Sarah Fay, associate editor of The Paris Review, has a piece in The Atlantic on the digitization of book reviewing, framed beautifully by references to George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer.” She praises Bookslut, Nancy Pearl, Goodreads, and The Los Angeles Review of Books for their collective skills of recommendation, reviewing, and New Criticism. I’d add The Quarterly Conversation, The Rumpus, The New Inquiry, The Morning News (for their annual Tournament of Books feature), and of course, The Millions.
Could the internet save book reviews?
Chronic City, Come Alive
In an interview with Jonathan Lethem, the NBCC's Jane Ciabaratti offers, inter alia, a sympathetic reading of Chronic City; both have more affection than Kakutani did for what Lethem calls "the claptrap contraption plot I invented." Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal, in a flash of inspiration, assigns the book to the estimable Alexander Theroux - the only non-Latin writer who can credibly use the word "prosopographical" in a review. (But, attn editor: "not a jot" twice? in subsequent paragraphs?) A marathon bi-borough reading of the entire novel continues tonight at McNally Jackson.
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The Not-So-Invisible Man
"The novel is told from the perspective of an unnamed African-American narrator who considers himself to be socially invisible due to the color of his skin," writes Variety. Following in the footsteps of its adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Hulu is in the beginning stages of adapting Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Read our own editor Lydia Kiesling on Ellison's Invisible Man.
Great American Label
“Almost as soon as the concept of the Great American Novel was invented, in the nation-building years after the Civil War, Buell finds it being mocked, noting that one observer dryly put it into the same category as ‘other great American things such as the great American sewing-machine, the great American public school, and the great American sleeping-car.’ It was enough of a cliché by 1880 for Henry James to refer to it with the acronym 'GAN,' which Buell employs throughout his book.” On the reigning gold standard for quality in American fiction. (Related: we asked nine experts their picks for the best American novel.)
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I’ll Be Your Unicorn
When job interviews and Tinder combine, what is the outcome? Megan Sawey shows us at The Rumpus. Pair with an essay on day jobs and fiction writing.
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Thank Your Mother
Recommended (and timely!) reading: Christy Wampole on why "You Will Never Be Able to Thank Your Mother Enough."
Sister Golden Hair Excerpt
There’s an excerpt from Darcey Steinke’s forthcoming novel, Sister Golden Hair, over at Granta right now. In our Great Book Preview, Emily St. John Mandel wrote that Steinke’s novel focuses on a family “on the brink of collapse” in early-70’s Virginia.
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“I was sad as I began to think that I might be gay.”
Recommended Listening: Andrew Solomon’s Moth story, “My Post-Nuclear Family.” (Solomon’s work has previously been shouted out in our Year in Reading series by Millions staffers Hannah Gersen and Edan Lepucki.)
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Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead
"If you remember the sixties, then you weren't really there." We've all heard the saying, but in case you actually forgot what the sixties were like, I have good news for you. The complete archive of Oz Magazine, sometimes called the most controversial magazine of the sixties, is available for download over at Open Culture. Oz regularly featured work by such artists as R. Crumb, Germaine Greer, and many more.
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