For its spring issue, the Paris Review will be publishing Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich—its first serialized novel in forty years—with original illustrations by Leanne Shapton. It’s a chance to discover Bolaño’s famous lost novel almost a year before it appears in book form.
Paris Review to Publish Bolaño
The Economy of Goodwill
Recommended Reading: Against crowdfunding websites that marketize goodwill.
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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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On The (Separate) Road
"I always had the sneaking and sinking suspicion that there would have been no place for me ... there were no Scarlett O’Haras in the Beat world. There were women, certainly, but they felt like cardboard cut-outs, something to move around, admire, shift gently out of the way when necessary. In fact, the only women Kerouac and Ginsberg seemed to genuinely respect were their mothers." Lynette Lounsbury at The Guardian on falling in love with the Beat generation, which may or may not have loved her back.
The Dead and the Pre-Dead
"For obit writers, the whole world is necessarily divided into the dead and the pre-dead. That’s all there is." The Paris Review interviews Margalit Fox, a senior writer for The New York Times, on the complicated art of obituaries.
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Citizen of the Year Reading List
ICYMI Colin Kaepernick was named GQ's 2017 Citizen of the Year a few weeks ago. In light of this honor two of his closest friends "have compiled a list of 'Freedom Dream' resources spanning close to two centuries—including books, essays, films, documentaries, songs, and museums—that can help readers, viewers, and listeners to understand race as the central political, cultural, economic, social, and geographic organizing principle of our nation, past and present. For it is only when we acknowledge the centrality of race in dictating the outcomes of life and death in the United States can we begin to work toward meaningful forms of racial justice." Find the books, music and movies that helped inspire Kaepernick (and that will enlighten you too) here.
Ugh. Another Bolano novel already? Can we finally agree that Bolano is the most over-hyped writer of the decade?
In the grand scheme of things (i.e. literature), he’s a middling talent at best.
Surely Bolano is less ‘over-hyped’ than other authors covered by The Millions? It’s easy to deem an author ‘middling talent’ from the peanut gallery of internet comments. I agree that there is some serious trendiness in the regard given to Bolano by websites like this or Quarterly Conversation, html giant, etc –and something cynical about the industry that’s grown around his work — but if the author that’s over hyped is the author of 2666 I think that’s pretty encouraging for literature [insert Franzen jibe here]. Who would you prefer to be ‘hyped’?
If you read Spanish that novel has been available for awhile now. (I don’t, unfortunately.) Just started a subscription to The Paris Review and am looking forward to this serial.
Middling? 2666. The Savage Detectives. Distant Star. Antwerp. By Night in Chile. I can’t think of half a dozen living American novelists with a comparable list of masterpieces.