Writing Desire
New Marilynne Robinson On the Way
This fall, Marilynne Robinson will mark her return to a fictional plains town in Iowa with the publication of Lila, the third novel in her Gilead series. Expect the novel to be featured in our forthcoming Great Book Preview, but if you can’t wait until then, you’ve got to check out FSG’s exclusive excerpt from the book.
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“Listening feels like a weighted choice”
If you read only one take on Rihanna and Chris Brown’s latest musical (and personal) partnership, make it this one by Ann Powers.
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Art, Lit, and Finnegans Wake
“I’m a writer through and through, but the art world—to a large extent—provides the arena in which literature can be vigorously addressed, transformed, and expanded.” Frederic Tuten interviews Tom McCarthy about the overlap between the visual arts and literature, the importance of reading, and living, voraciously, and the power of Finnegans Wake for BOMB Magazine. Pair with our own Nick Ripatrazone‘s review of BOMB: The Author Interviews.
Ellis Backs Franzen
According to Vulture, Bret Easton Ellis firmly backs Team Franzen in the forthcoming issue of The Paris Review. That issue, by the way, hits shelves next week. I know because I saw a video of it on the printing press.
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Graffiti Lit
When street art and literature combine: on “The Moving, Playful Poetry of the World’s Textual Graffiti Artists,” from Slate.
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An Eastern Bloc Monument
Cheers to Joshua Cohen for this early look at Péter Nádas’ mind-bending magnum opus, Parallel Stories. Our own review will appear sometime in 2014, when we finish reading. (But we can already say that all 1,100-page novels should begin, as this one does, with a dead body.)
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