Ian McEwan stopped by BBC’s Radio4 flagship news program to discuss, among other things, his love for John Williams’s Stoner. The novel, as Claire Cameron reported for us last month, is currently flying off the shelves in the Netherlands. However since McEwan gave Williams’s forgotten masterpiece a shout out, UK buyers have been snapping up four copies per minute.
An American Bestseller Abroad
Sainthood Etc.
Need something to complement our profile of Jami Attenberg’s Saint Mazie today? Then try this on for size: Year in Reading alum Emily Gould conducts an interview with the author at The Rumpus. Among other things, they talk about historical fiction, writing quickly and doing research on the Lower East Side.
●
●
The Memory Artist
British artist Stephen Wiltshire is sketching and drawing a 19-foot long panorama of the New York City skyline. The kicker: the drawing is being produced entirely from memory following a 20-minute helicopter flight.
●
●
Literary Writers in the Writers Room
Vanity Fair explores the change in attitude among the literati about writing for TV and notes that “[I]ncreasingly, the industry is ransacking bookshelves for adaptable novels and short stories. And fiction writers are becoming show-runners themselves.”
Kafka in Myanmar
“On my manhood rests a tattooed / portrait of Mr. President. / My beloved found that out after we wed. / She was utterly gutted, / Inconsolable.” Poet Maung Saungkha may have to prove in a Myanmar courtroom that he doesn’t have a tattoo of the nation’s president on his genitals.
●
●
The Old Man and the Fee
The descendants of Ernest Hemingway’s famous cats have now become the attempted subject of federal regulation.
●
●
Marlon James’s Minnesota
“In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them. By now, the person I created in New York was the only one I wanted to be. …Eight years after reaching the end of myself, I was on borrowed time. Whether it was in a plane or a coffin, I knew I had to get out of Jamaica.” Marlon James, author of The Book of Night Women, which once gave me so much trouble, and whose novel A Brief History of Seven Killings the Book Report covered here, writes for the New York Times Magazine about leaving Jamaica to find himself in Minnesota.
●
●
Readers Pick Favorite Indie Books
More from The Huffington Post’s series on independent books: Readers’ Favorites From Indie Publishers.
One comment: