A Russian publisher has stooped to a new low: it added “fake quotes from fake newspapers on the cover of a … novel released this summer.” That’s not all, either. Apparently the publishers are trying to bill the book as a “Swedish” crime novel even though it was actually written by a Russian under a pseudonym.
Who Can You Trust Anymore?
This Curiosity is Awful
Looking for someone to whip your writing into shape? Then tweet the new Gordon Lish bot, a Twitter account which offers unvarnished critiques of your tweets and fictional sentences. (Related: Frank Kovarik on the editor’s relationship with Raymond Carver.)
Clickity-Clack
Half a century ago, it would have been inconceivable to think that one day, the clack of typewriter keys would disappear from daily life. The rise of the personal computer, in Sadie Stein’s words, turned an everpresent sound into a “living anachronism.” She reflects on the value of the typewriter in a blog post for The Paris Review Daily. (It might also be a good time to read our own Bill Morris on typewriters and pen pals.)
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Two Chapters of Train Dreams
You can read the first two chapters of Denis Johnson‘s latest novel Train Dreams on his Facebook page.
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The Most Terrifying Books
With Halloween a week away, The New York Times asked Ayana Mathis and Francine Prose about the “most terrifying” books they’ve read. Their choices? Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Hans Christian Andersen‘s fairy tales. Pair their combined essays with Flavorwire‘s list of “50 of the Scariest Short Stories” and our own Ben Dooley‘s brief review of House of Leaves‘s “existential terror”.
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During the period in which Portugal was under Salazar’s dictatorship, which of course included censorship of books and press, portuguese author Dinis Machado wrote three noir crime novels under the pseudonym Dennis McShade (notice how he played with his own name), pretending to be an american author. The books claimed to have been translated by Dinis Machado himself, who was called by the censor agents regarding this american. He was able to convince them that the books were harmless, and they were published. The set is in America, but you can identify some metaphors regarding the dictatorship in Portugal.
This kind of pretending games can be fun. Though this story is not related to the one you are talking about, I thought it would show you how this pretending games can be subversive. And by the way, the three novels by Dennis McShade are incredibly good. He was, of course, a reader of Chandler and Hammett.
Well, I have to wonder if the fake quotes from the fake reader are any more authentic than the hyperbolic blurbs from ostensibly “real” readers….