In lieu of writing a legitimately popular book, or having Barack Obama photographed while being “given” your book, it appears that you can get onto the New York Times bestsellers list for about $200,000.
Gaming the Bestsellers List
Some (Possibly Stale) Links
William T. Vollmann has a new book out, Riding Toward Everywhere about riding freight trains. In what must be a first for Vollmann, the Washington Post describes the book as a “modest little volume.”The New Yorker held a contest to reinterpret Eustace Tilley, its “iconic dandy.” The entries are posted on Flickr.The anxiety brought on by selling books to the used bookstore.The Atlantic website goes free. Everything back to 1995 is available.n+1 interviews a hedge fund manager. It’s surprisingly fascinating (if you skim the technical stuff).Also in the world of big money, a record was broken on Monday. As global markets plummeted, French bank Societe Generale was selling frantically. The bank had just discovered that an employee had fraudulently lost $7.2 billion, believed to be the most ever by a “rogue trader.”
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A Boor
Recommended Reading: This primer on how to explain without mansplaining.
The M.F.A.? C’est Super!
If you’ve ever wondered what the life of an M.F.A. student looks like, here’s your answer.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Wallace, O’Rourke, Levy
It seems almost silly to mention it since the book’s been on shelves and discussed in the book pages for a couple of weeks now, but the “official” release date of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King is this Friday. (Our review was published today.) Meghan O’Rourke’s grief memoir The Long Goodbye is out this week. And another look at our culture through the lens of our technology is now out, Steven Levy’s In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.
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“Made Twilight look like War and Peace”
Herewith, an amazing takedown of Fifty Shades of Grey, spoken by none other than a horrified Salman Rushdie. If a quote like this isn’t a good reason to go to The New Yorker Festival, we don’t know what is.
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The gun goes off in the end
“Maybe this is a writer thing, having pages and pages of stuff written that has not yet cohered into a completed arc, which, when you finish it, would be a laurel on which you could rest.” A writer considers Chekhov’s dictum.
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Orsonalia
This will either make or ruin your Tuesday: a clip of Orson Welles, in 1974, reminiscing about his relationship with Hemingway. As Sadie Stein writes, “it has everything: titanic ego-clashing, disingenuous concern-trolling, bullfighting, damning with faint praise, posthumous character assassination.” You could also read Jessica Roake on Peter Biskind’s My Lunches with Orson.
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Convicts and Classics
Apparently, great books can be life changing: British prisons have begun using a literature course originally developed in the US and including Shakespeare, Dickens, and Steinbeck to help rehabilitate criminals.
PASTOR DRISCOLL! GET OFF THAT HEATHEN NEWSPAPER’S BESTSELLER LIST IMMEDIATELY!
Signed, GOD.
PS I’m using this Shea guy’s email because my own was hacked by the Devil, again.