Out this week: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (who Angela Qian wrote about for The Millions in September); We Are Water by Wally Lamb; Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins; Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books by Claudia Roth Pierpont; and The Eternal Wonder, a recently discovered novel by Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck. For more on these and other new books, check out our Great Second-half 2013 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Tartt, Lamb, Collins, Pierpont, Buck
Careless Cervantes
Ilan Stavans’s introduction to the quadricentennial edition of Don Quixote is available on the Literary Hub website. As he explains it, the narrative is both baffling and perfect: “What I like most about Don Quixote is its imperfection. I wasn’t wrong in my teens about the sloppiness of the writing; it is just that my attitude was too pedantic. It is, unquestionably, a defective narrative. Cervantes is often criticized as a numb and careless stylist.”
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Yossarian Wins
At The Paris Review Daily, Katherine Hill (whose debut novel came out two weeks ago) comes up with a bracket of ideal literary friends. (Understandably, Portnoy beat out Humbert Humbert.)
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“Suddenly, a pale fire sprung from his palms.”
Like Game of Thrones? Love reading stories about the Brooklyn literary scene? Well, guess what — the good-humored editors at Full Stop found a way to combine the two.
Writing from the Self
Year in Reading alumnus Alexander Chee has a guide for writing an autobiographical novel. He writes, “The woods is your life. You are the axe.” Pair with this Millions piece in defense of autobiography.
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Hanging On
After visiting more than 2,000 of America’s independent bookstores, Kate Brittain found herself thinking their demise might not be so inevitable. The cards, she writes, remain stacked against them, but they nonetheless offer a few things that may well keep them in demand. Pair with: our tribute to e-book pioneer Michael Hartt.
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On the Ledge
“For years, growing up, I was obsessed with the thought; among my earliest memories is the desire, at age three or four, to run in front of an oncoming bus. Not because I wanted to see what would happen, but because I was sure I knew what would happen: I wouldn’t have to live any longer. I suspect there may be a suicide gene.” Clancy Martin tackles a perennially touchy subject.
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Profit-Sharing for Authors and Publishers
Novelist and blogger M.J. Rose thinks authors’ personal marketing efforts should be more substantially rewarded; Robert Miller, president and publisher of HarperStudio, responds with a proposal to restructure the author-publisher relationship into 50-50 profit-sharing, as HarperStudio has done.