In this piece on “Southern Enlightenment“, Kevin Charles Redmon checks out John Jeremiah Sullivan‘s Pulphead and Frank Bill‘s Crimes in Southern Indiana for The Rumpus. In the process, he touches on Axl Rose and methamphetamines.
Guns N’ Roses N’ Meth
D) All of the Above
“I guess the book could be read also as poetry, but I just didn’t want to define this book, I didn’t want to put it under any label.” The Rumpus interviews Chilean author Alejandro Zambra about his newest book, Multiple Choice. And if you want more Zambra – and believe us, you do – we interviewed him too back in 2011.
Sanity Is a Construct
Recommended Perusing: This list from Electric Literature of six contemporary innovators of the short story. From Lorrie Moore to Alejandro Zambra, it is some seriously good company.
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“The Threadbare Art of My Eye”
As Robert Lowell put it: “sometimes everything I write / with the threadbare art of my eye / seems a snapshot.” Poetry and photography.
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Pre-Speed
Once upon a time, the poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a very proto-Speedboat kind of novel. It’s only just getting published now.
Watching Alice Munro
You may have heard that Alice Munro couldn’t make it to Sweden to accept this year’s Nobel prize. Instead, she made a video, which you can watch in full on the Nobel Prize committee’s website. (You could also read Ben Dolnick’s beginner’s guide to her work, or else read my essay on the meaning of her win.) (h/t The Paris Review)
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With a Twist
In the New York Times, a review of 2013 Year in Reading alum Olivia Laing’s new book, which delves into the alcoholism of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and six other famous writers. Among the biographical tidbits in the book: Tennessee Williams had a brandy Alexander every day when he lived in New Orleans.
Burning Books in Angola
Recommended Reading: For Public Books, Year in in Reading alumna Katrina Dodson writes on José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel A General Theory of Oblivion.
Using Faulkner
Glen David Gold encourages young writers to “cultivate literary friendships”, but he’d like to add one thing: “for Christ’s sake, do not let them become transactional.”
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