In his review of Lee Friedlander’s collection, Playing for the Benefit of the Band: New Orleans Music Culture, Nathaniel Rich remarks on the “unsettling beauty” of the artist’s photographs.
“Friedlander’s portraits do not feel celebratory”
Sergio de la Pava Takes Home the Bingham Prize
Congrats are in order for Sergio de la Pava, who just won the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for his debut novel, A Naked Singularity. For more on the novel, which holds an illustrious place in our Hall of Fame, check out our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s profile of the author from last year.
Tabloid Fodder
“Sitting down to read The Actress, Amy Sohn’s newest novel, is even better than standing in line at the grocery store while the person in front of you disputes the price of a carton of orange juice, giving you extra time to read the tabloids. The Actress might be as licentious as a tabloid, but it is far more intelligently written. And, you probably won’t be reading it while standing in line inside a grocery store.”
Best in Translation
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” NPR reminds us of this great quote from Haruki Murakami before rounding up its five favorite books in translation for 2016, including Yoko Tawada‘s Memoirs of a Polar Bear (originally published in German) and The Clouds by Juan José Saer. And from our archives: translator Alison Anderson on “Ferrante Fever” and what a great translation adds to the original work.
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#LitBeat: NYC <3’s The Rumpus back!
Last night Colson Whitehead, Sam Lipsyte, Amber Tamblyn, and Andrew McCarthy read to some New Yorkers at Public Assembly, simply because practically everyone likes The Rumpus. Here’s Specter Magazine’s editor, Mensah Demary, with the latest installment of #LitBeat.
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The Confessions of Bill Styron
Now that you can purchase the letters of William Styron, you can note how especially funny (and sad) it is that Darkness Visible, the author’s book-of-self-help-slash-memoir-slash-confession, sold well enough to overshadow the novels that made his name.
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Appropriate Today More Than Ever
For the tenth anniversary of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich has penned a new foreword and introduction which you can read here.
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