In the current issue of Tin House Robin Romm has a very compelling essay on the value of mean-spirited judgement in our novels, especially as empathy becomes reified into fiction’s greatest gift and virtue, or even treated as a therapeutic offering.
Mean Reading
Something Is Off
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Hatchet Man
“Book reviews are another matter, because a bad review has the potential to be far more adversarial: one writer spending years on a book, one reviewer spending days reading it, and a lasting relationship being created between the two in print. Or, perhaps, a history between the two that lends the review a particular piquancy.” An exegesis of the good bad review.
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Serial Vonnegut
Amazon is putting out seven never before published works from Kurt Vonnegut as a serial ebook called Sucker’s Portfolio.
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Book Signings in the Digital Age
The New York Times looks at new technological efforts to make book signings work in the age of the ebook. One idea is an e-reader add-on that lets the reader snap a photo with the author, which the author can then sign with a “digital stylus.” The photo is meant to make its way to Twitter and Facebook, of course. “Bragging potential? Endless,” says the Times. Authors: get ready to say “cheese”?
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Blake Butler on Submitting Writing
HTMLGiant‘s editor Blake Butler, author of There Is No Year, has compiled a list of things he’s learned from submitting his writing.
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William Gibson’s Zero History
The New York Times reviews William Gibson’s new novel Zero History: “To read Gibson is to read the present as if it were the future…” Also: Douglas Gorney interviews Gibson for the Atlantic.
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Much of the “empathy” in modern fiction (and the old stuff, come to think of it) is just sentimentality dressed up in pretty prose.