“I never thought of myself as an outsider. Because outside of what? You would have to give advantage to this space where you’re not, to think of it as sovereign because you’re not there. I was always in the center of where I needed to be.” Aleksander Hemon on writing his new book.
The Center of Things
More Adler
It's turning into Speedboat Week here, so why not spend the weekend with some of Renata Adler's most renowned nonfiction? Her controversial reassessment of Pauline Kael (featuring "A Limitless Capacity to Inquire," one of the best found poems you'll ever read) is at the NYRB, and her deep dive into l'affaire Lewinski can be found at the L.A. Times. Interestingly, as Sarah Weinman points out, Adler's 2001 book about the Bilderberg Conferences still hasn't seen the light of day. ("Who suppresses manuscripts? We do!")
In Case You Didn’t Know
In The Globe and Mail, Nick Mount reviews How to Read Literature, a new book by Terry Eagleton that you can file next to Reading Like a Writer and How Fiction Works.
●
●
Shots Fired
"While I'm glad we've had this chance to talk, because of time constraints I cannot answer these basic questions about race and how racism works." Colson Whitehead considers new business cards. See our review of his Pulitzer-winning The Underground Railroad here.
●
●
The Reluctant Actor
While Liz & Dick might have failed to live up to our campy expectations, you can still get your Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor fix from the recently-published Richard Burton Diaries.
Weekend Links
Bat Segundo bags his biggest fish yet: John UpdikeOn their blog, the Freakonomics guys are looking for poker players to help them with an experiment, but the bigger news is that the post reveals a sequel to the bestseller is in the works.Part one of a interview with book designer Paul Buckley of Penguin Book Group - includes lots of examples of his work.John Batelle doesn't mind that pirated copies of his book The Search are being sold on the streets of Mumbai.
●
●
●
●
Tennessee Williams’s College Days
The Strand Magazine is publishing a previously unseen Tennessee Williams short story in its spring issue. "Crazy Night" is about Williams's lovelorn college days when he describes sex like "vaccination the first day of school."