You might never be able to finish Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, but you can stay in his hotel. France is marketing its literary heritage with hotels named after famous authors. At the aforementioned Marcel, guests can stay in rooms named after Proust characters. If you aren’t a fan of madeleines, you can check into the R Kipling or Le Pavillon des Lettres.
Room Service With Proust
Zen State
Recommended Reading: Brett Elizabeth Jenkins’s poem “To Get to Zen” at Paper Darts. “you must first lose your/shit in an elevator/in front of a man you do not know.”
Chasers
Last week, Year in Reading alum Megan Mayhew Bergman released Almost Famous Women, a new collection of stories. Now, at Bookslut, Rebecca Silber talks with her about the book, which spans nearly a decade of meticulous reading and research. Sample quote: “We need to see women who chase wild dreams and professions as ardently as men.”
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Roger Angell on the Triple Play
Even those who detest the sport can feel the joys of reading Roger Angell’s baseball writing. Case in point: his latest dispatch, in which he remarks on a recent triple play by saying, “What’s great about [triple plays] isn’t really their scarcity but the fact that they beautifully illustrate the invisible force that hovers about each pitch and play and inning and game in this pausing, staccato, and inexorably accruing pastime: the laws of chance.”
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Sam Anderson’s Margins
In 2010, Sam Anderson showed us his Year in Marginalia. This year, he’s taken that show on the road. Or, more accurately, I guess he’s taken it back home.
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McCann wins the IMPAC Award
Colum McCann can add the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award to the long list of accolades he has received for Let the Great World Spin. The book is a Millions Hall of Famer and our coverage of the title has been fairly extensive. Previously: Digging into the 2011 IMPAC Longlist, The Eclectic IMPAC Shortlist Has Arrived.
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A New Book Review
Sharpen your pencils freelance book reviewers: The Wall Street Journal plans to buck the trend of disappearing book review sections by launching a weekly pull-out. Robert Messenger will edit. The New York Observer takes note of the storylines in play: Rupert Murdoch once again bucking conventional wisdom, The WSJ trying to go head to head with The New York Times in yet another high-profile venue.
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