Ryan Bradley chats with Gary Amdahl, author of Visigoth, about fiction, “reality hunger,” and the current publishing climate.
“I’m more articulate then I was when I was nine, but I don’t know anything new.”
New Michael Lewis Book On the Way
Michael Lewis’s next book, which is due to hit shelves in March, will be concerned with “the financial world.” And that’s really all we know about it at this point.
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Electric Literature v2.0
Electric Literature—first established as a cross-platform digital publisher, but best known for its popular “Recommended Reading” tumblog—has just relaunched itself as a literary advocate built around a strong website and social channels. C0-founder Andy Hunter tells the Washington Post, “Posting a cool photo on social media gets a much greater response than text alone, even in our audience of book lovers. While at first that might seem at odds with literary content, we’ve always felt that changes in the way we communicate create opportunities to reach more people.”
The litigation is never dead. It’s not even past.
Last Thursday, Faulkner Literary Rights, the company controlling William Faulkner’s works, proved two things by suing Sony Pictures Classics: 1) that they finally got around to seeing Midnight In Paris (2011); and 2) that they’re not down with Woody Allen’s decision to include two of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s lines in Owen Wilson’s dialogue.
The Rooster Crows!
Tournament of Books fans: The official Tournament of Books bracket has been posted. Along with an introduction to this year’s literary throwdown, readers can get a gorgeous bracket poster, sure to become the decorative centerpiece of any library wall.
Listening to David Foster Wallace
One measure of a writer may be the quality of the thinking he elicits in others. Here, in advance of The Pale King, is an uncommonly perceptive BBC radio documentary about David Foster Wallace.
Gothic Roots
“If Gothic literature had a family tree, its twisted gnarled branches chock-full of imperiled, swooning heroines and mysterious monks, with ghosts who sit light on the branches, and Frankenstein’s monster who sits heavy, with troops of dwarves, and winking nuns, and stunted, mostly nonflammable babies, at its base would sit Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.” Carrie Frye writes for Longreads about the history and personality behind the first Gothic novel, which turns 250 this year.
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Avid Bookshop
Do you live near Athens, GA? Come out tonight to support a newly opened indie bookstore: Avid Bookshop. Or, if you can’t make that, hit up tomorrow’s “Kids’ Day” at the same place. They have a Twitter account, too.
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