There’s a new Ethicist in town. Chuck Klosterman is taking over the NYT advice column, and I’m thinking, gee, I wonder what the author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs knows about ethics. His first column seems pretty legit, but I can’t wait for him to introduce time-travel [pdf] and other hypotheticals.
How ethical are cocoa puffs?
Nabokov’s Notes
Vladimir Nabokov spent twenty years translating “the first and fundamental Russian novel,” Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. His battle with the text sparked an intellectual debate with his former friend, Edmund Wilson. The Paris Review has his notes. Pair with our own Lydia Kiesling’s thoughts on Lolita.
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New Paris Review Board Members
Word came out yesterday that Jonathan Galassi and Year in Reading alum Mona Simpson will join the Paris Review editorial board. Former editors both — Galassi edited the magazine’s poetry, while Simpson edited its fiction — the two will join Rose Styron, Jeffrey Eugenides and other notable figures on the board. Simpson also has a new novel coming out in April.
Tuesday New Release Day: McCarthy, Phillips, Turow, Geni, Catton
Vintage International released Cormac McCarthy’s screenplay for The Counselor, the new Ridley Scott film which our own Nick Moran wrote about on Saturday. Also out: Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips; Identical by Scott Turow; The Last Animal by Abby Geni and The Luminaries by Booker Prize shortlister Eleanor Catton, which Martha Anne Toll reviewed for us on Monday. (For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-half 2013 Book Preview.)
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Tuesday New Release Day: McCann, Shriver, King, Lin, DiSclafani
New this week: TransAtlantic by Colum McCann, Big Brother by Lionel Shriver, Taipei by Tao Lin, Joyland by Stephen King, and The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani.
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A to the Future
We take it for granted that our language will grow and change. But one thing we think less often about is that our alphabet is subject to the same forces. Herewith, Carlos Lozada reads Michael Rosen’s new book Alphabetical, which delves into the origins and future prospects of our writing system.
JJS on Seidel
“Seidel scared himself with poetry, and us too. How had he done it?” John Jeremiah Sullivan presented the Hadada Award to Frederick Seidel at The Paris Review’s Spring Revel last month. You can read the full text of his speech and three of Seidel’s poems. This seems to be a much better week for Sullivan because he also just won the James Beard Foundation’s MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his essay “I Placed a Jar in Tennessee.”
A New Robert Galbraith Novel
You may have heard that J.K. Rowling published a crime novel last year under the pen name Robert Galbraith. According to her alter ego’s website, Rowling will publish another novel as Galbraith, one featuring (again) the private investigator Cormoran Strike. (If you missed it, you should definitely read Elizabeth Minkel’s recent piece on Ron/Hermione and authorial regrets.)
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