New this week: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, Harvard Square by André Aciman, Tapestry of Fortunes by Elizabeth Berg, and Palisades Park by Alan Brennert.
Tuesday New Release Day: Wolitzer, Aciman, Berg, Brennert
Techrification
“Another friend of mine told me a story about the Apple bus from when he worked for Apple Inc. Once a driver went rogue, dropping off the majority of his passengers as intended at the main Apple campus, and then rolling on towards San Jose instead of stopping at the satellite location, but the passengers were tech people, so withdrawn from direct, abrupt, interventionary communications that they just sat there as he drove many miles past their worksite and eventually dumped them on the street in a slum south of the new power centre of the world.” In the London Review of Books, a native of San Fran laments her tech-drunk city.
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Russian Slapstick
“Russian humor is to ordinary humor what backwoods fundamentalist poisonous snake handling is to a petting zoo. Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.” Ian Frazier writes about the strange humor of Daniil Kharms for the New York Review of Books.
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All Jokes Aside
Over at Vulture, Jesse David Fox offers a retrospective of 100 years of jokes that shaped modern comedy.
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Poets & Writers’ MFA Rankings
This week I linked to one poet’s concerns about the top MFA programs ranked in Poets & Writers. Now, a pretty impressive list of creative writing instructors have some questions for Poets & Writers itself.
Coffee House to Publish Essays and Nonfiction
“Coffee House Press is pleased to announce that in addition to literary fiction and poetry, the nonprofit press will add essay collections and creative nonfiction to their publishing program.”
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Emo Allan Poe
Quoth Edgar Allan Poe or an emo band? Take this trickier-than-it-looks quiz, and decide for yourself.
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