Dave Eggers’ latest, A Hologram for the King, is out today. Also out this week is an under-the-radar, new effort from Richard Russo, Interventions, a collection that’s a collaboration with his artist daughter Kate Russo. Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? is out (Don’t miss our illuminating interview). And Michael Frayn has a new novel, Skios. More new fiction: Don Winslow’s The Kings of Cool (a prequel to Savages), Joshua Henkin’s The World Without You, and Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home. In non-fiction, There’s David Maraniss’ Barack Obama: The Story.
Tuesday New Release Day: Eggers, Russo, Heti, Frayn, Winslow, Henkin, Brunt, Maraniss
New Critical Flame
Issue three of The Critical Flame has arrived. Richard Nash’s review of Ted Striphas’ The Late Age of Print is a highlight.
The Ultimate Cat in the Hat
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins was more than just a Dr. Seuss book but a reality for the writer. Seuss was as fond of hats as he was rhyming and now part of his chapeau collection will be touring the U.S. 26 of his hats will stop in Atlanta, New Orleans, South Lake Tahoe, Tampa, Midlothian, and Northampton. For more Seuss, read our essay on censorship of The Lorax.
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David Foster Wallace In Brief
“Wallace’s fiction contains enormous cruelty… But it is also a deeply moral body of work. Its difficulties, and many of its cruelties, exist for specific reasons. Whether Wallace’s fraught projects are successes or failures is up to the individual, but these are judgments that all serious readers should want to make for themselves.” Chris Power considers David Foster Wallace‘s short stories in an essay for The Guardian and argues that after Infinite Jest they just might be the most important work he produced.
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Do Yourself A Favor
“I remembered Def Leppard for their one-armed drummer arrested for spousal abuse. Meanwhile Prince played, like, twenty different instruments while having sex in the backseat of taxicabs, ducking the Antichrist, and shouting for gun control. Also: girlfriend on drums. What’s fair is fair.” The Prince-related thinkpieces have mostly subsided by now, but this new piece by Dave Tompkins at The Paris Review will make you glad that people are continuing to write about him.
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‘Mockingbird’ Removed from Reading List
A Mississippi school district has decided to pull Harper Lee‘s To Kill a Mockingbird from its junior-high reading list because it “makes people uncomfortable.” The novel, which frequently tops the American Library Association’s “Frequently Challenged Book” list, tackles racism. See also: an essay on the symbolism of mockingbirds.
The Best of Gaddis’s Letters
Year In Reading contributor and The End of Oulipo author Scott Esposito has been reading a lot of William Gaddis’s letters recently. Over at his blog, he’s shared his favorite ten passages from Gaddis’s collected correspondence.
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