Turns out Americans aren’t the only ones who adore snark. The novelist and critic Adam Mars-Jones has won the first Hatchet Job prize from the British website Omnivore for his blistering takedown of Michael Cunningham’s latest novel, By Nightfall. Mars-Jones beat out Geoff Dyer’s slam of Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending. “It isn’t terrible,” Dyer wrote, “it’s just so…average.”
Hatchet Job Prize
When Foxes Become Dogs
The Silver Fox Experiment began in 1959 when Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev began selectively breeding wild foxes until they became more “dog-like” and tame. Today, the experiment continues at The Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk.
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Formative Influence
For every download of “In Memory of a Friend, Teacher and Mentor,” Philip Roth’s eulogy to his high school teacher, the folks at Audible will donate a dollar to the Newark Public Library. Learn more in The Paris Review Daily’s new interview with Roth.
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Everyone Is an Immigrant
Eliza Griswold’s got a great essay up on The Poetry Foundation’s website. It’s about poetry and reportage in Lampedusa, the largest island in the Italian Pelagie chain.
Wisconsin Envy
Chad Harbach and Bon Iver make this a big year for Wisconsin. It seems New York is slowly catching up.
New Thomas Pynchon Teaser
Hot off the press: the first page of Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming novel Bleeding Edge, which is due to hit shelves on September 17.
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