If you enjoyed Sonya Chung’s interview with James Salter, you’ll want to check out this video of the author reflecting on his life, and what led to his decision to “write or perish.”
Extra Salter
Tuesday New Release Day: Gilbert, Forna, Drabble, Segal, MacFarlane, Winterson, de la Pava, Franzen
New releases this week include The Signature of All Things by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, which you can learn more about in Steve Almond's review for the Times. Also out: The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna; The Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble; Half the Kingdom by Lore Segal; The Night Guest by Fiona MacFarlane; The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson; Personae by Hall of Famer Sergio de la Pava; and The Karl Kraus Project by Jonathan Franzen.
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The Alligators of Abraham
You can listen to Robert Kloss read from The Alligators of Abraham, which was released last Thursday from Mud Luscious Press. The author also composed a playlist to accompany his book. The gorgeous text has been receiving much-deserved advance praise, and it's even borne a "series of texts – videos, art, stories, and more – written, filmed, cobbled together, and razed by different artists from around the literary world."
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Lost Hitchcock
A long lost Alfred Hitchcock film has been unearthed in New Zealand.
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Two Tools for your TBR Pile
One Goodreads vigilante has created a master list of authors notorious for responding immaturely or meanly to negative reviews of their work. Elsewhere, iDreamBooks, a new Rotten Tomatoes-type service, was launched. The site aggregates critics’ book reviews and shows you what to read next.
Tell Us a Story
Why do the British tell the best children’s stories? Perhaps because their culture has remained in touch with its pagan folklore, whereas in the United States, more pragmatic tales of morality, Christian obedience, and bootstrap-lifting rose to prominence. Also, picture books: general good thing for children or roadmap to total the moral collapse of society?
Literature and Commerce
The Rumpus points out that both it and HTML Giant are experimenting with ads. I was also noticing recently that several enterprising literary magazines - including The Paris Review and Canteen have been advertising on Google. (You can buy ads on The Millions too.)
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The Stories We Tell
Of more than 23,000 front-page articles that appeared in The New York Times between 1939 and 1945, only 26 were about the Holocaust. Watch a powerful 18-minute mini-documentary about "how and why the genocide of Jews was neglected and euphemised by the Times, and by extension, the American people." Pair with our piece about the German traditions of the Denkmahl and Mahnmahl, two different kinds of memorials with subtle, yet important distinctions.