The kind folks at the PEN American Center recorded Colum McCann’s recent conversation with author and soccer ace Aleksandar Hemon. Listen to the pair discuss the Western distinction between fiction and non-fiction, and also the hypothetical merits of “watching a potato.”
McCann and Hemon in Conversation
Brooklyn Art Book Fair Kicks Off Tonight
More than 40 independent, artist-run presses and organizations will be on hand, including Pioneerworks Press, BOMB Magazine, Printed Matter, Wendy’s Subway, and Meekling Press.
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Black Bodies Matter
“All the rage and mourning and angst works to exhaust you; it eats you alive with its relentlessness.” The New York Times‘ Jenna Wortham on self-care during a summer rife with violence against people of color.
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A Fine Statement
This piece on the limited language of David Lynch from Dennis Lim over at The New Yorker is a fascinating journey into the mind of the peculiar auteur behind such gems as Eraserhead and Twin Peaks. Lynch will be publishing what he has called a “quasi-memoir” sometime in 2017.
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The Eternal Struggle
“I bet you can relate. Always another crisis, always more costs to keep down. It’s hard to find time for yourself, you know? But the president of the United States should be able to read a book when he wants to. Or at least look at one. Maybe I could just look at this book for a while.”
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“Hauntedness is a feeling.”
Wyvern is publishing a “Haunted” theme issue just in time for Halloween this year, and you have until mid-September to submit your work. “Haunting is in your bones,” Wyvern’s editors write. “You know it when you feel it, and you know it when you write it. That is what we’re looking for.”
Could the internet save book reviews?
Sarah Fay, associate editor of The Paris Review, has a piece in The Atlantic on the digitization of book reviewing, framed beautifully by references to George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer.” She praises Bookslut, Nancy Pearl, Goodreads, and The Los Angeles Review of Books for their collective skills of recommendation, reviewing, and New Criticism. I’d add The Quarterly Conversation, The Rumpus, The New Inquiry, The Morning News (for their annual Tournament of Books feature), and of course, The Millions.