“I was dropping out of college and had begun a novel and returned to New York. A bookstore in Manhattan announced a rare reading and signing by Anthony Burgess, a primary hero of mine at the time, for his autodidact’s erudition and braggadocio, and for how he’d gentrified a number of outre genres just by picking them up and mingling them with his erudition and braggadocio.” At the LARB, Jonathan Lethem remembers a formative reading by the author.
King Braggadocio
Who Wrote What?
Do you want to work at The Strand in New York City? Think you have what it takes? Take this famous quiz and match each work with its author to see if you have the literary chops to pick up a paycheck from one of the United States’s most beloved bookstores.
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Designing ‘The Laughing Monsters’
Continuing our conversation on book covers: a look at rejected designs for Denis Johnson‘s The Laughing Monsters.
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How Meta a Work is Man
A Shakespearean consulted for Arthur Phillips‘ buzzed-about new novel, The Tragedy of Arthur, reviews…The Tragedy of Arthur. In which he appears. Alongside “Arthur Phillips.”
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Whose Tale
“At first blush, bringing an eight-year-old to one of William Shakespeare’s quirkier plays in an effort to help her see herself, an Asian American girl, in popular culture did seem a rather odd decision.” Nicole Chung for Hazlitt on The Winter’s Tale, representation, and parenting in the age of Trump. And wouldn’t you know it, we have a piece specifically about that very play – “three/fifths wintry tragedy, two/fifths vernal comedy, and wholly a masterwork” – right here.
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Claire Vaye Watkins Takes Home the Dylan Thomas Prize
Kudos to Claire Vaye Watkins for taking home the Dylan Thomas Prize! Worth £30,000, the prize went to Watkins because, in the words of of the chair of the judging panel, she possesses “some of Dylan Thomas’s extraordinary skill in the short story form.” (Read more about Watkins’s work in Geoff Mak’s review of her 2012 book Battleborn.)
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Lit Mags, Ahoy!
Three cheers for literary magazines, eh? Do yourself a favor and check out Tin House’s new Portland/Brooklyn issue (with mixtape to match!), DIAGRAM 12.4, Hobart’s revamped website (with daily content!), and the brand new Revolver magazine out in the Twin Cities.