Erin Morgenstern‘s debut novel The Night Circus went from National Novel Writing Month project to 6-figure book advance after being rejected by more than 30 agents.
NaNoWriMo Author Scores Big
A Touch of Worldliness
To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Atlantic’s Twitter book club is reading (and discussing) The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. Follow along on Twitter @1book140.
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The Moralist With the Dragon Tattoo
Tim Parks takes Stieg Larsson seriously - sort of - in the NYRB.
Yankee Spinach Foxtrot
Wilco appeared in a Popeye comic strip, and they also released an animated music video featuring the sailor, Olive Oyl, and Bluto.
Has Odds, Will Bet
As previously reported, Haruki Murakami is favored to win the Nobel Prize in Literature seven-to-one. For more on the dubious practice of betting on literary awards, see this interview from last year with an employee of the London-based company responsible for calculating the odds.
Multiplicity
Flip through the blurbs on a recently published novel and you’re likely to come across a ton of stock phrases. Gary Shteyngart parodied this repetition -- as well as other facets of the blurb-industrial complex -- in a bit of improv last year. At The Morning News, Christine Gosnay writes about a poem that gave her a genuinely new reaction: the sense that she was "more than one person.”
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Faulty Education
Recommended Reading: The Harvard Gazette on education and inequality. “If inequality starts anywhere, many scholars agree, it’s with faulty education.” Our own Nick Ripatrazone writes about closing the gap between high school and higher education.
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