Recommended: Ellah Alfrey on selecting Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.
On Granta’s “Prescient” List
First Lines of the New Gary Shteyngart
Here are the first lines of the new Gary Shteyngart novel, Super Sad True Love Story, forthcoming in July: “Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die. Others will die around me. They will be nullified. Nothing of their personality will remain. The light switch will be turned off.”
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Vintage Interview with Jaimy Gordon
While you’re waiting to get your hands on Lord of Misrule, the National Book Award winner by Jaimy Gordon, Gargoyle Magazine posts an interview with Gordon from 1983. (via The Paris Review).
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Illustrated Goethe
At The Rumpus: illustrations by Harry Clarke for a 1925 edition of Goethe’s Faust.
The Case of the Selfless Detective
In one among several lost Nancy Drew books, the girl detective asks herself “why she feels compelled to spend all her time and energy solving other people’s problems.”
Area Woman Makes the Best of It
What do you do when McSweeney’s rejects your humor piece? You could, like most people, slink off and write something new, perhaps after a quick look at the site to get a better sense of what they’re looking for, or you could write a new humor piece about getting rejected by McSweeney’s. At The Nervous Breakdown, Rachel Pollan takes the latter route (with a cameo by the movie Swingers).
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