Another year, another year of Full Stop Features, and Peter Nowogrodzki is starting things off with a bang. In a thorough and engaging review, Nowogrodzki dives into Tan Lin’s miniature book The Patio and the Index.
On Broken and Repaired Circuits
Illustrated Goethe
At The Rumpus: illustrations by Harry Clarke for a 1925 edition of Goethe’s Faust.
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New Joan Didion Memoir
Joan Didion has finished work on a new memoir about aging. It is to be titled Blue Nights and will be published by Knopf in 2011.
Holy Order in Remote Places
The last book that Genevieve Hudson for The Rumpus loved was James Salter’s classic of mountaineering, Solo Faces. Here’s an essay from The Millions on why Salter was one of the best at writing sex.
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Weekend Links
George Saunders is the subject of one of Deborah Solomon’s wacky interviews in the New York Times. (via Ed)Scott gets a byline in the SF Chronicle for his review of Duchess of Nothing by Heather McGowan.Elizabeth Crane summarizes the Tom Cruise flick Minority Report like only she can.”A rare collection of Dracula-related books is to be handed over to Dublin City Library.” I had no idea Bram Stoker was Irish.
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Lowbrow
“I have a theory: the thing that makes you a unique writer hasn’t got so much to do with your influences as it does with how you became a writer in the first place. I think your preferences—your obsessions—come just as much from the first sorts of things you consumed and were passionate about. Whether that’s pop music, comics, “lowbrow” fiction, soap operas, or anything else, the thing that matters most is what started you writing stories.” Amber Sparks writes about “lowbrow” influences and the many paths to becoming a storyteller in an essay for Electric Literature.