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
“MFA Thesis (and/or Life Reevaluation)”
Did your MFA program offer impractical courses like "Problems in Modern Fiction"? At the Ploughshares blog, Rebecca Makkai offers some suggestions for more useful classes, such as "Introduction to Despair," "Pretending You’re Talking to Terry Gross When You’re Alone in the Car," and "The Art of the Flirty Author Photo Grimace." Pair with: Our interview with Makkai.
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Library Tour
The al-Qarawiyyin library, the oldest library in the world, has just reopened after years of renovations. Take a look inside. Andrew Pippos writes about private libraries and what they reveal about their readers.
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Life in Letters
“To age is to understand that the powers of total recovery are gone, are no longer anticipated (except by those who, having lost their marbles, no longer know what to anticipate).” The epistolary legacy of writers such as Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, and Elizabeth Bishop offers invaluable insight into the process of growing older, writes Robert Fay for The Atlantic. See also our own Lydia Kiesling on the narrative possibilities of leaked emails.
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Watch me spit, classic lit
Based on a recent Jay-Z and Kanye West joint, La Shea Delaney and Annabelle Quezada bring you the addictive track "B*tches in Bookstores." This all despite West being a confirmed, even proud, non-reader.
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Visionary
At the Times Literary Supplement, Raymond Tallis reviews Hallucinations, a new book by Oliver Sacks that defines “sensational consciousness.”
The Best of the Best
Theoretically, it pays to get a novel on Amazon’s best seller list. In reality, though, a bestselling novel doesn’t make as much in cold hard cash as you’d think.
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Spillman’s Memoir
Recommended Reading: Rob Spillman, editor of Tin House, speaks with the LA Times about his new memoir, All Tomorrow’s Parties. Spillman was featured in our piece on literary editors’ favorite issues of their magazines.
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Wake Up and Smell the Covfefe
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.” Following President Trump's misstatement of a line from The Great Gatsby, The Guardian has a quiz of literary misquotations for your mid-week amusement.
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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.