Recommended Reading: “So I Went Away” by Crapalachia author Scott McClanahan.
“Years passed.”
Citation, Please
Fun Fact: British radio and television presenter Alan Partridge (a fictional character played by Steve Coogan) is referenced in not one, not two, but seven entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, you cheeky Brits.
Why Is Iceland So Literary?
One in ten residents of Iceland will publish something in their lifetime. (Compare that to the United States.) And all residents receive the bókatíðindi – a volume listing approximately 90% of all books being published in Iceland – free of charge. Indeed, as Mark Medley notes, when it comes to literary ambitions, the Land of Fire and Ice is “punching above its weight class.”
Fright Night
Canada’s famous Nightmares Fear Factory is setting the tone for Halloween with its hysterical Flickr stream of spooked guests.
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Live New Yorker Cartoons
Recommended Viewing: New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers to introduce a new segment “Live New Yorker Cartoons.”
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Bad Habits
There are many things you could call William S. Burroughs, who was born a hundred years ago this month, but Will Self prefers to call him “the original junkie,” a title which reflects the author’s hedonistic background and the strangeness of books like Naked Lunch. Self takes a close look at Burroughs’s novel-cum-memoir, Junky, in The Guardian.
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Ishiguro Interviewed
“Maybe in the future I’ll feel compelled to write that kind of specific and current book, but right now I feel that my strength as a fiction writer is my ability to take a step back. I prefer to create a more metaphorical story that people can apply to a variety of situations, personal and political.” Electric Literature interviews Kazuo Ishiguro about his most recent novel, The Buried Giant, which our own Lydia Kiesling reviewed here.
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