n+1 editor Keith Gessen discusses how the magazine’s editors “are slowing down.” “We’re not mad at anyone anymore,” he says. “We think everything is great.”
Keith Gessen’s Longform Podcast
Ride or Die
“When I was younger, I finished everything. I was a total martyr. Now … I’m getting older. We have a finite amount of time on this earth. If something really doesn’t speak to you, and there’s not a ride-or-die reason to read it all the way through, then it’s time to give up.” Ten questions for Lisa Lucas, the new(ish) director of the National Book Foundation.
The Forgotten Forty
In a sea of Best Book lists, LitHub spoke to 40 booksellers about the most overlooked titles of 2017. On the list? Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, which was featured in Emily St. John Mandel‘s Year in Reading.
Perpetua
When, in 1921, a young French writer working as a translator for James Joyce asked the writer to reveal his schema for Ulysses, Joyce balked, saying that “If I gave it all up immediately, I’d lose my immortality.” What he meant, at least in part, is that he wanted his opus to be relevant in perpetuity. At Full-Stop, Dustin Illingworth reads Ulysses on Twitter and asks: can the book survive the transition from the page to social media? Pair with: Josh Cook on The House of Ulysses by Julian Rios.
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The Art of Hyping
Chad Harbach‘s The Art of Fielding is ubiquitous. We tapped it in our Second Half of 2011 Preview. n+1 bundled it with year-long subscriptions. The Awl interviewed the author. The New Yorker‘s Book Club picked it as their September book. It was reviewed in The New York Times. Now Keith Gessen‘s expanded his Vanity Fair piece on the novel’s development into a standalone e-book. In light of all this hype, McNally Jackson’s Tumblr provides a poignant list of baseball puns for reviewers to start avoiding.
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Hangovers and Strip Clubs: The Wire
Maxim’s long, comprehensive oral history of The Wire shouldn’t be missed. In fact, it should be supplemented with Idris Elba’s short profile in New York Magazine.