“I think essay and memoir hang together in a balance. There’s any number of ways to strike it, but from Montaigne on down that balance seems key to their design.” The Paris Review interviews the essayist Michelle Orange, author of the recent This Is Running For Your Life.
Writing For Your Life
at the utmost limits of writing itself
Christian Bök wonders about the future of conceptual poetry:”How do we write poems in a world where a spambot, like @horse_ebooks, gets to write all the great lines…?”
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Hot off the Motherboard: New Issues of OLM, N1BR
Along with the dreaded switch to Daylight Wastings Time, the first of the month brings new issues of Open Letters Monthly and N1BR. Between the two of them, you can find, among other things, reviews of Where the Wild Things Are, J.M. Coetzee‘s Age of Iron, Bob Seger, and the Complete Bloggings of Caleb Crain.
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Steinbeck’s Journalism
For This Land Press, which you really should be checking out regularly, Millions contributor Brian Ted Jones looks into John Steinbeck’s work as a journalist, and also the “New Joads” of Oklahoma.
Tom McCarthy Gets Interviewed
“There is a vicious rumor circulating that Tom McCarthy is the writer of our generation,” writes Christopher Bollen in Interview as he, ahem, interviews the author and Millions Year in Reading alum.
Mr. Cromwell
Wolf Hall, you may have heard, is now a TV show, which you can watch on PBS (in the US) and BBC Two (in the UK). Is it good? According to Sonia Saraiya, the adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novel is eminently worth watching, “a rare adaptation from book to screen that makes the most of what the visual medium can provide.” You could also read our interview with Mantel.
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Mr. Roth
“Who wouldn’t want to read dirty books with Philip Roth?” At The New York Times, Lisa Scottoline writes about taking a class with Roth in the ’70s. If you didn’t get a chance to take a class with Roth, here are 10 lessons you can learn from him.
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Self-Published, Self-Promoted
Four days ago, The New York Times exposed the practice of purchasing five-star reviews on Amazon. So far, few have offered solutions. A Reddit user explains how to properly read Amazon review graphs through the cloud of purchased hype. Erin Keane calls for independent writers to hold themselves to higher standards.