At The Guardian, Susanna Rustin interviews the Irish writer Edna O’Brien, whose new anthology of stories, The Love Object, comes out as an e-book this week. Among other things, she compares a writer who works on a book for only one day a week with a parent who leaves a toddler unsupervised: “You can’t find it again.”
Not a Soirée
The 100 Most-Read Novels at the Library
OCLC, a leading library research organization, has released a list of the 100 most widely read novels from more than 18,000 libraries worldwide.
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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
“‘What I want,’ a young Luis Buñuel announced to the audience at an early screening of his first film, Un Chien Andalou (1929), ‘is for you not to like the film … I’d be sorry if it pleased you.’ The film’s opening scene, which culminates in a close-up of a straight-edge razor being drawn through a woman’s eyeball, is often taken as the epitome of cinema’s potential to do violence to its audience…Horror movies frighten us; violent thrillers agitate us; sentimental stories make us cry. Suffering is often part of our enjoyment. Within limits, however: we are not to be so displeased that we are not pleased. Buñuel deliberately went beyond the limits of permissible displeasure. And so, in his own way, does the Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke.”
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Thursday Links
LA Weekly writes up the Los Angeles indie bookstore scene, of which I was once a part. Book Soup, my former place of employment, gets a nice and quite accurate writeup. I’ve never shared my stories on the blog, but, for example, the stuff about Faye Dunaway and Elton John is true. Tyson, the star of the article, was one of our more colorful newsstand employees when I was working there. The article’s take on Book Soup owner Glenn, meanwhile, is hilarious and right on the nose. As a bonus, the LA Weekly’s package includes a little bookstore tour of Los Angeles that serves as a nice counterpoint to the one that Garth created for NYC recently.Speaking of LA, obsessive film fans and those who love them should note that Amazon is having a big sale on Criterion Collection DVDs right now.Looking for a new place to live? The house in which Jack Kerouac was born is now for rent.TEV goes out on a “limn” with Michiko Kakutani.
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Natural Opposition
Recommended Reading: Michele Filgate’s interview with Leslie Jamison, who participated in Year in Reading this year.
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In Response to Rejections
At the Electric Literature blog, Judson Merrill responds to his many rejection letters: “If you were that excited about my submission, I’m concerned you may have read it with unfair expectations… I’ve reattached my submission under the new title ‘Eight Pages of Tripe’…”
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A Consolation Prize
In the wake of her 2016 Presidential loss, Hillary Clinton’s best-selling book What Happened sparked the question: “Would you rather be president of the United States or a No. 1 best-selling author?” The Washington Post asked several authors including Cheryl Strayed, Erik Larson, and Joyce Carol Oates for their thoughts. See also our interview with Strayed from our archives.
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