Two literary titans in need of no introduction: Martin Amis reviews Don DeLillo‘s The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories.
Amis on DeLillo
I Will Remember
Recommended Reading: this moving piece from Andrew Higgins at The Rumpus on admissions of guilt.
Prison Prose
What inspired Wally Lamb’s latest novel, We Are Water? Part of it came from his experience teaching writing at a women’s prison in Connecticut for the past 14 years. He spoke to The Missouri Review about what it’s like to teach “the incarcerated wounded” and how they have influenced his work. “With my fiction, I’ve never been afraid to go to the dark places, but I think the women have made me more daring.”
●
●
Unfashionable Genius
“There is a unity to all of Robinson’s work, and this is part of what makes her so great. Her writing expresses a consistent and compelling vision of the world—a vision that sees the real as revelatory, the everyday as wondrous, Spokane as leading to Galilee.” Anthony Domestico profiles Marilynne Robinson and her new novel Lila, which we’ve mentioned here and here and here, for Commonweal.
●
●
Black on all Sides
“The company has forged a chain uncommon in mainstream publishing: an unbroken line of black women, from the novel’s protagonist, via the author, to the editor, to the art director who created the cover art (featuring a black woman).” Meet the trio of Black women at Kensington Publishing who are changing (modernizing) the traditional lily white romance genre.
RIP E.L. Doctorow
E.L. Doctorow, the renowned novelist and fiction writer best known for books including Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and the National Book Award-winning World’s Fair, passed away in Manhattan last night at the age of 84. You could read one of our numerous pieces about his work if you’d like to look back on his life and career.
Spiegel & Grau turns to indies for help
Shaken by scathing reviews from The New York Times and The Washington Post, Yann Martel‘s publisher turns to independent bookstores for help.