“It may be true… that the internet will turn out to be ‘a giant empathy machine.’ And yet, as any reader knows, we’ve already had one for centuries.” Drew Calvert reviews The Novel: A Biography for the Los Angeles Review of Books and provides an argument for the novel in the digital age.
“A Giant Empathy Machine”
Dorothy Parker Loses Her Day Job
Once upon a time, Dorothy Parker was fired from her post as theater critic for Vanity Fair for harsh reviews that upset the magazine's advertisers.
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Football Book Club: Louisa Hall’s ‘Speak’
This week, the upstanding men and women of Football Book Club are reading Louisa Hall’s novel Speak — and posting about (a) having their minds blown by Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts and (b) having their metaphoric hearts metaphorically stomped on by the NFL.
New Helen DeWitt
Millions fave Helen DeWitt’s new novel Lightning Rods now has a cover and is available for pre-order. Look for it in October.
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Drawing Straws
Recommended Reading: How to tell if you’re in a Shirley Jackson story.
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Area Woman Makes the Best of It
What do you do when McSweeney’s rejects your humor piece? You could, like most people, slink off and write something new, perhaps after a quick look at the site to get a better sense of what they’re looking for, or you could write a new humor piece about getting rejected by McSweeney’s. At The Nervous Breakdown, Rachel Pollan takes the latter route (with a cameo by the movie Swingers).
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2010 National Book Award Winners Announced
The 2010 National Book Awards were announced this evening. In fiction, Jaimy Gordon won for The Lord of Misrule; in nonfiction, Patti Smith won for Just Kids; in poetry, Terrance Hayes won for Lighthead; and for young people’s literature, Kathryn Erskine won for Mockingbird.
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A Bookish Father’s Day
Looking for the perfect book for Father’s Day, but didn’t find quite what you were looking for in our list? Lit Hub has some supplemental titles you might be interested in.
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Any experience with a news site’s comments section reveals that the idea the Internet is an empathy engine is a cruel joke.