As summer rolls around, you might way to get acquainted with The Vonnegut Review. Conceived by Wilson Taylor and Matthew Gannon, the review will function as a season-long project “dedicated toward reading and reviewing all fourteen of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels.” You can participate with the Review’s Twitter and Tumblr posts by utilizing the hashtag “#VonnegutSummer.”
The Vonnegut Review
Bolaño At the Movies
Writing for Slant, Bill Weber reviews Il Futuro, a film is based on an as-yet-untranslated novella by Roberto Bolaño. Previously, JW McCormack expounded on the prospect of adapting the Chilean author’s masterpiece, 2666, into a motion picture.
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New Thomas Pynchon Teaser
Hot off the press: the first page of Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming novel Bleeding Edge, which is due to hit shelves on September 17.
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Is a Harper’s Café Around the Corner?
The Oxford American will soon run its own restaurant out of its Arkansas headquarters. Like its associated publication, South on Main will “try and explore the whole breadth of the South.” It will also feature an event space.
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The Poetic Meter of a Viral Tweet
Frankie Thomas dissects why her viral tweet, an ode to Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Cohen, and Shakespeare, seemed to speak to our need for poetic meter.
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What the Bestseller List Says about 2017
Slate books and culture columnist Laura Miller looks at what this year’s bestseller list tells us about 2017. One of her conclusions, “2017 was the year that the very concept of a best-seller became even more dubious.” After reading her analysis, check out our Year in Reading lists, whose authors found joy in reading and viewed it as one of the few good things of this year, even if the bestsellers of the year didn’t reflect those feelings.
That’s So Miami
The organizers of this year’s O, Miami Poetry Festival are holding an online poetry contest entitled “That’s So Miami.” To participate, submit a poem that begins or ends with the phrase, “that’s so Miami.” Entries – which can be culled from both Twitter and Instagram – are accepted in English and Spanish (duh), and submissions are posted daily on the organization’s new Tumblr. For a rundown of the festival’s other April events, check out their Facebook page.
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Dreaming with N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin speaks to Raffi Khatchadourian about writing herself into the stories she wanted to read, as well as what the future holds for her.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Sayles, Mieville, Theroux, Habila, Drabble, Donoghue, Cronin
The huge, McSweeney’s-published, John Sayles novel A Moment in the Sun has been getting great reviews. It’s now out. Also new this week is China Mieville’s Embassytown, reviewed here today; Paul Theroux’s exploration of the genre of travel writing, The Tao of Travel; prizewinning Nigerian author Helon Habila’s new novel Oil on Water; and A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, the complete stories of Margaret Drabble, recently written up by Joyce Carol Oates in the New Yorker. New in paperback are a pair of Millions Hall of Famers, Emma Donoghue’s Room and Justin Cronin’s The Passage.
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