It was the height of the feminist revolution and one man was trying, unsuccessfully, to publish a book about a man amidst a midlife crisis. 25 years later, Esquire editor Gordon Lish read sections of An Armful of Warm Girl in a literary magazine and demanded that Knopf reconsider publishing it (they did). This week over at Bloom, Nicki Leone dives into the work of W.M. Spackman, the man often referred to as “Fitzgerald‘s literary heir.”
The man Lish fought for
Taking Risks on the Page
Over at Catapult, Idra Novey writes on how her experience as a translator changed how she approaches her own work as a novelist. Pair with Magdalena Edwards’s Millions essay on reading Clarice Lispector in English.
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Obama’s Books
In support of "Small Business Saturday," President Obama took his daughters shopping for books at Kramerbooks in D.C. So, which books made it to the register?
Witt on Einhorn
In Emily Witt's last piece (she got a book deal) for the New York Observer, she profiles Amy Einhorn and her self-named imprint. (via)
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That Used To Be You
"The day you follow me to that mound of oyster shells on the beach is the day I realize muscle and bone have been at war for a long, long time." The Saturday Rumpus essay by Ashley Inguanta is tender and poetic. Some past iterations are also well-worth a revisit.
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Tough Broads
“The rest of the morning went like that. We did synchronized clapping. We did active listening. We did a role-play exercise in which I was a girl waiting for a bus and Karloff was a masher, but when I started flirting back, she didn’t like it. I got four more cups of coffee and felt brokenhearted when my bottle gave up its last drop.” Philip Marlowe attends a court-mandated women’s studies workshop.
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It Came From The Internet to Destroy My Productivity!
Now you, too, can create vintage pulp novel covers with the best of ‘em.
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Did You Hear?
Gossip is often seen as inherently frivolous and trashy, which is why it’s odd that a poet would use it as the subject of his or her work. On The Poetry Foundation’s blog, Austin Allen writes about George Green’s collection Lord Byron’s Foot, in which, as Allen puts it, “the dish spares no one.” (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
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I discovered Spackman by chance on a library shelf nearly 15 years ago and got obsessed for a while. Have him to thank for my intro to Henry Green too. Just last week I reread everything after Armful, and the guy still rewires my brain with his syntax. Glad to see others are finding him too.