New this week: Yannick Murphy’s latest novel The Call is out this week, as is Tom Scocca’s chronicle of expat life, Beijing Welcomes You (Both are written up in our big second-half preview). Also arriving is a new novel from Helen Schulman, This Beautiful Life, and Bed, the debut effort of David Whitehouse, which has already been a (minor) prizewinner in the UK, and which the publisher compares to A Confederacy of Dunces.
Tuesday New Release Day: Murphy, Scocca, Schulman, Whitehouse
The Investigation of Feeling
“I think it’s important that poets exist in societies because they exist in the realm of affect. Feeling is important to them. How people feel, what they feel, what breaks them, how trauma resonates through their lives… that’s a legitimate space in poetry. It’s a legitimate space for investigation.” Aaron Coleman interviews Citizen author Claudia Rankine about intimacy, her writing process, and her experience in an MFA program.
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Mieko Kawakami on Her Favorite Murakami Story
Mieko Kawakami discusses the measured mastery behind her favorite short story by Haruki Murakami, "Tony Takitani."
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Book & Beer
To kick off German Literature Month, Melville House’s marketing manager picked the best beers to drink as you read Heinrich Böll. Now Dogfish Head’s brewmaster Sam Calagione has paired beers with a few other literary classics.
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“What’s it like to fall in your thirties?”
“I could measure my progress with metrics like number of scabs collected, number of inches ollied,” writes Nick Courage, in his great piece about rediscovering skateboarding in his thirties. “There was an objective truth to the sport; unlike my writing, my powerslides were self-validating.”
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