Ron Charles calls Ann Patchett’s new State of Wonder “another dazzling work” with touches of Heart of Darkness and The Island of Doctor Moreau.
‘Dazzling’ State of Wonder
NASA’s Science Fiction
Science fiction is about to get a lot more scientific. Tor and NASA will be collaborating on some book projects.
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Long Form Back in Vogue
Is long form nonfiction returning to prominence and popularity? Folks at The LA Times‘ blog think so. Anna Clark has posted a list of recommended reading for aspiring nonfiction writers, too.
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“Eyes Without a Face”
John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats fame has a debut novel, Wolf in White Van, longlisted for the National Book Award, and Dwight Garner reviews the “strange and involving” novel for The New York Times.
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A Wasted Life
“I have wasted my life.” Over at the Paris Review, Dan Piepenbring takes a look at James Wright‘s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” and the many interpretations readers have brought to its famous last line. Among those readers is David Mitchell, who wrote about the same poem in an essay for The Atlantic‘s By Heart series earlier this year.
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Apocalypse Patriots
In The New Statesman, Ben Marcus wonders why American writers are so obsessed with the apocalypse. (A sentiment a few others have wondered of late, too.)
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44 Issues
The New Yorker is not a magazine for the general public, writes Summer Brennan in the Literary Hub. “Because The New Yorker is nothing if not a view of the world from a comfortable vantage point. The intensity of the features is balanced by reviews of Manhattan restaurants and jokes about how busy we all are. Print magazines are tribal, and we swear our allegiance by buying them and opening them up. The New Yorker assumes that I am politically liberal and have read Chekhov’s The Seagull, and The New Yorker is right.”
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