John Sunyer checks in with Franco Moretti at the Stanford Literary Lab. Moretti, a 63-year-old professor of English, is the author of Distant Reading – a book in which he lays out his long-held belief that “literary study doesn’t require scholars to actually read the books.” Rather, he believes in a “new approach to literature [that] depends on computers to crunch ‘big data,’ or stores of massive amounts of information, to produce new insights.”
“What’d You Major In?” “Big Literary Data.”
Seriously, Read This Book
Lev Grossman is ready to dub John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Blood-Horses and, more recently, Pulphead, "the next Tom Wolfe," and NPR's Dan Kois agrees that he might be "the best magazine writer around." Elsewhere, Zach Baron writes an interesting profile of the author for The Daily.
Form of the Future
"For our readers, time is the precious commodity they invest in every book they decide to purchase and read. But time is being ground down into smaller and smaller units, long nights of reflection replaced with fragmentary bursts of free time. It's just harder to make time for that thousand-page novel than it used to be, and there are more and more thousand-page novels to suffer from that temporal fragmentation." Tor.com on why novellas are the form of the future.
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This is a nice surprise.
The latest installment of #LitBeat is up! Jerry Stahl, Tom Bissell, Krys Lee, and (Millions staff picked) Lauren Groff went head-to-head for the glory of being crowned the victor last Friday in a very special made-for-TV version of Literary Death Match in L.A.
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Smart Money
Colson Whitehead will be playing in next month's World Series of Poker. He's writing about it for Grantland, Bill Simmons' new ESPN affiliate. He's also accepting sponsorships.
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Je Ne Sais Quois
Chances are you’ve heard that the most important thing a writer needs to make it in the modern lit world is luck. Undoubtedly, there's a lot of truth to that, but what if there’s another factor that has a bigger impact on a writer's success? Sean McElwee argues for the importance of something more prosaic.
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Wow. That is incredibly depressing.
During my ill-advised attempt to major in pre-med, I dissected an annelid worm to learn about its anatomy and ended up with a mushy mess. Reminds me of this.
Went to see an absolutely wonderful film “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” recently. There is a scene set in Istanbul. The lead character’s New York investment company has come to evaluate a struggling Turkish publishing company for a possible takeover and asset sale. One of the investment bankers comments that he had “evaluated” several other publishing companies during a meeting with the local publisher. The latter commented (to paraphrase) ‘So you think you can you evaluate me?” There are a million implications in the way the actor delivered that line.