This year, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle for their groundbreaking The Madwoman in the Attic.
Wide Sargasso Theory
“Writers all need Vera.”
Does a writer need a devoted spouse to be prolific? At The Atlantic, Koa Beck examines the concept of having a do-it-all partner like Vera Nabokov and if this traditional gender role only harms female writers. Koa interviews various writers, from Emma Straub to Ayelet Waldman, on how their literary partnerships work. “I'd fantasized that being his Vera was a way for me to deal with being stuck as a stay-at-home mom—I'd subsume my own ambitions into something ‘greater!’ But that lasted about 48 hours," Waldman said.
Rainy Day Books
Someone left a manuscript out in the rain. On their tumblr blog, Doubleday Books share two pictures of their offices repurposed to dry it out.
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“A great novel is always felt as a kind of gift”
Millions contributor Brian Ted Jones read through some of Nic Pizzolatto’s written fiction – such as his novel, Galveston – and found that the author dwelled on many of the “same obsessions” as he does in his breakout HBO hit, True Detective.
Out There
A half-century ago, Thomas Berger published Little Big Man, a satire of Westerns that helped increase the stature of the Western genre as a whole. To mark the book’s 50th anniversary, Allen Barra reflects on its legacy, suggesting that it’s as good a candidate as any for the title of Great American Novel. Related: Daniel Kalder on the odd phenomenon of the Euro-Western.
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Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies Coming in May
Big news for fans of Hilary Mantel and her Booker-winning (and Millions Hall of Famer) Wolf Hall. The U.S. release date for the much anticipated Wolf Hall sequel Bring Up the Bodies has been moved up from the fall to May 22nd to coincide with the U.K. release date.