Out this week: a new novel, Dissident Gardens, by Year in Reading alum Jonathan Lethem; Subtle Bodies by Norman Rush; His Wife Leaves Him by Stephen Dixon; Goat Mountain by Year in Reading alum David Vann; Someone by Alice McDermott; and Enon by Paul Harding, which Joseph M. Schuster wrote about for The Millions yesterday.
Tuesday New Release Day: Lethem, Rush, Dixon, Vann, McDermott, Harding
Book Bailouts
Ukraine is investing approximately $61 million in order to “bolster [the nation’s] reading, publishing and bookselling beginning in 2014 and lasting through 2018.” One concern held by Ukranian literati is the rapidly expanding influx of Russian writing, which some claim have been “push[ing] books from Ukrainian publishers and authors off the shelves.” Meanwhile, Russia recently announced a $100 million stimulus package for its own book industry.
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“History is filled with irony”
Casey N. Cep ponders oppositional forces at work on two statues harkening back to the days of Maryland’s slaveholders. “More than tragedy or romance, history is filled with irony,” she notes.
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Great Genes
"My mum is Jerry Hall and my father's Mick Jagger. People say I have great genes," says the youngest of Mick Jagger's children, Georgia May Jagger, in a new Hudson Jeans television ad. See the jeans and genes of this "neo-Bardot" at The Daily Beast.
Maya Angelou’s Forever
"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." Maya Angelou now has her own Forever stamp.
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The New Yorker Says No to The New Yorker
The greatest trick David Cameron ever pulled was getting The New Yorker to reject itself.
Politics and Prizes
“I lost him when he became a neo-liberal.” Certain Swedish literary critics remain outraged that Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for literature despite abandoning his prior socialist political beliefs. (via Arts and Letters Daily)
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An Interview With Helen DeWitt
Helen DeWitt talks to Bookforum about the origins of her long (as in really long!)-awaited second novel, Lightning Rods.
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