Paris Review editor Lorin Stein recommends a couple of self-help books to one reader in this week’s mail blog. “Let your self-help freak flag fly!” he writes. Such might put you in esteemed company. As Maria Bustillos pointed out in her poignant investigation for The Awl, David Foster Wallace treasured many self help books.
Literary Self-Help
Tuesday New Release Day: Bezmozgis, Dyer, Professor X, Pletzinger, Still
New this week is David Bezmozgis’s The Free World, the new Geoff Dyer collection of criticism Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (reviewed here today), “Professor X’s” higher ed expose In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, Funeral for a Dog, a German novel in translation by young author Thomas Pletzinger, which John Wray has blurbed as “ballsy,” and Chinaberry, a posthumously published novel by the Appalachian author James Still.
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New Open Letters Monthly
In the new issue of Open Letters, “Sam Sacks tours the city with E.L. Doctorow, Colm Tóibín, and Colum McCann.”
Chinese Publishing
The Guardian profiles the proliferation of Chinese self-publishing websites. Could this be the future of publishing?
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The One I Love
Recommended Reading: Sarah Sansolo on her childhood obsession with Britney Spears.
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Brooklyn Art Book Fair Kicks Off Tonight
More than 40 independent, artist-run presses and organizations will be on hand, including Pioneerworks Press, BOMB Magazine, Printed Matter, Wendy’s Subway, and Meekling Press.
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The Rooster is Nigh
At The Morning News, Rooster hosts Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner lay out “The Pre-Game Primer” for the Tournament of Books. The action kicks off tomorrow.
While a Fox Was Brown
This interactive guide to the demise (or, rather, the rise) of the passive voice by Vijith Assar at McSweeney’s is every bit as fascinating as it is troubling. This notable piece from The Millions by Fiona Maazel should act as a nice grammatical complement.
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