“These are terrific diversions, but their status next to the book is a little ambiguous. Isn’t using animation to advertise a book a little like using sculpture to promote poetry?” asks Lindesay Irvine in this article about book trailers in The Guardian. If you’re looking for a diversion, this video short based on César Aira‘s Ghosts is certainly worth watching.
On The Rise of the Book Trailer
“Other creative uses for my fuzzy matter”
Unfamiliar Fishes author Sarah Vowell steps up to bat for this month’s Believer advice column, Sedaratives. She fields questions concerning librarian crushes and dryer lint.
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“A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment”
Recommended Listening: “A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment,” a new podcast from Sherman Alexie and Jess Walter.
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Some links
“i need more sprawling post-modern novels NOW!” is the plea at Ask MetaFilter.Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has thousands of images from their collection online. It’s just like being in the dusty stacks.I’ve been enjoying emdashes lately. It’s a blog about my favorite magazine.
On Magna Opera
Nabokov fans, brace yourselves! Roxana Robinson makes a case against Lolita, “a brilliant book in many ways, but not a masterpiece.”
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Rural Fever
Considering an anthology about writers leaving New York came out last year (with a contribution by our own Emily St. John Mandel), it makes sense that we should now look back on the career of E.B. White, who gave up his Manhattan apartment for a farm in rural Maine.
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A Tale of Murder
Over at The Atlantic, Terrence Rafferty claims that women are writing the best crime novels. “Their books are light on gunplay, heavy on emotional violence. Murder is de rigueur in the genre, so people die at the hands of others—lovers, neighbors, obsessive strangers—but the body counts tend to be on the low side,” he writes. Pair with this Millions piece on novels where women are true detectives.
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Pevear and Volokhonsky on Leskov
Granta talks to some translators of Russian literature about what they’re working on, and we learn that Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the first couple of Russian translation are working on a 600-page collection of stories by Nikolai Leskov, an underappreciated contemporary of Dostoevsky. Previously: The Millions interviews P&V.
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Authors Helping Authors
Debut author Maya Sloan writes a charming and heartfelt blog post about dressing up as a clown for Charles Bock’s Literary Rent Party.
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Book trailers haven’t fully found their form yet, but there’s definitely an artistic connection to be found between the forms. I runs a company that creates book trailers that are cinematic, affordable, and hopefully stylish. One way or the other, authors and publishers need a visual component to build fan bases and sell more books. Why not make something really cool and cinematic rather than the same old slide show with still frames that makes people not want to read anything.