Another posthumously published Roberto Bolaño novel has arrived, The Third Reich. Time to update our Bolaño Syllabus again? Also posthumously published is Michael Crichton’s Micro, which was a third finished when he died and was completed using Crichton’s notes by Richard Preston. Also new this week is Stephen Sondheim’s Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011).
Tuesday New Release Day: Bolaño, Crichton, Sondheim
Lydia Davis, Ctd.
Last year, I pointed readers to Numero Cinq, a new Canadian lit mag with a notably memorable tagline. In the latest issue, which is split into seventeen parts, Benjamin Woodard talks with Lydia Davis about her Flaubert translation, her new story collection and the art of writing while traveling. (h/t The Rumpus)
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Literary Lost
As Lost meanders towards its finale, the LA Times rounds up the plentiful literary influences that popped up during the show’s run.
“Kafka was a son of Prague to his phthisic fingertips”
“Repressed homosexual yearnings certainly would account for some of the more striking of [Franz] Kafka’s darker preoccupations,” writes John Banville in his investigation of the writer’s personal life and psychology.
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“Women Essayists”
“Is This a Golden Age for Women Essayists?” Cheryl Strayed and Benjamin Moser debate in this week’s The New York Times‘s Bookends column. Pair their piece with Anne Boyd Rioux‘s Millions article examining gender equity and lack thereof in nonfiction writing.
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Transgressive, Interesting, Weird
This summer, Emily Books will launch a new imprint with Coffee House Press, featuring books “by women and gay men and gender outsiders—or people who had transgressive, interesting, weird personalities.” Also check out this Millions essay on what we call what women write.
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A History of Resilience, Documented by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim discusses her newest book, The Waiting, inspired by her mother's family separation and reunion in the midst of war.
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