New this week is the latest Scandinavian sensation, The Hypnotist by “Lars Kepler,” who after a literary manhunt, was revealed to be a husband-and-wife team. Also out this week is a new novel by wunderkind Stefan Merrill Block, The Storm at the Door.
Tuesday New Release Day: Kepler, Block
David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello Talk Hip-Hop
The book David Foster Wallace co-authored with Mark Costello about the pair’s “uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop” will be re-released in the US next Tuesday. UK readers look like they’re going to get a reissue of the book on their shelves as well.
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As It Comes
Recommended Reading: Nicholas Rombes on Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays. You could also read S.J. Culver on discovering her work when he was young.
Matthew Stadler’s NAFTA tour
Matthew Stadler of Publication Studio hits NYC on his NAFTA tour just in time for the 4th of July weekend. The Saturday evening begins with a ghost tour of sorts, of the city’s “disappeared bookstores,” and a lavish Mexican dinner will follow. If the feasts in Stadler’s latest novel, Chloe Jarren’s La Cucaracha, are any indication, expect copious cocktails and intriguing conversations. More details here.
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A Literary Conspiracy
Gaddis, Pynchon, “Wanda Tinasky”: Jenny Hendrix looks at a real-life literary conspiracy of mistaken identity upon the re-release of “Jack Green’s” Fire the Bastards.
With Very Small Font, Of Course
Ireland debuted a new stamp featuring a 224-word short story written by Dublin teenager Eoin Moore.
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Flaws of Hitch
The recent passing of Christopher Hitchens has led to numerous praiseful eulogies. Many have been (and he would’ve hated this…) hagiographic. Now, in an article for The Nation, Katha Pollitt seeks to “complicate the picture … at the risk of seeming churlish” to allege that the man “had virtually no interest in women’s writing or women’s lives or perspectives.”