“Why write in an unlovable genre with an inevitably hectoring tone? Dystopia, situated in a dangerous no-man’s-land between the pulpit of the preacher and the safe sniper post of the satirist.” Future futurists, take note: the New York Review of Books reviews Chang-Rae Lee’s addition to your dystopic shelf, On Such a Full Sea, and ponders the virtues of the dystopic endeavor itself. (Bonus: Lee writes about his own 2013 Year in Reading here at The Millions.)
Dystopia’s Meta-Dangers
Yossarian Wins
At The Paris Review Daily, Katherine Hill (whose debut novel came out two weeks ago) comes up with a bracket of ideal literary friends. (Understandably, Portnoy beat out Humbert Humbert.)
●
●
A Tipping Point for Gladwell Haters?
The Nation expends about 7,500 words to say Malcolm Gladwell is a hack. The source of the umbrage: “a cheerful, conversational voice deployed in a perfectly paced dopamine prose that had the palliative effect of nullifying whatever concerns readers might have about this product or that problem.”
Hollywood McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy’s written a spec script about “a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down.” I think we all know where that’s headed.
●
●
No Exit
As Der Spiegel bluntly puts it, when Jean-Paul Sartre met up with the head of the RAF, a German terrorist group, he tried to use his powers “to persuade them to stop murdering people.”
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Irving; Hijuelos; Eco; Rothschild; Golden; Alarcón; Gaitskill
Out this week: Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving; Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise by Oscar Hijuelos; Numero Zero by Umberto Eco; The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild; Wherever There Is Light by Peter Golden; City of Clowns by Daniel Alarcón; and The Mare by Mary Gaitskill (who we interviewed today). For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
●
●
Amazon’s Top 100 of the Year
Amazon is tweeting its top 100 books of the year today on its Twitter account. (Thanks, Darryl)
A rare thing, the antiquarian
The New York Times recently ran an in depth look at the process of learning to deal in rare books. Which made me think of The Monkey’s Paw, a rare book store so good that twice now I’ve personally heard rare book dealers (at both Sellers and Newel and Paper Books) describe, with admiration and a dash of collegial envy, as everyone’s favorite book store.
●
●