Sara Davidson’s Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion is an intimate portrait of one of America’s most revered and private writers.
Joan
An Experiment In Crowdsourced Development
Palgrave Macmillan is posting sample chapters from book proposals online, inviting comment “from anyone who feels they can contribute to the development of the works in question.” The trial will continue for the next six weeks.
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63 years and 1 day
The Catcher in the Rye is 63 years and 1 day old today and PBS has published an infographic tracing the novel’s complicated route to publication. Pair with Millions essays about rereading Salinger and his three leaked stories.
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Masthead Revisited
“This is a story about a woman who was erased from her job as the editor of the most famous literary magazine in America.” For Longreads, A.N. Devers writes about Brigid Hughes, the second editor of The Paris Review, who has been all but scrubbed from the magazine’s history. See also: Dever’s 2011 Year in Reading entry.
Tuesday New Release Day: Yanique; Vollmann; Cheshire; Makkai; Sweterlitsch; Chancellor; Hellenga; Brown; Thorpe; Baricco; Lawson; Lepucki
Out this week: The Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique; Last Stories and Other Stories by William T. Vollmann; High as the Horses’ Bridles by Scott Cheshire; The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai; Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Thomas Sweterlitsch; A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall by Will Chancellor; The Confessions of Frances Godwin by Robert Hellenga; Don’t Try to Find Me by Holly Brown; The Girls from Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe; Mr. Gwyn by Alessandro Baricco; Road Ends by Mary Lawson; and our own Edan Lepucki’s California (which you may have seen on Colbert). For more, go read our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
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Quick links
I’ve gotten a little behind in my reviews of books I’ve read recently. Maybe I’ll get to it this weekend or early next week. In the meantime here are three literary links that caught my eye today:The many challenges of turning books with non-textual elements into audiobooks. Also discussed: how to verbally render David Foster Wallace’s copious footnotes. (New York Times).Daedalus, the big remainder house, is opening a standalone bookstore in Baltimore (Baltimore Sun). Previously: I discuss remaindered books – and buy some, too!A mysterious person – or possibly persons – has been placing roses and a bottle of cognac on Edgar Allen Poe’s grave each year for 57 years on the anniversary of the writer’s birthday. This year some nosy people got in the way, but the meaning behind the ritual and the identity of the visitor remains hidden. (Guardian)
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Love to Hate
Just in time for AWP, The New York Times has published a look at “Why Writers Love to Hate the MFA.” We’ve published several other perspectives on the degree over the years, like this, this, this and this.
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Remembering Mankell
Recommended Reading: This Atlantic article on the life of Henning Mankell, author of the Kurt Wallander series. The author said, “When I write, I always try to reflect the reality we live in, a reality that is becoming rougher and more violent. This violence and its impact on people around it is what I try to reflect in Wallander. But reality always surpasses the poem.”
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