In response to an article in the Atlantic observing that women dominate the world of YA fiction, Laura Miller wonders whether men avoid and women embrace YA fiction for the same reason: it offers little prestige.
“YA fiction has blossomed outside the literary world’s prestige economy.”
Tweeting with Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan has a new story, “Black Box,” which is being published in ten installments over the New Yorker Fiction Twitter feed. Beginning last night at 8pm EST, and the story continues tonight at the same time.
Boiled Down
“Like reading, love works in roughly the same way every time, but the details of any given case are irreducibly particular, and it’s in the details that everything happens.” Lidija Haas on Elif Batuman’s debut novel, The Idiot. (You could also read our review by Virginia Marshall.)
●
●
The perils of befriending your heros.
David Bezmozgis‘s beautiful and painful essay on befriending his literary hero, Leonard Michaels.
●
●
Curiosities
io9 offers up “The Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life,” from Frankenstein to Pattern Recognition. (via)Cathleen Schine on the charms of Peter CareyThe “Thomas Bernhard cult” claims a new initiate.F.O.T.M. (Friend of The Millions) Lydia Millet talks about “endangered species, the idea of motherhood, and her stint at Hustler.””Why do scribblers make drinking their second art? For one thing, it primes them for their task.” Writers and booze.Some American Studies undergrads at The University of Virginia have put together an online exhibit titled “The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s.”NPR’s “In Character” segment considers Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne.
●
●
Monday Linkday
My mom pointed out this article in the Washington Post about a bookstore in Baltimore that primarily gives away books rather than selling them. It’s called the Book Thing:”That’s the whole thing with the Book Thing,” Wattenberg says. “All I am is a middleman. The people have books…. They give them to me, they’re happy to have a place to see them go somewhere, and the people that get the books are happy to get the books.”Also, file under conspicuous consumption: Anyone looking for an extravagant gift for the film buff in their life should look no further.Spotted on the el: The Travels of Marco Polo… sure the red line doesn’t go all the way to China, but we can dream.
Lonely Subjects
Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life, explores the intersection between photography and loneliness. Pair with Angela Qian’s review of Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City.
●
●
The Future United States of America
In Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams's new anthology, they gather a group of writers to imagine the country's future using speculative fiction.
●
●
●