“Of all the literary genres, poetry has proved the most resistant to digital technology, not for stodgy cultural reasons but for tricky mechanical ones.” Looks like that might be changing, however, as Open Road releases Flow Chart, Your Name Here and 15 other John Ashbery digital poetry collections.
Ashbery Goes Digital
NaNoWriMo Author Scores Big
Erin Morgenstern's debut novel The Night Circus went from National Novel Writing Month project to 6-figure book advance after being rejected by more than 30 agents.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Marcus, Gass, O’Nan, Cole
New this week are The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus, a collection of William H. Gass's writings, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts, and Stewart O'Nan's The Odds: A Love Story. New in paperback is Teju Cole's Open City.
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LDM TV: The Pilot
Next week, the folks at Literary Death Match are bringing literature into the third dimension by staging “LDM TV: The Pilot.” Two shows consisting of four readers apiece will take place in Los Angeles, and performances will be judged by a killer lineup including such notables as Susan Orlean, Michael C. Hall, Moby and Tig Notaro. Full event details can be found here. For what it’s worth, I still rank Matt Gajewski’s LDM performance as my all-time favorite, so Beau Sia, Simon Rich, Daniel Alarcón and company have their work cut out for them.
A Sign of the Apocalypse?
The singularity is near: If you go to your Amazon recommendations page, you'll see that you can now log into Facebook from there "to get Amazon recommendations for you and discover your friends' Favorites and Likes."
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“What is your useful skill in a tangible situation?”
First there were cupcakes, then donuts, and now toast. At The Pacific Standard, John Gravois discovers the surprisingly emotional and personal reason for why toast is the latest artisan food trend.
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Colbert on a Roll
Don't miss Maurice Sendak sparring admirably with Stephen Colbert (part 1, part 2) on the occasion of Bumble-ardy, an instant classic in my house. He followed that up with master interviewer Terry Gross, on whose show Colbert was recently a guest.
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Reviews for the King
Some reviews of Dave Eggers's new novel, Hologram for the King, are starting to appear: Carolyn Kellogg writes that the story is accessibly though "elegantly told," and Michiko Kakutani describes the prose as almost surprisingly "pared down" and "Hemingwayesque."