For those of you that complain about there not being any pictures: bring back the illustrated book!
Pictures of You
Poolside Romance
Recommended Reading: Roxane Gay's short story about a summer romance, "The Year I Learned Everything," at Rookie. "He’s the best-looking of the bunch so you can imagine how ugly his friends are."
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The Half-Seen Thing
“My process for writing is the same, regardless of form: I abandon my children, I become a horrible husband, and a half-assed teacher. That’s what it all has in common.” Adam Johnson interviewed for Tin House in conjunction with the release of his new collection of short stories, Fortune Smiles.
Belle Epoque
In the annals of Southern literature, Elizabeth Spencer isn’t as well-known as Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor, but she is, Wilton Barnhardt writes, “one of America’s best short-story writers.” The 92-year-old author’s new collection marks “65 years and counting of superb writing,” he argues.
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Love – Love
"When the French would go to serve, they often said, Tenez!, the French word for 'take it,' meaning 'coming at you, heads up.' We preserve this custom of warning the opponent in our less lyrical way by stating the score just before we toss up the ball. It was the Italians who, having overheard the French make these sounds, began calling the game 'ten-ez' by association. A lovely detail in that it suggests a scene, a Florentine ear at the fence or entryway, listening." Whether it's David Foster Wallace or John Jeremiah Sullivan writing about tennis, I'm reading it. Another three-namer, Jonathan Russell Clark, reviewed The David Foster Wallace Reader for The Millions.
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Contemporary Fiction and the Internet
"The internet has altered our lives in ways television never did or could, but mainstream literary novelists – by which I mean writers who specialize in realistic, character-based narratives – have mostly shied away from writing about this, perhaps hoping that, like TV, it could be safely ignored." Laura Miller examines how contemporary novels are coming to terms with the internet.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Ng; Kwok; Moses; Scheft; Ahmad; Fitzgerald
New this week: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng; Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok; The Appetites of Girls by Pamela Moses; Shrink Thyself by the Letterman staff writer Bill Scheft; The Last Taxi Ride by A.X. Ahmad; and the Cambridge University Press edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Taps at Reveille.
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Susan Orlean’s Obsessions
The Rumpus interviews Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief & most recently Rin Tin Tin) about her obsession with other people's obsessions.
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