Sam Lipsyte’s new collection The Fun Parts is out this week. Also out are Red Doc> by Anne Carson, Mary Coin by Marisa Silver, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid, Jacob’s Folly by Rebecca Miller, The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates, and The End of the Point by Elizabeth Graver.
Tuesday New Release Day: Lipsyte, Carson, Silver, Hamid, Miller, Oates, Graver
Tuesday New Release Day: Rayner; Yuichi; Jangfeldt
Out this week: Another Night, Another Day by Sarah Rayner; Ground Zero, Nagasaki by Seirai Yuichi and Mayakovsky: A Biography by Bengt Jangfeldt. For more on these and other great titles from this year, check out our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
The Secret Life of Ayn Rand
Kevin Courier is re-running interviews he did for the CBC in the 1980s on the Critics At Large site. Here’s his 1986 interview with Barbara Brenden, author of The Passion of Ayn Rand. Brenden’s book, Courier writes, “not only unveiled this polarizing figure” of Ayn Rand, but it “also illustrated the perils of blind faith and idolatry.” Given the Objectivist’s influence on a certain vice presidential candidate, this one’s worth a read.
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We Can’t Make This Up
If you thought Cameron Diaz’s windshield sex scene in The Counselor was weird, things just got weirder for Cormac McCarthy. His ex-wife was arrested for pulling a gun out of her vagina after a domestic dispute about aliens escalated. Pair with: Our essay on McCarthy’s foray into screenwriting.
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RIP Chinua Achebe
According to the Times, The Guardian and other sources, Things Fall Apart author Chinua Achebe has died. Last October, we published a review of his final book, There Was a Country, which you might want to reread as a first step to considering his legacy. (You could also check out our piece on Things Fall Apart.)
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RIP Jimbo’s
South Floridian bandits, fishermen, drunks, madmen, and college students are mourning the imminent demise of beloved Miami institution, Jimbo’s. The site of the “Who Lets The Dogs Out” video, the Flipper movie starring Elijah Wood, and a couple iterations of the now-defunct Swampstomp music festival, Jimbo’s defied summation. Put simply, you had to see it yourself. The way I always explained it to my friends up North was by telling them it was like The Rum Diary met CBGB’s and Will Smith’s “Miami” video. Still, even that’s insufficient, so I recommend reading the Miami New Times‘ epic chronicle of the place’s history.
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