“The petty savageries of family”
“This is not a part of the entertainment here tonight.”
Recommended Reading: Brian Oliu’s “Owen Hart & The Finite Life of Ropes,” which is damn sure the best piece of writing you’ll ever read about a professional wrestler’s death.
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In The Shadow of Odessa
Craig Fehrman reviews Keith O'Brien’s Outside Shot, a book which follows the 2009-10 boys’ basketball team at Scott County High School in Georgetown, Kentucky. O’Brien’s book is much in the mold of Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights, writes Fehrman, in that it’s concerned with a “troubled town, precarious season, political resonance” – but it’s also a book that falters under the legacy of its predecessor.
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Serializing in the Digital Age
The University of Michigan Press will be serializing two novels on their Facebook account. Previously, authors such as Brandon J. Mendelson have experimented serializing their novels 140 characters at a time. He even has some tips for doing so.
Footnotes as Fine Art
Recommended reading: Jonathan Russell Clark examines "The Fine Art of the Footnote" for Literary Hub. Pair with his Millions articles on the opening sentence, the closing sentence, and doing away with quotation marks altogether.
Sundog Lit’s Games Issue
Sundog Lit is putting together their first theme issue, and it’s going to be all about “Games” of all types: video games, baseball games, Game of Thrones, etc… Fittingly, their guest editor for this issue will be Level End author Brian Oliu. Submission deadline is June 1st. If you need a little inspiration, you should check out Adrienne LaFrance’s take on MoMA’s video games exhibit.
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New Quarterly Conversation
A new issue of The Quarterly Conversation covers Gaddis, Müeller, and the Nordic masculinity of Per Petterson, among other topics.
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Inherited Disorders
In the Fall 2015 issue of n+1, Adam Ehrlich Sachs explores the idea of inherited disorders through nine short pieces. An excerpt: “He wanted the reader to think to himself: ‘I just read about the Holocaust. Why am I picturing this fern? What is the matter with me?’ Such was the literary effect he was aiming for.”