Alison Flood highlights a few of the collectives scouring the glut of self-published books in search of gems.
A New Path to Recognition for Self-Published Authors
On Bad Reviews
Recommended (Archival) Reading: “The language is too rich and poetic for my liking” and other gems from Amazon one-star reviews of classic novels, dredged up in 2014 by Electric Literature. Pair with the worst book review ever written.
Bad News/Good News
N+1 – we repeat – is not putting its archives online, as we surmised from a too-quick perusal of its new website. (We regret the error. Post in haste, repent at leisure.) But it might, for $75,000.
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Unaffiliated
Helen Vendler is one of those rare scholar-writers who doesn’t adhere to a particular school of theory. In her new book of essays, she explains her view of criticism as distinct from both philosophy and scholarship, as a form of learning that’s inherently “unsystematic and idiosyncratic.” In Open Letters Monthly, Jack Hanson reads through the book. You could also read Jonathan Farmer on Rita Dove’s letter to Vendler.
The Perils of Bookselling
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A Not so Steamy First Time
Jesse Bering on his incredibly inelegant first time writing about sex. Cf. his most recent adventures of writing about sex, his new book Why is the Penis Shaped Like That?.
The Seduction of Deductions
“Tax authorities in Finland are turning to poetry in a bid to get more firms to file their tax returns electronically.”
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We’re Not In the Establishment. Right, Geoff?
In The Guardian, Geoff Dyer talks about about the literary establishment and how, in particular, “unspoken assumption that [it] – whatever it is – is a bad thing.”