I highly recommend reading Jennifer Gilmore’s emotional essay on meeting “the birth mother.”
“I have a lot of feelings about the meeting.”
Some Choice DFW Links
GQ offers an insightful interview with The New Yorker‘s Deborah Treisman on the subject of editing David Foster Wallace…while elsewhere, the German translation of Infinite Jest – Un Endlicher Spass – becomes an unlikely hit. (via)
Tuesday New Release Day: Saunders; Marcus; Beah; Lee; Vapnyar; Kidd; Abani; Shteyngart
Lots of new releases this week, among them a new paperback edition of Tenth of December by George Saunders. Also out: Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus; The Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah; On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee; The Scent of Pine by Lara Vapnyar; The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd; The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Abani; and Little Failure by Year in Reading alum Gary Shteyngart. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2014 Book Preview.
HTMLGiant’s ToBS
If you’re looking for an occasionally evil but mostly hysterical month-long diversion, I recommend following HTMLGiant‘s “Tournament of Bookshit“. So far one highlight has been: “excessively long list of credits including pushcart nominations in your bio vs. the guy who goes 20 minutes over the suggested reading time“
Internet’s End
Recommended Reading: Sam Frank’s interview with Infomaniacs author Matthew Thurber.
Didion: Cool and Manly?
The Atlantic reviews the first full-length biography of Joan Didion, The Last Love Song by Tracy Daugherty, to be released August 25th. The biography “looks at the author’s legacy of cool.” Related: Franklin Strong’s essay on “The Manliness of Joan Didion” in The Millions.