Recommended: Art of Fielding author Chad Harbach on sports novels.
Game Theory
Edwidge Danticat on Earthquake in Haiti
Video of Haitian American novelist Edwidge Danticat talking about the earthquake in Haiti at Democracy Now.
●
●
Pale King Pre-Orders
David Foster Wallace's final novel, The Pale King, is now available for pre-order. 432 pages. (via)
“It’s Spring when I realize that I may never have children.”
If you love stories about conception, infertility, baby gorillas, cicadas, and roundabout references to Virginia Woolf, you're going to love Belle Boggs' "The Art of Waiting" in Orion Magazine.
●
●
Controversial Books
This week in book-related infographics: a look at the most controversial books of all time.
Clarissa Explains It All
Recommended Reading: This piece by Adelle Waldman at The New Yorker on loving and loathing Samuel Richardson, "the man who made the modern novel."
●
●
Dubliners Day
In 2004, much of the literary world celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Bloomsday, aka the setting of James Joyce’s Ulysses. This year, we’re celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Dubliners, which our own Mark O’Connell once described as “a collection which writers of the short story form seem basically resigned to never surpassing.” At The Paris Review Daily, Skippy Dies author Paul Murray writes about his history with the book. You could also try to pass our eccentric James Joyce quiz.
●
●
Professor Díaz
Junot Díaz has criticized MFA programs for being "too white." So what's on his syllabi? Salon found the syllabi for the two courses Díaz teaches at MIT. In his fantasy world-building class, students read everyone from Bram Stoker to Octavia Butler. His advanced fiction course includes stories by Edwidge Danticat and Roberto Bolaño. Where can we sign up?
Against Captain Underpants
Renaissance Learning has released its annual report on what children are reading. The NYDaily News books blog takes offense at some of the more popular books named in the report, suggesting that kids and teens deserve to be challenged by better literature. The Huffington Post mines through the report to discover that American teenagers on average are still reading at or near the level of fifth graders.