Craig Fehrman reviews Keith O’Brien’s Outside Shot, a book which follows the 2009-10 boys’ basketball team at Scott County High School in Georgetown, Kentucky. O’Brien’s book is much in the mold of Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights, writes Fehrman, in that it’s concerned with a “troubled town, precarious season, political resonance” – but it’s also a book that falters under the legacy of its predecessor.
In The Shadow of Odessa
Setting the Bar Quite High
Believing that high quality TV dramas have supplanted silver screen blockbusters, and now rival novels as “the best way of widely communicating ideas and stories,” Salman Rushdie is set to pen a science fiction series for Showtime. The show will be called “The Next People.” Yet while he’s cited “The Wire” as a source of inspiration, the novelist also backhandedly referred to it as “just a police series.” (A stance he defended on Twitter.) Controversial? Perhaps. But still nothing compared to him calling “Game of Thrones” “very addictive garbage.” Later on, when asked by Vulture to list some of his favorite TV shows, Rushdie curiously counted “Entourage” among them.
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Tatjana Soli on Paul Yoon
In The New York Times, Tatjana Soli gives high praise to Snow Hunters, the first novel by Once the Shore author and Best American Short Stories alumnus Paul Yoon. The novel, which tells the tale of a North Korean refugee named Yohan, proves that Yoon is “well-suited to the short form,” she writes. (Related: Soli has written for us.)
In the Frame
Photographers who are tired of weddings should start shooting book covers. When New Directions asked to use one of Allen Frame’s photos for the cover of Robert Bolaño’s Last Evenings on Earth, he gave them access to his archive instead. Today, nine Frame photos have been used on Bolaño book covers. You can view them here or at New York City’s Gitterman Gallery.
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Pump the longreads at SXSW
Our own founding editor C. Max Magee is teaming up with our friends at The Bygone Bureau and The Morning News to give a panel discussion at SXSW Interactive 2013 on the future of independent longform writing on the web. If you wanna see the panel make it to Austin, head over the SXSW site to give us your vote. You can register to vote here.
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Say My Name
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Kafka’s Wound: A Multimedia Treat
The London Review of Books sought out Will Self to help create “a digital literary work that pushed the boundaries of the literary essay well beyond its traditional form.” The effort, they hoped, would “loosen and enhance the structure of the essay, changing the way the reader interacts with the text.” Well, consider that a success. Behold, “Kafka’s Wound” in all its multimedia glory. [Bonus: Millions readers in the UK can catch Will Self’s discussion of the digital essay on September 6th.]
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Found In Translation
“I have the impression that the shelves of new releases in US bookstores are becoming more globalized. They’re still not as international as those in bookstores in Rome or Paris or Mexico City or Buenos Aires, where there is a much higher percentage of books in translation. But I think works in translation are becoming much more visible.” Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue contends that trends in publishing mean we’ll enjoy ever-increasing bounties of translated work. See also: translator Alison Anderson on “Ferrante Fever” and what a great translation adds to the original work.
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