Anyone who cares about the financial viability of the book business should read Author’s Guild President Scott Turow’s open letter on the implications of the government’s threatened anti-trust suit against major publishers and Apple over alleged collusion in e-book pricing.
Letter from Scott Turow
Selfie Sadism
Did David Foster Wallace predict our anxiety over selfies? At The Wire, Danielle Wiener-Bronner argues that Wallace was prescient in Infinite Jest. Although videophony, his concept of video-chatting, isn’t the same thing as a selfie, the paranoia over looking good is strikingly current. “This sort of appearance check was no more resistible than a mirror. But the experience proved almost universally horrifying. People were horrified at how their own faces appeared on a TP screen.”
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Can’t-Do Spirit
“America has always been able to countenance beggars, short-con men, and nine-to-fivers who just can’t get ahead, but we’ve never known what to do with the type of person who could have been really big but chose not to make the concessions required.” The Believer takes a look at the paradox of Nelson Algren.
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The Vulgar and Beautiful
At Big Other, Greg Gerke reads William H. Gass’s The Tunnel and looks at language, the controversy over the book, and how the vulgar and the beautiful relate.
Tuesday New Release Day: Ellis; Moore; Hodge
Out this week: Normal by Warren Ellis; The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories; and The Best American Magazine Writing 2016. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest fiction and nonfiction book previews.
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“What fascinates me are the turning points”
At The Guardian’s website, Hilary Mantel reflects on her second Booker Prize, awarded to the author for her new novel, Bring Up the Bodies. Mantel is the first woman to win the prize more than once.
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Jennifer Egan Interviews
Jacob Weisberg is hosting a series of interviews called “Conversations With Slate.” The first interviewee is A Visit from the Goon Squad author Jennifer Egan. You can catch the first two parts here and here; part three will be posted today.
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Hot Authors
“Author-hot” has historically been a pejorative phrase, or at best faint praise, but Canteen is looking to change that with its “Hot Authors” project, “reinterpreting and reappropriating fashion magazine glam” for the Moleskine set. The redesigned Canteen website also features an interview with yours truly – not, I’m sad to report, included in the “Hot Authors” package.
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