New this week: Paul Auster’s latest, Sunset Park; a new collection of short stories from Stephen King called Full Dark, No Stars; The Memory Hole, a memoir by the historian Tony Judt who recently died from ALS (the essays collected here appeared in recent months in the New York Review of Books); and the latest obligatory obfuscatory presidential memoir Decision Points.
Tuesday New Release Day: Auster, King, Judt, Bush
When Five Years Pass
“New houses get built, and new songs are sung ... and I am the same, in the same trembling state.” Things are not going very well at the newly built Federico García Lorca center in Granada, Spain. Patience is wearing thin as members of the García Lorca Foundation continue tangling with government officials over control of the center, which is intended to house nearly 20,000 items — manuscripts, drawings, musical compositions and artworks valued at more than 20 million euros.
Next Step: Skynet Becomes Self-Aware
James Harriman-Smith wants to know what humans can learn from a computer's reading of Shakespeare's plays. As it turns out, there's quite a bit.
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Twenty Years of Jest
Recommended Reading: Tom Bissell reflects on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest twenty years after its publication. You could also read our review of The David Foster Wallace Reader.
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Literary Maps of Another Kind
In anticipation of Adam Sternbergh’s novel, Shovel Ready, Chris Bilton and Sarah Liss collaborated on “the ultimate N.Y.C. dystopia map,” which serves as an amalgamation of “some of the darkest visions of the city.” Meanwhile, Jacob Silverman points us to a map of St. Petersburg, Russia, "made out of lines from Russian literature.” (Bonus: Sternbergh discusses his novel with the Los Angeles Times.)
None Found Here
Not sure what’s honest and what’s not in your life? Then consult Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit, which handily lays out seven tools for identifying bad ideas. The astronomer also provided a list of common fallacies in his 1995 book, The Demon-Haunted World.
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Between a Rock and a Bookless Place
As libraries struggle to survive in the UK, community-based lending libraries are sprouting up to fill in the gaps. The Society of Authors is threatening to take legal action against these libraries after discovering that they are not required to pay any royalties to authors.
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Write a Turtle Story, Win a Turtle Diary
NYRB Classics just reissued Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary, and in honor of that occasion Levi Stahl is giving away a free copy. All you have to do is write “the best turtle story” in his comments section before June 20th. Are you up to the task?