Next week, Martin Amis will publish Zone of Interest, a dark new novel that takes place, like his earlier Time’s Arrow, in Nazi-occupied lands during the Holocaust. In this week’s New Yorker, Joyce Carol Oates reviews the book, suggesting that Amis is most compelling when he writes as a “satiric vivisectionist.” You could also read our own Mark O’Connell on Lionel Asbo: State of England.
Dark Matter
No Light Before
Recommended Reading: Peter Fulham on William Styron’s Darkness Visible.
Celebrating van Gogh
Celebrate van Gogh’s birthday (March 30, 1853) with this post from Brain Pickings on the artist’s meditations on the human pursuit of greatness.
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Borrow Harry Potter Electronically
Amazon has announced that all seven Harry Potter books will be available via its Kindle Lending Library starting on June 19th.
The Birth of the Novel
Recommended Reading: On Herman Melville and his reputation for “being sexually dangerous, and even depraved.”
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Certainly Got My Attention
Good Books is an online book retailer that donates all of its proceeds to Oxfam. It’s also a big fan of trippy literary homage. In a collaboration with two creative studios, and without consulting the Hunter S. Thompson or Franz Kafka estates, the group’s released a promo that draws on some of the most “out-there” elements of both writers.
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We’ll Find Ourselves
New Peter Gizzi poems about touchscreens and Instagram? Yes, please.