Joel Lovell profiles George Saunders for The New York Times, and he gives a killer endorsement for Saunders’s latest book, Tenth of December. The author’s collection from thirteen years ago, Pastoralia, was picked on our site as being among the “Best of the Millennium.”
“It is true that if there exists a ‘writer’s writer,’ [George] Saunders is the guy”
Fractal Surfaces
Recommended Reading: On Marianne Moore’s infectious devotion to all things small, and how that same devotion helped make her Observations one of the great verbal works of art of the 20th century.
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Everyone Is a Writer
“People in the publishing industry were complaining that ‘everyone is a writer now.’ I thought, well, why fight that? Isn’t that a good thing?” Andy Hunter, Publisher & COO of Catapult, Publisher of Literary Hub, and Co-Founding Chairman of Electric Literature, talks about the impetus for his three ventures.
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The Patriarch
This week, Richard Ford published his first novel in a while to feature Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of his Pulitzer-winning book The Sportswriter. At Salon, our own Lydia Kiesling posits a through-line from Bascombe to a certain TV gangster, arguing that The Sopranos shares its view of manhood with Ford’s novels. You could also read our own Michael Bourne on Ford’s 2012 book, Canada.
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Rediscoveries
It’s been forty years since a burst of new critical attention gave Anthony Trollope a new life. What is it about him that makes his work enduringly relevant? In the latest New Yorker, Adam Gopnik argues that the author was a master of gossip. You could also read Sara Henary on the author’s two hundredth birthday.
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The End of Sookie Stackhouse
Charlaine Harris is wrapping up the final installment of her popular Southern Vampire Mysteries series next May. The final novel, Dead Ever After, will be the thirteenth book in the set, which means there’s still plenty of material for True Blood to work with.
Reading Gregor Samsa’s Chart
Have you ever wondered about the astrological sign of your favorite literary character? The writers behind Astro Poets have you covered.
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