BLDGBLOG, which has “always been interested in learning how novelists see the city,” interviewed China Miéville about “the conceptual origins of the divided city featured in his… award-winning novel The City & The City,” among other things. Architects, fans of urban decay, and general lit nerds are going to have a field day with this link, I promise you.
China Miéville Interviewed by BLDGBLOG
Epic Pizza Delivery From Anonymous
Cole Stryker‘s Epic Win for Anonymous hasn’t garnered him a lot of positive feedback from members of the infamous image board 4chan. It did, however, result in lots of pizzas being delivered to Housing Works’ Bookstore on the night of its launch party. The author later did an “Ask Me Anything” session with Reddit and explained the pizza delivery among other things. What do you think will happen now that two authors have announced a forthcoming book on Anonymous itself?
Smart Money
Colson Whitehead will be playing in next month’s World Series of Poker. He’s writing about it for Grantland, Bill Simmons‘ new ESPN affiliate. He’s also accepting sponsorships.
Like Something in the Movies
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is one of those rare few classic novels that translates well to the big screen. To some extent, this was intentional — Nabokov often wrote fiction with an eye to selling film rights. John Colapinto writes about the author’s relationship with the cinema over at Page-Turner. You could also read our own Lydia Kiesling’s Modern Library Revue of Lolita.
The Book Guy
Whether or not you’re an avid collector of NYRB Classics like Stoner, you’ll enjoy this profile of series publisher Edwin Frank, conducted by Millions contributor and Oyster Editorial Director Kevin Nguyen. In the profile, Frank delves into the mindset that guides his choices, tying the rise of the American publishing series to the passage of the GI bill. Sample quote: “Someone seeing a book he or she always loved next to a book he or she had never heard about would say, ‘Wait that’s the book I always loved and it’s back in print, maybe I should buy this one too.’”
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Chinese Publishing
The Guardian profiles the proliferation of Chinese self-publishing websites. Could this be the future of publishing?
The Case for “A World Digital Library”
“All over the country research libraries are canceling subscriptions to academic journals,” notes Robert Darnton, “because they are caught between decreasing budgets and increasing costs. The logic of the bottom line is inescapable, but there is a higher logic that deserves consideration—namely, that the public should have access to knowledge produced with public funds.”
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Perennial Errata
The New York Times issues a correction note for something they’ve been messing up for 25 years.
Modern Anxiety
“I think dystopian novels are really about present anxiety, aren’t they?” Chang-rae Lee said in an interview for the Daily Beast’s “How I Write” series. His dystopian novel, On Such a Full Sea, was part of our 2014 book preview.
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