The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, the first book published in English, recently sold at auction for almost 2 million dollars.
The Recuyell Sells
Unheralded Greats
Taylor Antrim takes a page out of Roxane Gay’s book and “goes in search of great 2011 fiction unjustly ignored by The New York Times.”
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Still Don’t Have a Job?
Still don’t have a job? Friday’s Jobs Report shows structural unemployment is the real problem.
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Choosing Covers
It’s not often that a major publisher listens to a new author when they request a specific painting be used for their book cover. But they listened to Naomi Jackson, and over at the Literary Hub she explains her choice of cover art for Star Side of Bird Hill and the Caribbean significance behind it.
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Bright Eyes
After the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska died fighting in the trenches, Ezra Pound wrote a book about his work, inspiring a wave of interest that brought the sculptor to prominence. The book came out in 1916, a year after Gaudier-Brzeska’s death, and kicked off a succession of great books that tackle his sculptures. Yasmine Seale writes about their legacy in the LRB.
Wordpocalypse
In the beginning, God died, and it was bad. Then the pun died too, and despair came over the people.
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The Little Death
This essay from Garth Greenwell at The New Yorker about gay mystery novelist Michael Nava is as fascinating as it is informative. Then, let Daniel Friedman at The Millions spoil the genre for you with his take on the very few ways to tie up a mystery.
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Against Writers’ Houses
April Bernard is not a fan of Writers’ Houses because she does not believe the “private life, even of the dead, is ours to plunder.” Earlier this year, our own Luke Epplin also noted some of the limitations of Writers’ Houses.