Let’s take a moment to be jealous of other countries, shall we? In Iceland, “one in ten [residents] will publish something in their lifetime.” Norway’s government “buys 1,000 copies of every book a Norwegian author publishes. It provides a $19,000 annual subsidy to every author.” In Argentina, “the city of Buenos Aires now gives pensions to published writers.”
Three Reasons To Move Abroad
To the Choir
It can be hard for critics to strike a balance between high theory and accessible prose. For James Wood, the key is to retain enough theoretical knowledge to come up with an insightful point, while still retaining the ability to write in a natural dialect. In The Guardian, he talks about his own relationship with books.
●
●
“Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid”
“Being nominated for an award feels the way I imagine winning the lottery must feel: You’re deeply grateful and a little disoriented, you feel very lucky, and you know that it could just as easily have been someone else.” Our own Emily St. John Mandel writes about “the vast distance between literary prizes and literary work” and reading Norman Mailer for The Atlantic‘s By Heart series (which we’ve covered many, many times before).
●
●
Sudanese Shorts
Recommended Reading: This month’s installment of Words Without Borders, which features three stories by Sudanese writers Nagi Al-Badawi, Adel Gassas, and Sabah Babiker Ibraheem.
●
●
Transgender
●
●
Tomorrow!
This past week GOOD laid off most of their editorial staff, including former Executive Editor and creator of the #realtalk From Your Editor tumblog Ann Friedman. Posting some extra #realtalk on her blog yesterday, Friedman announced that the band of former GOOD editors are looking for work and also launching their own magazine: Tomorrow.
●
●
Curiosities: Three Feet of Paper
Conversational Reading covers “Four Greek Writers That You Should (and Can) Read.”Wells Tower interviewed on The Dinner Party Download.Anne Trubek at Good Magazine recommends our site to “Post-Collegiate Literary Types”The Elegant Variation gets a new reader. Congratulations, Mark!Make of this what you will: “Popular Japanese horror writer Koji Suzuki will publish a short novel called Drop on rolls of toilet paper.”Wikipedia Find of the Week I: Criticism of Wikipedia (so meta)Wikipedia Find of the Week II: No one cares about your garage band (so snarky)”Updike’s Sunset:” Kakutani takes on two newly published Updike collections, My Father’s Tears and Other Stories and Endpoint and Other Poems.Further Reading: Consider revisiting our guest post from last week, Finding Indie Opportunity on The Kindle, where a very interesting discussion developed in the comments.
Marco Roth on Kazuo Ishiguro
In honor of the upcoming film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, n+1 posts Marco Roth’s compelling review of Ishiguro’s novel and Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island online for the first time.
●
●