“A neck cannot be modern. A neck is in time, belongs to time, but is not formed by it. My guess is that even photos of Neanderthal necks would not differ significantly… [They are] in a certain sense, pure nature. Something that grows in a certain place, the way tree trunks grow, or mussels, fungi, moss.” Recommended reading: Karl Ove Knausgaard on the sanctity of bodies, the nature of truth, and the back of the neck. The third volume of Knausgaard’s bestselling My Struggle hit American bookshelves last week. (Check out our own review of Knausgaard’s previous volumes.)
The Back of the Face
The Mockingbird Lives
HarperCollins has announced that it will offer its trade paperback of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird at a discounted price to schools. This came as a response to the discontinuation of the mass-market paperback edition published by Hachette.
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The Always Provocative Katie Roiphe
The cuddle trumps sodomy! At The New York Times, the controversial post-feminist Katie Roiphe explores the difference between the descriptions of sex in the last generation of American male novelists (Philip Roth, John Updike, Norman Mailer) and the current generation (David Foster Wallace, Benjamin Kunkel, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer).
Remnick on Obama: The Bridge
New Yorker editor David Remnick‘s biography of President Obama will be released April 6, with a first printing of 200,000. Details at PW.
Where In The World Is That Book Going?
The Book Depository is “the UK’s largest dedicated online bookseller,” which is all well and good, but their live visualization of which customers are ordering what (and from where) might be the best part of the entire website.
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Karen Russell and the Hungry Ghosts
Karen Russell recounts finishing her book in the midst of pregnancy, and the financial and time calculations that must be done to get to that last page.
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