Are books on the way to becoming luxury objects? At Salon, Daniel D’Addario makes a case that they are, explaining how a new aestheticism in book design points to a future in which books function mainly as art objects. (While we’re on the subject of book design, it’s a good time to look back on our U.S.-U.K. book cover battle.)
Meant to Look Pretty
The Etiquette of Books
"Books: As with food and clothing, they’re a commodity that elicits status anxiety for many people, particularly the insecure. And wherever there is status anxiety, there are potential minefields. We need to tread with the lightness of meringue." Henry Alford explains the etiquette of books for The New York Times.
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Flannery’s Home
Over at The Paris Review, Wei Tchou travels to Flannery O’Connor's farm in Georgia. As she writes, “The charm of Andalusia lies in gestures like this, the ones that urge you into feeling as though you belong. The place isn’t a fossil, it’s a home.” Pair with Nick Rapatrazone’s Millions essay on teaching and learning from “the greatest American writer ever to load up a typewriter.”
Mirror Man
The "mirror man" makes a showing at LA's Griffith Observatory.
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Done Deals
Longtime writers know how hard it can be to tell when a piece is finished. Tolstoy famously tried to revise War and Peace right up to the book's publication. At the Ploughshares blog, Amy Jo Burns offers tips for evaluating a piece before deciding to give it to someone else.
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Oyster Pirates
This week in book-related infographics: "Unusual Jobs of Famous Writers," from Chuck Palahniuk (diesel mechanic) to Jack London (oyster pirate).
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hallberg, Goldman, Wolitzer, Packer, Butler, Connors, Fey and More
The gorgeous paperback edition of our own Garth Risk Hallberg's A Field Guide to the North American Family is now out. Also new and noteworthy are Francisco Goldman's New Yorker excerpted story of the death of his young wife Say Her Name, Meg Wolitzer's The Uncoupling, Ann Packer's Swim Back to Me, Blake Butler's There is No Year, and Phillip Connors's intriguing debut, Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout. Elsewhere, we've got Tina Fey's raved about memoir Bossypants and a new and long in the works biography of Malcolm X, whose author, Manning Marable died just last week on the eve of the book's publication. Finally, now out in paperback is the fiction blockbuster The Help.
Wells Tower’s Fairy Tale
Recommended Viewing: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned author Wells Tower reads an original fairy tale entitled, “The Chinese Person.”
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On Translating Robert Walser
The Quarterly Conversation interviews Susan Bernofsky, gifted translator of Robert Walser (whose Microscripts are due out this month.)
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The fate of the paper book in an electronic age was one of several cool ideas popping up in the move “Her” by Spike Jonze, recently opened. Some spoilers below, if you haven’t watched.
I think this may be the most wonderful movie I’ve ever seen, full of beautiful imagery, imagination and emotional truth. Advance warning: if you have ever gone through divorce, it will really hit home.
At one point in the movie, an advance copy of a paper book written by the lead character (from a publisher “that still prints real books”) is mailed to him. The book shows up in his P.O. box wrapped in brown craft paper and tied up with string, a beautifully homely little package! Touches like this showed up all through the film.