Ever since Pulphead, we can’t get enough of John Jeremiah Sullivan, so we’re happy to hear he’s at work on his next book, The Prime Minister of Paradise. Sullivan will tell the story of Christian Priber, a German American who tried to establish a utopia in 18th century South Carolina. “This man, he really represented the height of the enlightenment at the time,” Sullivan said during a recent interview at Notre Dame. No word on an official release date yet, but it’s already being optioned for film by Scott Rudin.
New JJS on the Way
Holiday links
Hope everyone’s holiday is going well. I’ll be putting up one or two more “Year in Reading” posts and then The Millions will most likely be dark until the New Year. But first, a couple of links:One of my favorite end of year lists is the bookfinder.com “Top 10 out of print books”: the main list and broken down into categories.Stephen King names his favorite reads of the year, including a forthcoming novel by A.M. Homes. His number one book, which he calls “the best mystery of the decade,” is LBC pick, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.Millions Flashback: Tis the Season
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Against Capital Punishment
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App Happy
Several recent novels — among them Dave Eggers’s The Circle and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge –tackle the effects of social media on our world. The latest, Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen, may be the best of the bunch, writes Andrew Hulktrans. At Bookforum, he explains why Cohen’s depiction of an app-saturated world is unparalleled. You could also read Jonathan Frederick Post on Cohen’s novel Witz.
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You/Are Entering
Apparently the confessional poets hated being known as confessional poets. Writers like John Berryman and W.D. Snodgrass responded badly when given the label. How do we understand their shared revulsion to the term? At The Paris Review Daily, an argument that we can find the answer in an unlikely place: The Twilight Zone.
The Chekhovian Rules of Writing
Anton Chekhov's rules for writing, as seen in an 1886 letter to his brother, include "total objectivity," "extreme brevity," and, of course, "compassion."
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If you read German and can’t wait or want an alternative perspective, consider Ursula Naumann’s longform essay “Pribers Paradies” (Eichborn, 2001).
… and please feel also free to visit Germany to see the exhibition of ACC Galerie Weimar and the Municipal Museums of Zittau called “KINGDOM PARADISE – Christian Gottlieb Prieber and Social Utopias of the present”.
Running from 31 May until 9 August 2015 in WEIMAR and from 1 July to 30 October 2016 in ZITTAU.
There is a huge community of curators, artists, and art historians already working on Priber and his ideas and story – looking forward to opening their exhibition in two weeks on 30th of May, 8pm at ACC Galerie Weimar.