“Was Jack Kerouac really a hack?” To quote Truman Capote: “That’s not writing, it’s typing.” Though not all writers agree.
On the Scroll
Why Criticism Matters
“We live in the age of opinion — offered instantly, effusively and in increasingly strident tones. Much of it goes by the name of criticism, and in the most superficial sense this is accurate.” The New York Times approached six accomplished critics, Stephen Burns, Katie Roiphe, Pankaj Mishra, Adam Kirsch, Sam Anderson, and Elif Batuman to explain, in the spirit of Alfred Kazin, “what it is they do, why they do it and why it matters.”
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Asterix Co-Creator Retires
Albert Uderzo, co-creator of Asterix, announced his retirement yesterday. Since 1977, Uderzo has been the sole author of the popular French comic books, which have sold over 350 million copies worldwide. His successor has yet to be named, though Uderzo said it will be an artist “who has been following us for a long time inside a studio I set up.”
New Michael Robbins Poetry
The latest issue of Poetry magazine features four of Michael Robbins’s first “post-Alien vs. Predator” poems: “Big Country,” “Be Myself,” “The Second Sex,” and “That’s Incredible!” Robbins was also a recent participant in our Year In Reading series.
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Get Your First Edition Fix
Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore just launched a First Editions Club where members get a signed first edition of a new book each month. Some recent selections include: George Saunders’s Tenth of December (our review), Jonathan Dee’s A Thousand Pardons (our review), and Philipp Meyer’s The Son.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hill; Donohoe; Bausch; Hall & Hobbs
Out this week: The Nix by Nathan Hill; Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe; The Legend of Jesse Smoke by Robert Bausch; and Sex and Death, a new story anthology including pieces by Kevin Barry, Wells Tower and Yiyun Li. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
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