Recommended Reading: Zadie Smith’s latest short story, “Moonlit Landscape with Bridge,” at The New Yorker. “The Minister got stuck on a sentence: I am further from my village now than I have ever been. Italicized just like that, in his mind.”
New Zadie Smith
James Baldwin on Film
James Baldwin was more famous for being an essayist and novelist, but he was also a film critic. At The Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky argues that Baldwin should be considered one of the best film critics for The Devil Finds Work. “Baldwin shows that criticism is art, which means that it doesn’t need a purpose or a rationale other than truth, or beauty, or keeping faith, or doing whatever it is we think art is trying to do.” For more on Baldwin, read our essay on his epiphanies.
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This Atrium
The New York Times Magazine published an excerpt of the latest novel by Dave Eggers. The book, titled The Circle, follows Mae Holland, a woman who takes a job at a Google-esque company dubbed “the most influential in the world.” At Reuters, Felix Salmon critiques the book’s take on Silicon Valley.
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Read/Write NY
Today, stuff yourself on envy and/or nostalgia for the NYC literary life. First, whet your appetite on the New Yorker’s gorgeous illustrations of notable bookstores, including one “the size of a luxurious Park Avenue closet.” Continue to a responsible main course essay on Choire Sicha, The Awl, and the Brooklyn loft building where it was founded and resides: a place that is “pleasant” but “a little dumpy, too, because that’s sort of our MO.” For dessert, savor Erin Loeb’s personal essay on leaving New York, and finish with a fittingly varied cheese course of other writers also saying goodbye.
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Thoughts of a Migraineur
“Stories are born unconsciously, but I think the writer determines whether the turn a book has taken is true or false through feeling, which is conscious. I shape my stories in this or that way because the story answers something that is emotionally rather than literally true for me.” At Full-Stop, Siri Hustvedt talks fiction with Tyler Malone.
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What Kind
At Boston Review, check out a new poem from Maggie Nelson. At The Millions, Leslie Jamison includes Nelson’s Bluets and The Art of Cruelty in A Year in Reading.
The Power of Social Media (And Sexts)
Poet Elisa Gabbert recaps the warm-your-heart generosity of poet (and “Poet Laureate of Twitter”) Patricia Lockwood’s Twitter followers.
Tuesday New Release Day
A week after it wins the Booker, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is now on American shelves. Jonathan Lethem’s newest Chronic City comes out today. Dave Eggers’ novelization of a movie based on a children’s book, Wild Things is out in standard and special fur-covered editions. A Lydia Davis-translated French “masterpiece” is out today from NYRB Classics.
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The Annotated Frank Sinatra
We didn’t think it was possible to make Gay Talese’s famous Esquire profile “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” any better, but Talese recently annotated the article for Nieman Story Board.
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