A few days ago, our own Edan Lepucki talked shop with Millions contributor Ramona Ausubel, whose new collection, A Guide to Being Born, came out last month. Now, at Full-Stop, Emily Oppenheimer reviews the book, which she says refuses to “make use of the obvious perspective.”
A Guide to a Guide
The New Gay Novel
“Garth Greenwell’s project with What Belongs to You is to remind us how illicit cruising and anonymous sex figure within the modern gay identity. As the gay marriage movement helps sanitize (and de-sexualize) queerness, Greenwell brings the dark and sordid elements of sex and promiscuity back into sharp relief.” Over at Pacific Standard, Nathan Smith writes on the new gay novel. Pair with the Millions review of Greenwell’s book.
●
●
Amazon’s Price-Check Debacle
A lot of people were outraged by initial reports of Amazon’s price-check promotion, and a lot of that had to do with misinformation. Thankfully, Richard Russo sets the record straight about at least one point of contention. (The discount doesn’t apply to books.)
●
●
Trigger Warning: Literature
Students at the University of California Santa Barbara, Rutgers, Oberlin, and others have been requesting “trigger warning” labels on literature from The Great Gatsby to Huck Finn. In The Guardian, University College London Professor John Mullan snipes, “You might as well put a label on English literature saying: warning – bad stuff happens here.”
●
●
Anything that helps you to see. Anything that makes you look
On Flannery O’ Connor’s practice of making visual art, and how the habits of an artist informed her sensibility as a writer.
●
●
May the odds be ever in your favor, Suzanne Collins.
The Hunger Games raked in $155 million in its opening weekend. That makes it the highest-grossing non-sequel debut of all time. Over at Salon, Laura Miller tracks the steps that led to the blockbuster’s mammoth success.
The Poetics of K-Pop
"In poetry, I realized again and again that 'failures' were in fact openings to more possibilities." Emily Yoon reflects on the poetic consequences of K-Pop for the Paris Review.
●
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Choi, Aw, Zambrano, Roth, Banville
New this week: My Education by Susan Choi, Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw, Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano, The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth, and a new edition of a previously hard to come by early collection of stories by John Banville, Long Lankin. Stay tuned for our big second-half preview with many, many more anticipated books, coming in less than a week.
●
●