Jennie Erdal asks, “What is the modern equivalent of the philosophical novel?”
Is it just a Russian thing?
The Unrealist Novel
Lev Grossman offers some first thoughts on Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, the David Foster Wallace biography written by D.T. Max due out in September. More interestingly, Grossman wonders whether we’re nearing the death of hysterical realism, that manic, maximalist genre James Wood defined in his review of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.
Tuesday New Release Day: Abbott, Powell, Stedman, Wagner
Megan Abbott’s Dare Me is out today. Learn more about her in an essay we published a year ago. Also out are You & Me by Padgett Powell, ML Stedman’s debut novel The Light Between the Oceans, and Dead Stars by L.A. great Bruce Wagner.
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“There is No Truth”
Rule number one in journalism: Don’t call the person you are interviewing a fucking asshole. James Frey of A Millions Little Pieces discloses what he believes is the future of the written word. (via)
True Coffeeshop Story
“Literary interviews became popular in the eighteen-eighties, but Richard Altick, the late professor of Victorian literature at Ohio State University, traces the public fascination with writers’ homes at least as far back as the eighteen-forties, when there was a vogue for books describing the houses and landscapes of famous authors, complete with engravings and, later, photographs.” On the strangeness of literary celebrity.
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While a Fox Was Brown
This interactive guide to the demise (or, rather, the rise) of the passive voice by Vijith Assar at McSweeney’s is every bit as fascinating as it is troubling. This notable piece from The Millions by Fiona Maazel should act as a nice grammatical complement.
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