“The continued publication and popular packaging of [Roberto Bolaño’s] incomplete work may actually be diluting his reputation as a writer of varied talents and fearless ambition.” Sam Carter is wary of The Roberto Bolaño Bubble.
The Roberto Bolaño Bubble
Listening for “Some Late-Summer Evening”
Recommended listening: The Southern Review has released a playlist perfect for summer listening, complete with five poems by Charles Simic.
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New Eggers Story
Today's second dose of recommended reading: Dave Eggers has a new short story, "The Alaska of Giants and Gods," in The New Yorker.
“Fat guy. They knew.”
Recommended Reading: Ray Shea's essay at Hobart "Fat Guy." "I want to say that I shrunk into my shoes and disappeared, but when somebody throws 'fat guy' at you, you don't shrink, you grow. You bloat."
On The Road With DFW, Part II
At Condalmo, Matthew Tiffany's review of David Lipsky's new book, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace: "You can’t go more than two or three pages without Lipsky’s shadow falling over the text. And you aren’t reading this book for the Lipsky, are you? The biggest problem here is that, like it or not, his fingerprints are all over it. And I didn’t like it."
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Betting Big
The Wall Street Journal explores the phenomenon of the million-dollar literary debut. Pair with Edan Lepucki’s Millions interview with her agent about publishing a first book.
(Do Not) Steal This Book
Everything you've ever wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) about book sales -- from what the heck even constitutes a sale, to standard print runs, to author earnings per sale -- from Lincoln Michel at Electric Literature.
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A needed perspective, although the Bolaño Legacy argument makes more sense than the “He’s taking the space of other translated works in NA” one. He might take up a greater part of the literary conversation, but I’m not publishers would necessarily be translating more Latin-American fiction if Bolaño’s posthumous works weren’t around.
People are finally figuring this out? They’ve been churning out subpar Bolano collections for years, much of it mindlessly repetitive.