Lev Grossman offers some first thoughts on Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, the David Foster Wallace biography written by D.T. Max due out in September. More interestingly, Grossman wonders whether we’re nearing the death of hysterical realism, that manic, maximalist genre James Wood defined in his review of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.
The Unrealist Novel
“We call this fandemonium”
Reuters has a short piece on The Hunger Games and the long tradition of American Literary tourism. Well, when in Rome… or Atlanta…
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Melodious Sound Patterings
“Reaching the end of a Babstock poem, I often felt (and still often feel) stunned into a kind of numinous awe.” Stewart Cole for Partisan on Ken Babstock and the state of Canadian poetry. Continue with confidence on your quest through the Canadian canon with the help of this guide by our very own Michael Bourne.
“It’s the people that keep you going back”
Here’s a wonderful way to spend 77 minutes: the NYPL posted the entire video of a conversation between Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and Behind the Beautiful Forevers author Katherine Boo.
Summer Reading Suggestion: Novellas
At the Guardian, Wayne Gooderman hypothesizes that a Henry James or Truman Capote novella might make for better summer reading than “the doom and gloom of Messrs Mann and Conrad.”
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R.I.P J.D. Salinger
Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger has died at 91. Update: The New Yorker has linked to twelve of Salinger’s stories available to subscribers online.
The aMTrAk Residency
Remember that time Amtrak offered a 10-day train residency, and the internet experienced a collective freakout because trains are literary catnip, and then we found out it was kind of a scam? Barnard Zine Library does, too. In honor of that cultural moment, they recently sponsored an “MTA Residency” that, while less glamorous, has already yielded beautiful work.
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Recommended Reading from Roxane Gay
Book Riot has compiled a list of Roxane Gay’s recommended reads via Twitter. Some of her choices include Citizen by Claudia Rankine, God Help the Child by Toni Morrison, and City on Fire by our own Garth Risk Hallberg. See more books Gay recommends in our Year in Reading column.
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Harper Lee’s Unsolved Mystery
In 1970, Harper Lee came to a small town to write about a crime that occurred there, a gruesome murder that was staged to look like a car accident.
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What a load.