Congrats are in order for Sergio de la Pava, who just won the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for his debut novel, A Naked Singularity. For more on the novel, which holds an illustrious place in our Hall of Fame, check out our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s profile of the author from last year.
Sergio de la Pava Takes Home the Bingham Prize
If You Have to Ask
"It’s like a massive piece of denim, and with that denim you can make something really cool. You can make a jacket, you can make some cool jeans, or you can make a cushion or a cover." When The New York Times decides it wants to define "punk," you'd better get ready for some cringe-worthy responses. Here's a Millions piece on Viv Albertine, author of Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys and no stranger to punk rock.
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This is a Curiosity-novel
In "kids these days" news, any book now counts as a "novel." There are fiction novels and nonfiction novels, recipe novels and poetry novels and picture novels and, less facetiously, a new novel told in letters of recommendation, Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members. And now that you've finished my three-sentence nonfiction digital novel, here's the world's longest novel, which clocks in at 3 million pages that I confess I have not read.
The Thousand Autumns of C. Max Magee
A chance to be a part of literary history? David Mitchell fans can now bid in a charity auction to have a character named after them in a future novel of his.
Angela Merkel Vs. Google Books
On the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel took the opportunity to express her concern that Google Books threatens the rights of authors and potentially violates copyright laws, BusinessWeek reports.
Too Much to Process
A couple weeks ago, Brian Ted Jones reviewed The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, which “takes place on the margins of a grand, cosmic struggle.” Not long afterwards, at The Rumpus, Woody Brown offered a somewhat negative take on the book, arguing that Mitchell makes it too difficult for the reader to suspend her disbelief. You could also read Brown’s Millions review of Haruki Murakami’s new novel.
The Neglected Nobelist, Neglected No More
Henrik Pontoppidan, the Danish novelist, won the 1917 Nobel Prize for literature. His masterpiece, Lucky Per, has never been available in English. Now - lucky for us - it is. Frederic Jameson reviews it for The London Review of Books.