Recommended Reading: “The Loneliness of Certain American States” by Catherine Lacey.
“Godfather? Me?”
Still Here
For a man who’s retired, Philip Roth is still oddly present in the literary world. Ever since he announced his intention to quit writing, he’s made a stream of public appearances, including an awards ceremony at Yaddo one week after claiming he’d never appear on stage again. So what gives? In The Baffler, J.C. Hallman explains why writers can never really quit, in a piece that nicely complements our own take on literary retirement. FYI, Hallman has written for us.
Translation Issue
The translation issue of The White Review is out, featuring an interview with Fiston Mwanza Mujila and a brilliant new story by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker.
Kanye West, Featuring Eustace Tilley
Kanye‘s Twitter feed meets the New Yorker caption contest: brilliant.
A Song of Spare Time
As you might expect, the world of Game of Thrones fanfiction is complicated, pornographic and more than a little bit intimidating.
●
●
The 2016 International Dublin Literary Award Longlist
This morning, the longlist for the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award came out, and the nominees include some familiar names. Year in Reading alumnus Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (which won this year’s Pulitzer, whom you can learn more about in this essay by our own Michael Bourne) is on there, as is Year in Reading alumnus Michael Cunningham’s The Snow Queen, Year in Reading alumna Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State (reviewed here by Aboubacar Ndiaye), and A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (winner of this year’s Booker Prize).
●
●
Amazed and Infuriated
Why do articles go viral? At The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova traces what makes a popular story all the way back to Aristotle, but today’s clickbait has two features: a positive message or an ability to excite the reader emotionally. This probably explains why we love those articles about puppies. Pair with: Our piece on if book titles were written for clicks.
●
●