The Guardian has published a top ten list of superheros and it is official: Batman is the greatest. Would Spider-Man have been bumped up to number one if the latest movie had less Peter Parker, and more Jean-Ralphio?
Holy Listicle Batman!
“Let the past collapse at the right time”
In the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, Ice Trilogy author Vladimir Sorokin looks at the current events related to Ukraine, Russia, and Crimea, and notes that “the Russian state’s ‘vertical power’ structure” (which is to say “monarchical structure”) is what keeps the Russian people held “hostage to the psychosomatic quirks of its leader.”
●
●
In the Mind of the Author
At The Rumpus, Suzanne Koven talks with Eve Ensler, better known as the woman who wrote The Vagina Monologues. Among other things, they talk about her new book, In the Body of the World.
●
●
Plotting Genres
This week in book-related infographics: “A Plotting of Fiction Genres” from Electric Lit.
Writing About Suicide
Recommended reading: Philip Connors, whose memoir All the Wrong Places was included in our 2015 Book Preview, writes for the New Yorker about his brother’s death and the problems with “cathartic” writing.
BTBA long list announced
The 2012 Best Translated Book Award long list has been announced. Among the contenders in the fiction category are Edouard Levé for Suicide, reviewed on The Millions here; Mathias Énard‘s Zone, which our own Garth Risk Hallberg described as “the kind of book that can tie a critic in absolute knots“; and Jean-Philippe Toussaint‘s The Truth About Marie, which The Millions Staffer Mark O’ Connell called “a strange and unsettling novel that upholds its author’s status as one of the most exciting figures in contemporary fiction.” One of Chad Harbach‘s year in reading selections, Dezso Kosztolányi‘s Kornél Esti, also made the list.
●
●