Vanity Fair takes a closer look at Joseph Heller‘s tragicomic novel Catch-22. If you’re in NYC this August, you can supplement this reading with McNally Jackson’s “Ask Me About…” series.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22”
The Surreal World
Recommended Reading: Dean Young’s poem “Why I Haven’t ‘Outgrown Surrealism,’ No Matter What That Moron Reviewer Wrote” for Plume.
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Drawing the Line
Recommended Reading: On the dark, subversive adult coloring books of the 60s.
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Colbert on a Roll
Don’t miss Maurice Sendak sparring admirably with Stephen Colbert (part 1, part 2) on the occasion of Bumble-ardy, an instant classic in my house. He followed that up with master interviewer Terry Gross, on whose show Colbert was recently a guest.
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Modern Primordial
Over at the Oyster Review Alexandra Edwards takes a literary tour of Florida, guided by “a few writers who chart Florida’s strange vacillation between the modern and the primordial,” including the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, Zora Neale Hurston and Ernest Hemingway. Our own Nick Moran has also profiled the literature of the Sunshine State, though his take was a little more “Floridapocalyptic.”
Against Writers’ Houses
April Bernard is not a fan of Writers’ Houses because she does not believe the “private life, even of the dead, is ours to plunder.” Earlier this year, our own Luke Epplin also noted some of the limitations of Writers’ Houses.
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Choose Your Highsmith!
The fine folks at Norton have made all of Patricia Highsmith’s books available in eBook format, and to celebrate the move, they’ve crafted a website dedicated to the author’s work. Choose Your Highsmith features a recommendation engine while will instantly pick a Highsmith book to match your selected criteria. There’s also a great video in which Alison Bechdel, Robert Weil (Highsmith’s editor at Norton), Joan Schenkar (Highsmith’s biographer), and Terry Castle share their love for the author of the Mr. Ripley series.
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Longlist Released for the Guardian First Book Award
The Guardian picked its longlist for the 15th annual First Book Award, and it features selections from both NoViolet Bulawayo and Donal Ryan – two authors named to this year’s Booker Longlist as well.
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