times at The Virginia Quarterly
At The Wilmington Star News, a round-up of the news coverage of the suicide of The Virginia Quarterly Review‘s managing editor, Kevin Morrissey, and the accusations that Morrissey’s boss, Ted Genoways, the wunderkind editor-in-chief of VQR, may have played a role in the suicide. In the wake of this sad controversy, the University of Virginia has shut down the 85-year-old journal, pending an internal investigation.
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Glad to hear they’re doing well.
Recommended Reading: “Patterns” by Kristiina Ehin, which has a better opening line than anything else you’re going to read this month, I promise.
Gandalf Set Up the Fireworks
The Paris Review starts the year off right with a post on Tolkien’s birthday.
RIP Jenny Diski
Jenny Diski, a prolific author who’d kept up a serialized diary of living with cancer since 2014, died this morning at the age of 68. Her partner, Ian Patterson, broke the news on Twitter, after which outlets including The Guardian confirmed it. The author had recently published her final book, a memoir.
Stocking Self Published Novels
A guide for booksellers on working with self published authors.
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