Recommended Reading: A Public Space has new fiction from Roxane Gay, whose novel An Untamed State was recently reviewed for our site by Aboubacar Ndiaye.
Noble Things
Necessary Losses
“When people are young adults, they have these packs, or tribes, that they form. Those connections are very real, and yet another, more powerful social narrative is that you’re supposed to pair off and have children—and never see your friends again. In the case of the gay world, there’s an additional element, in which you’re supposed to spin away from your straight friends and be part of a gay world. Both ideas of adulthood are sad to me, and I was attracted to a group of friends as a lost paradise, and one that there’s no way to keep.” At The Paris Review Daily, Anna Altman talks with Caleb Crain about his new book, Necessary Errors.
●
●
And The Problem With That Problem
The problem with memoir is well-known. What’s less well-known is the problem with the problem with memoir.
●
●
George Saunders Interview
George Saunders, author of In Persuasion Nation, has a great dialogue with former student Patrick Dacey on “steering towards the rapids” when writing. (via @BOMBMagazine)
●
●
Kaitlyn Greenidge on Seeing Past the Dominant History
Kaitlyn Greenidge discusses her new novel, Libertie, and how she sought to tell stories from communities not commonly heard from in history books.
●
●
●
“The petty savageries of family”
Recommended Reading: Laura Bogart on the weird art of memoir writing. (h/t The Rumpus)
Juan Goytisolo: 1931-2017
The Washington Post reports that Spanish writer and Cervantes Prize winner Juan Goytisolo has died at age 86. Bruna Dantas Lobato wrote about Goytisolo’s 1970 novel of dispossession Count Julian for us, noting that “[j]ust like the nature of exile itself, the narrative offers no relief, no place of rest: just fragment after fragment of dry landscapes, lonely characters, and rooms in disarray.”
●
●
Against Captain Underpants
Renaissance Learning has released its annual report on what children are reading. The NYDaily News books blog takes offense at some of the more popular books named in the report, suggesting that kids and teens deserve to be challenged by better literature. The Huffington Post mines through the report to discover that American teenagers on average are still reading at or near the level of fifth graders.