Once again, another Dave Eggers novel is coming with barely any notice. Knopf will publish Eggers’s latest, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, on June 17. The title is longer than the plot description, but the new novel will follow a man named Thomas who interrogates a NASA astronaut about their connection.
Yes, More Eggers on the Way
Flimflam
Here’s a simple poll idea we’re amazed we hadn’t thought of before: asking famous writers to pick their favorite words. In The Guardian, Hilary Mantel, Tessa Hadley and others (including Year in Reading alum Eimear McBride) choose their picks for an exceedingly odd vocabulary list.
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Amazon’s Backstory
Continuing its dabbling in content, Amazon has now collected its author interviews, essays, and other tidbits into one section called The Backstory.
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Dispatch from the Online Retail War
During its ongoing contract talks with the publisher, Amazon has been displaying that Hachette’s books ship in “up to 3-5 weeks.” James Patterson, one of their biggest authors, has declared on Facebook that “there is a war going on between Amazon and book publishers.” The Washington Post has more on the backstory of Amazon’s strategy, while the New York Times blog details how Patterson and other authors are fighting back.
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The Future of the University Library
The landscape of university library use is changing, along with the attendant ways in which academics and college students alike do research.
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Even the Editors Get Rejected
Perhaps someone should compile a Salon des Refusés of Poetry Magazine‘s rejected poets.
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We’ll Miss Hitch
Vanity Fair remembers Christopher Hitchens, a favorite of ours who was always fun to root for, and who, as you’ve no doubt heard by now, died last night. Andrew Sullivan remembers an email exchange from happier times. Hitchens’ ebook from this year, The Enemy, is in our Hall of Fame, and we reviewed his memoir, Hitch-22, last year.
We know Eggers doesn’t do any research for his novels – as he proudly informed us in the publicity push for his last laugher – but this sort of turn-around guarantees nobody’s even editing him. So basically now he’s publishing the equivalent of a NaNoWriMo manuscript every nine months.
I’m guessing the Times will review it three times.
I read, and then skimmed, A Hologram For The King. There’s a phenomenal novel to be written about the strange economies of the Middle East, Dubai and Jeddah and all that, but this wasn’t it. Eggers has an ear for good stories, but is a supremely lazy researcher and writer. I don’t get why he thinks he can simply find within himself the credibility and knowledge to carry this stuff over.
I can only imagine a novel called A Hologram For The King, dealing with Saudi, written by a competent author.