V.S. Naipaul (seemingly a professional misogynist at times) rankled many by suggesting there are no women writers that can equal him and calling Jane Austen “sentimental.” Now the Guardian offers up a quiz that challenges readers to identify the gender of an author simply by reading a passage of his or her writing.
The Naipaul Test
Tuesday New Release Day: Salter, Atkinson, Maazel, Kushner, Shearn, Rich, Perisic
New this week: All That Is by James Salter, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, The Mermaid of Brooklyn by Amy Shearn, The Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich, and Our Man in Iraq by Robert Perisic.
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Go Buy A Watchman
In the spirit of the relentless consumerism and the commodification of literature, five hundred signed, specially-packed copies of Harper Lee's Go Set A Watchman will be retailing for $1,500 each. Did someone say "consumerism"?
The Art of Hyping
Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding is ubiquitous. We tapped it in our Second Half of 2011 Preview. n+1 bundled it with year-long subscriptions. The Awl interviewed the author. The New Yorker's Book Club picked it as their September book. It was reviewed in The New York Times. Now Keith Gessen's expanded his Vanity Fair piece on the novel's development into a standalone e-book. In light of all this hype, McNally Jackson's Tumblr provides a poignant list of baseball puns for reviewers to start avoiding.
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Nabokov at the 92nd St Y
The 92nd Street Y is gearing up for next Monday's Celebration of Vladimir Nabokov, which falls on the eve of the publication of his last, unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. A recording of Nabokov's only reading at the 92nd Street Y was just posted at the 92Y Blog, and includes selections from Pale Fire and Lolita. Monday's event will feature Martin Amis and Chip Kidd, and a display of a dozen of Nabokov's 138 handwritten notecards, on which he composed the manuscript.
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Tuesday New Release Day: McBride; Scott; Chariandy; Kendal; Erpenbeck
Out this week: Five-Carat Soul by James McBride; Unforgivable Love by Sophfronia Scott; Brother by David Chariandy; The Second Sister by Claire Kendal; and Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Art Dealer$
Fresh on the heels of Rachel Cohen’s Believer piece on “the unexpected double history of banking and the art world,” one of the country’s biggest art collectors is slammed with a $276 million insider trading accusation.
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