Ben Greenman, New Yorker editor, author, chart artist? The Observer explains.
The Chart Artist
Bold and Messy
Over at Full Stop, Josephine Livingstone writes about Eileen Myles’s hip image and the renewed success of Chelsea Girls. Also check out Stephanie LaCava’s Millions essay on how social media helped to push Myles’s book into the mainstream.
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Unforgivable Sins
We’ve covered The New York Times Bookends column before. This week, Benjamin Moser and Year in Reading alumna Rivka Galchen discuss unforgivable sins in literature.
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Happy Halloween
Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman have written a comic zombie novel entitled The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home, which can be read for free on the website Wattpad. So far, three chapters have been posted, with a total of thirteen to be published in the ensuing weeks.
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Tintin the Archeologist
Tintin’s official profession may be that of a reporter, but he is just as much an explorer and archaeologist, dashing around the world to chase down ancient artifacts in addition to nefarious villains and a good story. “Tintinologist” Jean-Marc Lofficier lists his favorite archaeology-themed Tintin adventures.
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The Teacher
Although Jon Fosse is not well known in America, his work is revered in his native Norway, where he stands on a par with his onetime student and American celebrity, Karl Ove Knausgaard. In a piece for The Paris Review Daily, Damion Searls argues for Fosse’s relevance, claiming that Fosse is the only writer whose work made him weep as he translated it. You could also read Jonathan Callahan on Knausgaard’s My Struggle.
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Press Start
Readers of the 1960s and 70s ran into many people who worried that writers were learning from television. In 2015, the concern is slightly different — are writers taking cues from video games? At the Ploughshares blog, Matthew Burnside tackles the game-ification of books.
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