In the June Atlantic, William Deresiewicz revisits that old favorite subject, the past and future of the Great American novel, in a review of two new books about the history of novels: The Dream of the Great American Novel by Laurence Buell and The Novel: A Biography by Michael Schmidt. (Dizzy yet? If not, consider nine other experts’ opinions on the Great American Novel here at The Millions, for a round dozen.)
How the Novel Made the World
A New Quarterly Conversation
Another quarter, another Quarterly Conversation. Check out reviews of Kirsty Gunn’s “incantatory prose” in The Big Music, an interview with Lars Iyer, and much more.
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Homesteading Alone
So you’ve bought the books on Urban Homesteading, but what you really want is to escape completely and build your own comfy cabin in the woods. Here are three books by Homesteaders who “go it alone.”
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Sor Juana, the 10th Muse
Matthew Wills remembers Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century nun who went on to become the founding mother of Mexican literature.
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On The Notebook
“The notebook is where our interior world makes contact with our exterior world; where our instinct for creation is first made material. Our notebooks are our first messy attempts at self-expression, and the ways in which we express ourselves are changing every day.” Sarah Gerard explores the life of the notebook in an essay for Hazlitt. Pair with our own Hannah Gersen‘s look at other methods writers use to keep their ideas straight, from calendars to collages.
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Early Years
Renowned children’s author Lois Lowry talks to The Days of Yore about writing as a mother, living in Japan as a child, and early receptions to Number the Stars and The Giver.
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Junot Díaz’s Twitter Fiction
As part of the ongoing Miami Book Fair International festivities, WLRN is giving readers a chance to co-author a story with Junot Díaz. Beginning at 5pm today, they will tweet out the first line to a story—provided by Díaz—from their Twitter account. Then readers will use the hashtag “#WLRNStory” to add onto Díaz’s line, and later each other’s lines, and ultimately the entire thing will unfurl before them.
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