Editor Betsy Lerner (The Forest for the Trees) gives her take on what makes a story “big.”
Betsy Lerner’s “Big” Story
Questioning Your Legacy
John Steinbeck's son criticizes the state of Texas for invoking Of Mice and Men's Lennie Small, in ruling that certain mentally retarded individuals can be sentenced to the death penalty. The great-great-great granddaughter of Herman Melville wonders where her great-great-great-grandfather's editor was when he wrote Moby Dick.
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A Visual Mind
To get a full sense of the legacy of William Blake, you need to see his paintings alongside his famous poems. The Wordsworth contemporary did much of his best work -- including the covers of his own collections -- with a brush. At the New York Review of Books blog, Jenny Uglow pays a visit to a new exhibition at Oxford.
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Citizen Bezos
Jeff Bezos married a novelist, "expressed a passionate devotion to books", and may be the one person mild-mannered indie bookshop owners hate more than any other. How'd that happen? After perusing a short history from the New York Review of Books, see for yourself with our vintage news announcements on Amazon's innovations in pay-per-page pricing, now-old products like the Kindle, and its industry-changing acquisitions of The Washington Post and the English language.
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Details are vague
China Miéville on apocalyptic London for The New York Times Magazine: "Standing so straight on a raised dais, in so immaculate a uniform that he looks like a ventriloquist’s dummy, the Metropolitan Police Service’s new commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, tells the conference in an avuncular voice about his plan for 'total policing. ' He is enthusiastic but nebulous. Details are vague."
RIP Mike Wallace
60 Minutes pioneer Mike Wallace passed away this morning at the age of 93. At CBS's website, colleague Morley Safer remembers his friend.
Book Signings in the Digital Age
The New York Times looks at new technological efforts to make book signings work in the age of the ebook. One idea is an e-reader add-on that lets the reader snap a photo with the author, which the author can then sign with a "digital stylus." The photo is meant to make its way to Twitter and Facebook, of course. "Bragging potential? Endless," says the Times. Authors: get ready to say "cheese"?
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DFW, ctd.
On Friday, the Ransom Center at the University of Texas-Austin opened up its holdings of The Pale King, DFW’s last novel (which our own Garth Risk Hallberg reviewed for New York Magazine). At Page-Turner, D.T. Max picks through the new papers.
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