Emily Gould champions Barbara Comyns‘s overlooked novels at The Awl. One more deserving mention: Comyns’s haunting Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.
“The reader emerges … refreshed but crippled”
Up to Scratch
What’s better than being a writer? A writer who gets paid. Manjula Martin and Jane Friedman have launched the new digital magazine Scratch, which gives writers information on how to advocate for their work. The preview issue is free and contains essays on what freelancers can learn from street vendors, Cord Jefferson on outgrowing his materialism, and an interview with Jonathan Franzen. You can subscribe here.
“The Ukraine is Weak!”
Ever wonder why some countries get a fancy “the” in front of their names?
Now on Kindle
Three days after Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the Times wrote about Katharine Weymouth taking over the Washington Post, Jeff Farhi reports that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has agreed to purchase the newspaper. Will Bezos follow up his purchase of English™ with a brand-new WaPo style guide?
The Queen Died of Grief
Must female characters always stand in the shadow of the institution of marriage? Ivan Kreilkamp writes on female bachelors, from Renata Adler’s Speedboat to Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights. Pair with this Millions essay on Adler’s piecemeal novel.
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(Winds of) Winter is Coming.
Get your mind right ahead of the Game of Thrones Season 4 premiere by reading this just-released chapter of George R. R. Martin’s sixth Song of Ice and Fire installment, Winds of Winter. Martin told fans in a recent blog post, “The new chapter is actually an old chapter. But no, it’s not one I’ve published or posted before.”
Getting Out with a Minimum of Hassle
Calling all stir-crazy New Yorkers! If you want to move to a smaller, less competitive locale, consult this handy-dandy guide to other cities at The Morning News.
Zombified
Recommended Reading: Michael Christie on Aleksandar Hemon’s The Making of Zombie Wars. You could also read Hemon’s Year in Reading entry.
Tuesday New Releases
Among the books hitting shelves this week are Pulitzer winner and New Yorker staffer Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University and memoirist and poet Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb. Also new, Melville House is putting out a novella, Union Jack, by Nobel laureate Imre Kertész, and NYRB Classics has published Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy a novel by Olivia Manning based on her time in Eastern Europe during World War II. Rachel Cusk provides an introduction to the edition.
“Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead” is a favorite of mine. I am very happy to see that people will get a chance to read it. It is a really strange and wonderful book.
It is, indeed, a strange book. I recently finished reading it, but I’m not sure what I think of it. It was worth the time, but I don’t think it will stay with me, and I don’t feel any compulsion to read anything else by her. Perhaps with time.