“Publishing is a word that, like the book, is almost but not quite a proxy for the ‘business of literature.’ Current accounts of publishing have the industry about as imperiled as the book, and the presumption is that if we lose publishing, we lose good books. Yet what we have right now is a system that produces great literature in spite of itself.” Twenty-first century publishing works in mysterious ways.
The Business of Books
The Art of the Adaptation
For The Guardian, Adrian Horton asks: how modernized should literary adaptations be? What liberties is it okay to take?
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Heavy Feather Review’s Call for Submissions
As they begin preparation work on “Vacancies,” a special double-issue of their magazine, the folks at Heavy Feather Review have issued a call for writing that explores “the dimly lit corners of the unoccupied, unassuming, or idle.” For inspiration, look toward Philip Levine’s poem, “An Abandoned Factory, Detroit.”
Opinions… In Verse
From now until August 16th, the editors of the Los Angeles Times’s Opinion section will accept poetry submissions. Their favorites will be published in the August 25th edition of the paper.
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A Change in Tone
In an illuminating interview for Slate, James Wood revises his opinion on David Foster Wallace and discusses how aging can change critics. As he puts it, “At exactly the moment that I wanted really to write, and started writing poems and then trying to write bad fiction, I was reading with a view to learning stuff. I was reading poetry. How did Auden do his stanza forms? And I was trying to copy those. What’s a successful poem, what’s an unsuccessful poem? […] What’s a good sentence? I don’t think I’ve changed. I am as sincerely interested in novels that fail as I am in novels that succeed. I just want to work them out. It’s a pleasure for me actually.” Top it off with Jonathan Russell Clark’s essay on Wood’s The Nearest Thing to Life.
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Internet Erasure
“There is a wide range of art in the world, but there is an urgent need for art that pushes us and makes us uncomfortable because it forces us to think, to question, to give into it, to resist.” Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay writes on Internet censorship and Dennis Cooper’s now deleted blog.
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On Granta’s “Prescient” List
Recommended: Ellah Alfrey on selecting Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.