Somehow we knew that Gary Shteyngart had a pretty interesting childhood. As Andy Borowitz explains in a review of Little Failure, the author’s new memoir, the elder Shteyngart regaled his son with “outlandish” stories, most notably “a sci-fi saga about a Jewish planet under constant attack by volleys of pork.” You can learn what the author likes to read today in his Year in Reading piece.
Foul Swine
Oh Say Can You Sing
A high school music teacher is trying his damnedest to establish an official state song for New Jersey, which is apparently the only state in America without its own anthem. If you’re curious, here’s a list of the 49 other states and their official, state-sanctioned musical accompaniments.
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“He’s like a Shakespeare.”
How do you “challenge Muslim stereotypes” in film? Add more white actors. The director of a biopic about 13th-century Sufi poet Jalaluddin al-Rumi hopes to have Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. star in the film.
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Real Grit
At the LARB, Anne Trubek quotes Lionel Trilling in a review of The Son and American Rust, the two books published thus far by New Yorker 20 Under 40 alum Phillipp Meyer. “In the American metaphysic,” Trilling wrote in his essay “Reality in America,” “reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.” Those of you who read our pieces on both books may be able to guess why the quote is relevant.
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The Great American Sneaker
For every book lover who also values comfortable footwear, New Balance has announced a line of sneakers inspired by great American literature.
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Pulling Out the Stops for Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue
Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue (as seen in our Book Preview; and excerpted here) is due to hit shelves early September, and everybody seems pretty excited about it. How excited? Well, the book will come with an “enhanced e-book” replete with multimedia features, and the publishers have also decided to create a pop-up version of Brokeland Records, one of the novel’s main settings.
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