Recommended Reading: Brett Elizabeth Jenkins’s poem “To Get to Zen” at Paper Darts. “you must first lose your/shit in an elevator/in front of a man you do not know.”
Zen State
On the Stupidity of Entitlement
Year in Reading alumna Ottessa Moshfegh has a new story in this week’s issue of the New Yorker, titled “The Beach Boy.” Moshfegh also spoke with Deborah Treisman about her writing: “Isn’t it hilarious when people are blind to their own arrogance? For some, no amount of American liberal-arts education, charitable contributions, or hours spent listening to NPR will ever wake them up to their own privileged, bigoted, and classist attitudes. [...] One might say that New Yorkers like the folks in 'The Beach Boy' are especially susceptible to the kind of stupidity I love to write about—the stupidity of entitlement.”
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Rocking Out With the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan loves music just as much as her protagonists in A Visit from the Goon Squad. Westword, Denver's alt-weekly, asked Egan what her five favorite songs are. The playlist includes everyone from Iggy Pop to Cat Power. We think Bennie Salazar would approve.
The L.A. Times Festival of Books
Speaking of festivals, recaps of last weekend's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books are up at Jacket Copy. Rafael Yglesias took home the top fiction prize for his novel, A Happy Marriage.
Overhearing the Wisdom
Recommended Listening: Poet Rachel Zucker speaks with John Murillo about duende and the ethics of writing poetry.
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The Peculiar Art of Rare Books Catalogues
"Our catalogues cost £5,000 to print and distribute (in envelopes! with stamps!) to the 800 people on my mailing list, 790 of whom will not order from it." Rick Gekoski at Guardian looks at the peculiar art (and commerce) of rare books catalogues.
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Mania for Classification
Our own Emily St. John Mandel is in conversation with Laura van den Berg over at the FSG blog. “We have such a mania for classification, don’t we? Everything just seems so black-or-white, one-or-zero, genre-or-literary sometimes, and I don’t think those divisions are especially helpful.” The authors are Year in Reading alumni, and you can check out Mandel’s and van den Berg’s posts at the respective links.