Even as much of the Eastern U.S. is lashed by a massive storm, we have new books this week, skewing mostly to non-fiction, including Kurt Vonnegut’s collected letters, Richard Russo’s memoir Elsewhere, James Wood’s collection of essays The Fun Stuff, and Peter Carlin’s authorized biography of Bruce Springsteen. On the fiction side is Emma Donoghue’s Astray.
Tuesday New Release Day: Vonnegut, Russo, Wood, Springsteen, Donoghue
How Should A Counterpoint Be?
In the LARB, Hannah Tennant-Moore offers up a counterpoint (which our own Emily M. Keeler wrote about on Tumblr) to the raves that greeted How Should A Person Be? when the book came out this year. To hear what the author, Sheila Heti, had to say about the novel, check out our interview from June.
●
●
An Excess of Symmetry
“What a perfect couple, two halves of the same little orange.” Guernica Magazine has a fantastic flash fiction piece by Andrés Neuman in anticipation of his upcoming collection of stories, The Things We Don’t Do.
McSweeney’s Newspaper Issue Preview
McSweeney’s offers a nine-page sneak peek at its forthcoming newspaper issue.
●
●
Postcard Nostalgia
●
●
Playing the Victim
The Empathy Exams, a new collection of essays by Leslie Jamison, gets its title from a piece about medical acting that was published in The Believer. On the Harper’s blog, you can read an interview with Jamison, who calls her collection “a refusal to choose between these approaches — criticism, confession, journalism.” (Michelle Huneven interviewed Jamison for The Millions a couple of years ago.)
●
●
When an Alumni Mag Covers Bad News
In the wake of the Sandusky scandal, the Penn State alumni mag Penn Stater couldn’t ignore the news. The dark, shattered cover is not what you typically see from booster-ish alumni magazines.
You’re Watching it Wrong!
“[From Russia With Love]’s lack of newness prevented connection with the audience. Scratch that. It wasn’t the film’s fault. It was the audience’s.”
●
●
What We Owe
Recommended reading: In a piece for the LA Times David Ulin ponders the ethics of writing. “What do we owe our subjects? Do we have the right to tell their stories at all?”
●
●