Today is Herman Melville‘s birthday. This October, Tin House will be releasing Matt Kish‘s Moby-Dick In Pictures. Kish began illustrating Melville’s masterpiece in 2009 by “creating images based on text selected from every page of the 552-page Signet Classics paperback edition.” You can preview some of the work on the book’s designated Twitter account.
Moby-Dick In Pictures
Tuesday New Release Day: Johnson, Auslander
New books this week: Adam Johnson’s much talked-about novel The Orphan Master’s Son, Shalom Auslander’s first novel and Hope: A Tragedy.
In Defense of Criticism
Glen Duncan, author of the genre novel The Last Werewolf, opened his New York Times review of Colson Whitehead‘s Zone One with this controversial line: “A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star”. Understandably, this led to some uproar. Now he’s doubling down on his stance.
“Would we also just weep and walk away?”
In an effort to get consumers to think more consciously about the “human cost” of commercial sugar production, artist Kara Walker has installed “Subtlety,” a large-scale public sculpture in Brooklyn’s iconic Domino Sugar Factory. Meanwhile, Edwidge Danticat explores contemporary labor conditions in the Dominican Republic’s cane fields.
How White Are Your Comp Titles?
The publishing industry is roughly 86% white. Yet comparative titles, or “book comps,” are whiter still, the L.A. Review of Books has found, arguing that this makes it exceptionally difficult for writers of color to place their books with imprints at Big Five publishers. “Comps,” in other words, “perpetuate the status quo.” Here’s how.
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Flynn, Strayed, and Likability
“That’s always been part of my goal — to show the dark side of women. Men write about bad men all the time, and they’re called antiheroes. … What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations, not necessarily for a hero’s journey. It’s to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.” Gillian Flynn and Cheryl Strayed talk with The New York Times about the adaptations for Gone Girl, Wild, and writing credible characters. Their conversation pairs well with our own Edan Lepucki‘s essay on likability in fiction.
Views of the Sandworm
Now that classic sci-fi mag Omni has risen from the Hades of publishing, editors are combing its massive archives in search of material to republish. Among that material, it turns out, are drawings of Dune homeworld Arrakis — drawings that happen to be endorsed by none other than Frank Herbert himself.
I Can Haz Russian Masters
In her “Classic Russian Writers: For Teh Internets” column at McSweeney’s, KA Semënova “updates classics of Russian literature with modern technologies to see if the insights of those writers hold up today.” Her first two pieces explore Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog” and Vsevolod M. Garshin’s “The Signal.”
Just Kids Playlist
As Rachel Syme points out, the person who made the Spotify playlist of every song mentioned in Patti Smith’s Just Kids deserves a free drink or two.
Moby-Dick has a very modern swing-for-the-fences sensibility that has inspired many artists. The Modern Library edition with Rockwell Kent woodcuts is still in print.