“I’ve been writing about ‘real’ characters and placing them in a shaped, or fictional, world. Writing TransAtlantic, there was never really a plan, at the early stages, to question the line between fiction and nonfiction. I just went on instinct, and then these worlds started to braid.” The Rumpus interviews Colum McCann.
Talking with Colum McCann
Write a Turtle Story, Win a Turtle Diary
NYRB Classics just reissued Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary, and in honor of that occasion Levi Stahl is giving away a free copy. All you have to do is write “the best turtle story” in his comments section before June 20th. Are you up to the task?
Tuesday New Release Day: Bezmozgis, Dyer, Professor X, Pletzinger, Still
New this week is David Bezmozgis’s The Free World, the new Geoff Dyer collection of criticism Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (reviewed here today), “Professor X’s” higher ed expose In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, Funeral for a Dog, a German novel in translation by young author Thomas Pletzinger, which John Wray has blurbed as “ballsy,” and Chinaberry, a posthumously published novel by the Appalachian author James Still.
Whitman Illuminated
Speaking of innovative publishing, Tin House released a new edition of Whitman‘s “Song of Myself” illustrated by Allen Crawford on May 16th. There’s a book trailer, and selected pages from the finished book can be seen here.
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If You Can Dream
In today’s installment of “The Unpopular Opinion,” Malcolm Jones for The Daily Beast thinks that it’s high time that we let Rudyard Kipling out of the penalty box. Jones argues that, while Kipling may have written a lot of “jingoistic trash,” to judge him “by the standards of our time, not his, serves him poorly and obscures his true genius.”
The Jackal Speaks
Superagent Andrew (“The Jackal”) Wylie disses the e-book and modern publishing’s “wild weekend in Las Vegas approach” to book acquisition in the Wall Street Journal Magazine. But the best part is an online slide show depicting Wylie’s journey from a wild-eyed hippie cabbie in 1971 to the uberwasp wheeler-dealer that he is today.
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Detective Edgar Allan Poe
Before Maxwell’s ever opened, Edgar Allan Poe tried to solve a murder mystery in my native Hoboken.
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Early Fire
Amazon says it’s shipping the Kindle Fire a day early, i.e. today.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Smith, Jones, Jemc, Dancyger, Marantz
Zadie Smith headlines a new week of new books, including essays by angry women and an excellent exploration of the rise of the online alt-right.
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