A while back, Frank Ocean alluded to the possibility of one day writing a novel. Asked by Guardian interviewer Rebecca Nicholson about his immediate plans following the success of his last album, Channel Orange, the musician replied, “I might just write a novel next.” The response seemed unserious. But now, in Jeff Himmelman’s long profile of Ocean for The New York Times Magazine, it appears the idea may have a bit more traction. “It’s fiction,” says Ocean. “And it’s about brothers.”
Frank Ocean’s Fiction
After the Wall
“[Christa] Wolf was a committed dissident in the GDR (East Germany) and a forceful voice resisting Western triumphalism after reunification. It would seem like some sort of explanation was owed to the public. Yet how does one give an account of oneself when the link to the past, to the psychological and cultural backdrop of such fateful decisions, is not even subjectively available?” On City of Angels: Or, the Overcoat of Dr. Freud.
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Cormac McCopyEditor
Cormac McCarthy helped copy edit Lawrence M. Krauss’s Quantum Man, a biography of the physicist Richard Feynman. But, seriously, can anyone prove it wasn’t really McCarthy’s Yelp review doppelgänger?
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Book Coverage As Premium Content
The Chicago Tribune is rolling out a new premium books section for $99 a year. The Printers Row offering (named for a Chicago neighborhood) “will feature 24 pages of book reviews, author interviews and Chicago-focused literary news, along with a weekly bonus book of short fiction.” You can either feel validated (special HBO-style “premium” section for readers!) or marginalized (so few people care about this that you have to pay extra if you want it.)
A Worthy Send-Off
Edmond Caldwell, a longtime Millions commenter and member of the golden age of lit blogging, has passed away. Caldwell was the founder of The Chagall Position and Contra James Wood. Read a tribute to Caldwell by his friends Boyd Nielson and Joseph G. Ramsey at Dispatches, here.
Fame: A P&L
$500,000 annual home improvements? $125,000 allotted for annual “domestic salaries and expenses?” A $95,000 tutor for Gwyneth Paltrow’s 5-year old? New York Magazine‘s “Celebrity Economy” package is as thorough and informative as it is revolting.
Times: New Film and Book Claim Five New J.D. Salinger Books to Be Published Starting in 2015
The Times is reporting that a new film and companion book (Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno) “include detailed assertions that Mr. Salinger instructed his estate to publish at least five additional books — some of them entirely new, some extending past work — in a sequence that he intended to begin as early as 2015.” One of the books is said to include a retooled version of Salinger’s unpublished (but available at the Princeton library) story “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans.” Kristopher Jansma (The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards) wrote about the story for us in 2011. Bonus Link: Garth Risk Hallberg on Salinger’s legacy.
I Ain’t Sayin’ Eustace Tilley is a Gold-Digger…
Apropos of our popular “Open Letter to Kanye West,” may we recommend the “Shouts & Murmurs in this week’s New Yorker? “I have more than a million [Facebook] fans,” writes a certain unnamed narrator. “Do you know how many fans Books have? Twenty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-four.”