“Through such experiments, [he] seems preoccupied by the need to make this familiar form something different from what we think it is, so that it can more capably capture a reality that has fast been veering into the unreal. It’s not just that the world outside the novel has made this jump, but also that we cannot evade the world’s strangeness when the storytellers, and the characters into which they breathe life, increasingly come from such different perspectives.” On Year in Reading alum Chang-rae Lee’s new novel (which you can buy with a nifty 3D book cover).
“Cleaves closely to the forms of realism”
Woody Allen’s Favorite Books
The ever-irreverent Woody Allen weighs in on his all-time faves, among other things. A Catcher in the Rye unsurprisingly makes the list, as do more obscure picks like The World of SJ Perelman.
Brief Likenesses
“Armand’s characters all seem both hugely present and in life’s juice and simultaneously dead, as if rent of brain, nerves, chest, stomach, intestines … Without gods and devils these patients feel that only fire can save them, existing eternally unless burned away.” Australian novelist Louis Armand’s newest, Abacus, is reviewed by Richard Marshall at 3:AM Magazine.
Metaphor and Memory, Fame and Folly
“’This splendid lady sandbagged me,’ Bloom said in a recent phone conversation, with the lofty, ungrudging admiration of an old general recalling an opposite number’s surprise attack at some long-ago battle. Flummoxed, he asked if they had not made an agreement. Ozick, Bloom recollects, said, ‘When you are dealing with the devil, you must be prepared to do anything!'” This New York Times Magazine profile of Cynthia Ozick makes it clear that, at 88, she shows no signs of slowing down.
No Matter How Small
Over at The Atlantic, Lydia Millet argues for the power and legitimacy of The Lorax’s moral message. Millet believes that the heavy-handedness of activist-minded fiction like The Lorax is powerful partly due to “its shamelessness. It pulls no punches; it wears its teacher heart on its sleeve.”
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2014’s Best Book Covers
“What is the value of a book cover if fewer and fewer people shop at bookstores?” Nicholas Blechman wonders about the purpose of the book cover at The New York Times Book Review, but he also rounds up some of the best covers of 2014, including the design for Eimear McBride‘s A Girl is A Half-Formed Thing (Millions review here, McBride’s “Year in Reading” here).
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New Asymptote Featuring Péter Nádas and Anne Carson
Recommended Reading: The latest issue of Asymptote, which features work from Péter Nádas and an interview with Anne Carson. (Bonus: Carson has a poem up on The New Republic’s website.)
Jay Gatsby, Iconic American
BBC‘s Tom Geoghegan asks whether or not The Great Gatsby is “the perfect tale for modern America.”
Matthew Salesses Interviewed
Get to know Matthew Salesses, whose story “High Schools, or How to Be Asian American” we shouted out a few months back.
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