Recommended Reading: this interview with poet Lucie Brock-Broido, whose new book Stay, Illusion is a finalist for the National Book Award.
“Give things away”
Dialing Down the Queasy
In 1998, Matthew Stokoe kicked off his career as a novelist with Cows, a stomach-turning book set largely in the confines of a slaughterhouse. Now, Stokoe has written a book with a somewhat ironic title, considering it dials down the obscenity in comparison to his early work. Drew Smith interviews the author over at Full-Stop.
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The Tactile Comic Book
A designer from Copenhagen, Philipp Meyer (not the novelist), has created the first comic book for the blind. “Most of the tactile material that is available for blind people is very information dense. It’s always about information and not often about art,” he says.
The Art of the Essay
What makes an essay literary? Over at the Kenyon Review, the editors explore language as an end in itself. Also check out H.S. Cross’s Millions essay on writing what you don’t know.
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Errol Flynn’s Cuban Story
Errol Flynn was unique. Quick with a quip, the Australian-born silver screen swashbuckler (and current Tumblr heartthrob) had such immortal lines as, “I like my whiskey old and my women young.” Fans have long been drawn to the actor’s incredibly interesting life—much of which was relayed in his posthumously published autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways—so the Cuban National Archive’s uncovering of previously lost footage from his film Cuban Story should excite many of them.
The Patriarch
This week, Richard Ford published his first novel in a while to feature Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of his Pulitzer-winning book The Sportswriter. At Salon, our own Lydia Kiesling posits a through-line from Bascombe to a certain TV gangster, arguing that The Sopranos shares its view of manhood with Ford’s novels. You could also read our own Michael Bourne on Ford’s 2012 book, Canada.
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Double Sided
Two ways of looking at a book: "Had I been still more articulate, I might have said that there’s a special readerly pleasure in approaching a book as you would a box. In its self-containment lies its ferocious magic; you can see everything it holds, and yet its meagre, often hackneyed contents have a way of engineering fresh, refined, resourceful patterns. And Emily might have replied that she comes to a book as to a keyhole: you observe some of the characters’ movements, you hear a little of their dialogue, but then they step outside your limited purview. They have a reality that outreaches the borders of the page."
“There was a sort of magic down here.”
Moving from New York to Baton Rouge might sound extreme to some, but not to Emily Nemens. Over at Lean In, she explains how she worked her way up from graduate assistant to Southern Review coeditor.
To the Wonder Trailer
The trailer is out for The Tree of Life director Terrence Malick’s latest project, To the Wonder. The film, which stars Javier Bardem, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Olga Kurylenko, will be released in 2013.