Evan Hughes investigates the formulation of such writers as Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, and David Foster Wallace. He claims they and their generation “had youths tangled enough for ten novels.”
Tangled Youths
Dreamland
Anyone who’s ever forgotten a million-dollar idea will attest to the maddening tendency of the subconscious to forget things. For many people, this extends to dreams, where the best ideas can pop up and die before the morning. But why is it so difficult to remember them? At Salon, the neuroscience behind our chronic inability to remember dreams. Related: Blake Butler’s innovative Year in Reading piece.
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Min Jin Lee Finds Her Voice
Min Jin Lee recounts how she found her voice, going from a young student struggling with the English language to a published author promoting her own work.
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Curiosities: the Department of Dead Horses
Tranquility by Attila Bartis is named winner of the inaugural Best Translated Book Award. Scott rounds up some reviews and background on the book.Video: Tom Perrotta on the state of American literary culture.”Art History books are full of errors.” This one is about La Raie Vert [the Green Stripe] from 1905 by Henri Matisse.Perfect for the cubicle: Five Chapters serialized John Cheever’s short story, “Of Love: A Testimony,” in bite-sized portions.Mark Sarvas (re)launches the Three-Minute-Interview series, starting with Plimpton Prize winner Jesse Ball. We reviewed Ball’s debut Samedi the Deafness last year. Ball’s new book is The Way Through Doors.Meanwhile, Sheila Heti chats up Mary Gaitskill.Yearbook photos of politicians: Mike Huckabee, How YOU doin’?Norman Mailer and William Styron conduct an epistolary friendship.The Nation revisits the ever-popular subject of Kafka and his critics.Wyatt Mason and friends parse Joseph O’Neill to within an inch of his life.Reif Larsen is this year’s Million Dollar Baby.And, from the Department of Dead Horses and Guys Kicked While Down, we bring you this…
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A Heartbreaking Playlist of Staggering Sadness
Emma Straub’s super sad true Year In Reading entry had our eyes welling up just from its synopses, but now Ms. Straub’s put together an extremely sad playlist to keep you depressed through all of February.
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You Come at Nabokov, You Best Not Miss
It is well known that Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson had one of the more visible falling outs in literary history over the former’s English-language Eugene Onegin translation, and indeed the history of that relationship’s souring is fascinating. But even still, it’s extremely interesting to read Nabokov’s nine-page “Reply” to Wilson’s “adverse criticism.” If nothing else, one has to wonder what Wilson was thinking when he brought a knife to a gun fight.
First Look at Last Gasps
In 2003, Mary Roach kicked off her book-publishing career with Stiff, a look into the lifespans (pun intended) of cadavers and the ethics of using them for study. At Lapham’s Quarterly, you’ll find the 2001 magazine article that Roach later expanded into Stiff. (Related: we interviewed Roach back in April.)
Thanks for linking to this fantastic article! What an interesting back story of these authors before (and after) they made it.