Sometimes, when you read a lot of work by a single writer, you end up writing unconscious imitations of their work. The reliability of this effect raises an ourobouric possibility: what if you reviewed a writer’s fiction in their own style? At The Awl, Sarah Marian Seltzer reviews Henry James as Henry James. You could also read Charles-Adam Foster-Simard on binge-reading James’s fiction.
Prodigious by Design
Books on Slate
This Friday Slate will premiere its first monthly book review feature. On the first weekend of every month, the Slate Book Review will take over the site’s main page. Senior culture editor Dan Kois told the New York Times that he was displeased to watch newspaper after newspaper scrapping their book sections; “it didn’t seem to me that there was less of an appetite for good writing about books.”
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Crystal Methods
Curtis Sittenfeld did some interesting research for her latest novel, Sisterland. “I went to this New Age bookstore in a distant suburb of St. Louis. I basically went there and was like, ‘I’m doing research,’ and then I un-ironically bought some crystals,” she told The Rumpus.
(Winds of) Winter is Coming.
Get your mind right ahead of the Game of Thrones Season 4 premiere by reading this just-released chapter of George R. R. Martin’s sixth Song of Ice and Fire installment, Winds of Winter. Martin told fans in a recent blog post, “The new chapter is actually an old chapter. But no, it’s not one I’ve published or posted before.”
John Jeremiah Sullivan on Essays
December 15th. New York City. Mark your calendars. John Jeremiah Sullivan and Wells Tower discuss “the art of the essay in light of Sullivan’s new book, Pulphead.”
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Guthrie’s Novel to Release with the Help of Johnny Depp
With the help of Johnny Depp, author Douglas Brinkley plans to release Woody Guthrie’s unpublished novel House of Earth next year. Guthrie finished the manuscript—which should yield a finished book about 250-pages long—in 1947, and it concerns a couple from West Texas who fight against banks and lumber companies.
More Madame
In the LRB, an amiable Julian Barnes joins in the ritual cavilling that must greet any retranslation of a masterpiece. But who’s complaining? It’s an excuse to read 6,000 words on Madame Bovary !
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