At the LRB’s blog, J. Robert Lennon pays tribute to Russell Edson, the playwright, novelist and prose poet who passed away last week. Lennon recounts that Edson was that rare favorite author who he learned about thanks to a cassette tape. (If you like the blog post, you could also read Lennon’s most recent novel.)
Overheard
Tuesday New Release Day: Baldwin; Lacey; Lim; Berman; Umrigar; Fierro
Out this week: The Last Kid Left by Rosecrans Baldwin; The Answers by Catherine Lacey; Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim; Perennials by Mandy Berman; Everybody's Son by Thrity Umrigar; and The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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Some Thoughts on Celebrity Book Clubs
"A few weeks ago, I texted my writing group, 'All I really want is to be just famous enough to have my own celebrity book club.' I was kind of kidding. But I kind of wasn’t. Because, like portion-packaged organic snacks delivered to your door, isn’t book club ownership one step closer to having it all?" Laura Briskman on the faux intimacy of celebrity book clubs, as more and more celebrities start their own post Oprah.
The Economy of Goodwill
Recommended Reading: Against crowdfunding websites that marketize goodwill.
Animals Everywhere!
It is a truth universally acknowledged (and recently addressed in Barclay Bram Shoekmaker's Millions review of Mo Yan's Frog) that literary translation is an imperfect art, and this list of mistranslated "literary moments" only offers more evidence for the claim. But for every serious blunder there's also a truly ridiculous one (or more). For example, the French translated the title of Animal Farm as Animals Everywhere!, which sounds a lot like a charming children's book and not at all like Orwell.
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Orozco Takes the Saroyan Prize
Post-40 Bloomer Daniel Orozco won Stanford’s William Saroyan International Prize for Writing this week. His story collection, Orientation, beat out a murderer’s row of adversaries including Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and Miroslav Penkov’s East of the West: A Country in Stories. Check out excerpts or stories from all three writers here, here, and here, respectively.
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Garcia Marquez Movie Protested
Production of a film based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores is being met with opposition from anti-prostitution groups in Mexico. HuffPo has the story. (Thanks Buzz)