At BOMB, Danielle Dutton speaks with me about her new press Dorothy, a publishing project, which just published two books you’ll want to add to your wish list, Renee Gladman‘s Event Factory and Barbara Comyns‘ Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.
Two More for the Wish List
Bold Move
“Poised to shake up the genre with its daring choice of protagonist, a groundbreaking young adult novel released this week by author Joan Berman reportedly makes the bold choice of following a moody, independently minded high school student who could be described as something of a loner.” The Onion pokes fun at YA fiction.
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Pioneering
Recommended Reading: Ruth Graham on the uncensored memoirs of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
“A Caul of Ambiguity”
“How could we possibly trust any creature that comes into the world wearing such a caul of ambiguity? That’s “essayists.” Four hundred and four years later, they continue to flourish.” John Jeremiah Sullivan offers a loose history of the essay, essayists, and all their many contradictions in a piece for The New Yorker.
Notable News Items
I’ve got another post up about Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers at the LBC Blog. I’ve been going back and forth with Sam (of Golden Rule Jones), so check out his posts, too.Calvin Trillin talks turducken and other things Cajun in the most recent issue of National Geographic. The piece is typical Trillin, funny and featuring mouth-watering descriptions of various regional delicacies. (Much like the articles collected in a favorite book of mine, Trillin’s Feeding a Yen)Jim Crace discusses his Guardian column, The Digested Read, “The idea of rewriting a book in the style of the author in just 500 or so words is a gift to any satirist, and it remains the only outlet in the print media where publishers’ hype always gets treated with the irreverence it deserves.” A collection of the columns is out in EnglandThe CS Monitor takes a look at the self-publishing craze: “IUniverse, which prints several thousand books annually, reports submissions are up 17 percent in the first six months of this year.”A couple of new McSweeney’s offerings that you may or may not have seen already. Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things… is anthology for young adults, edited by Lemony Snicket and with stories by Nick Hornby, John Scieszka and Neil Gaiman, among others. Meanwhile Issue #17 of their Quarterly Concern is also out. According to Amazon: “Issue 17 is not an ordinary issue of McSweeney’s. It is, however, an ordinary bundle of mail, stacked and rubber-banded, containing the usual items: a recent issue of Yeti Researcher, a sausage-basket catalog, a flyer for slashed prices on multi-user garments, a couple letters… the usual. Also: the debut of a DVD quarterly, featuring never-before-seen work by Spike Jonze and David O. Russell. Also: stories.”
“A man who kept to himself”
Recommended reading: one essay on George Orwell‘s stomping grounds on the Scottish island where he wrote 1984 in the throes of a tubercular fever, and another on the tiny Indian town of Motihari where he was born.
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Curiosities
Try out our new “Random Post” button below the search boxes on the sidebar.CJR unveils new software in the quest to stamp out “gotcha journalism.”* Charlie Gibson, September 11, 2008:Question: “Have you ever met a foreign head of state?”Gotcha Quotient: 95Reason: First of all, foreign policy-related questions are incredibly unfair…Tennis reprints David Foster Wallace’s feature essay from its September 1996 issue.Perhaps not the most useful link in these tight times: “The Most Expensive Things I could Find On Amazon.com” (Note: several of these are out of stock. Coincidence?)None of you saw this coming: Rapper Coolio to release his own cookbook.Cindy Sherman’s famous librarian “Untitled Film Still” fetched $900k at a recent auction.
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Paul Harding’s Book Notes Playlist
Enon author Paul Harding made a playlist to accompany his latest book, which was recently reviewed on our site by Joseph M. Schuster.
Not So Super Journalists
Spider-Man is one of our favorite superheroes, but he’s a terrible journalist. At The Atlantic, Daniel D. Snyder discusses how Peter Parker and Clark Kent are unethical reporters. “The media is, in theory at least, supposed to be honest. Putting on a costume, coming up with a fake name, and lying to everyone about what you really do are the opposite of that.”