Humiliation author Wayne Koestenbaum takes a page out of our own Mark O’Connell’s book to review Édouard Levé’s Autoportrait.
Koestenbaum on Levé
Karen Russell, Short Story Sorcerer
A master of the short story, Karen Russell discusses supernatural metaphors for motherhood, lonely mutants, and the pleasures of world-building.
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Tim Weiner Knows Every Secret Ever
Tim Weiner won the Pulitzer Prize for Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Then, four years after its publication, he received a box of J. Edgar Hoover’s “personal files on [FBI] intelligence operations between 1945 and 1972” from a well-connected D.C. lawyer. That treasure trove of information has since wound up in his recently published book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, and he sat with NPR’s Terry Gross to talk all about it.
How Can I Help
“Often the people who turn most passionately to data and reason are those who feel most overwhelmed and controlled by irrational impulses.” New fiction by Rivka Galchen over at The New Yorker! Pair with our review of her most recent book, Little Labors.
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Top Quark
The third annual 3 Quarks Daily Arts & Literature Prize will be judged by Chinese-American novelist Gish Jen. The first place award, called the “Top Quark” will win a cash prize of $1,000. Might we suggest nominating your favorite Millions article?
Short Story Shop Talk
Robert Birnbaum and Tobias Wolff talk short stories and other topics at The Morning News. Wolff: “Somebody once described the novel as a prose narrative of a certain length that has something wrong with it. I can think of a few novels that seem to have nothing wrong with them at all, but I can think of a lot more short stories that seem to me to be perfect.”
RIP Elmore Leonard
RIP Elmore Leonard, who passed away this morning at his home in Michigan at the age of 87. Our own Bill Morris got to the heart of what made Leonard a special writer in his 2010 piece about the prolific crime novelist.
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Why Iceland? Is It the Cod?
VQR contributor Bill Hayes explains his reasons for visiting Iceland as often as he does, and, surprisingly, does not count VQR’s great piece about Iceland’s fisheries among them.
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