Last week, I wrote about Josh Weil and Mike Harvkey’s joint book tour, which sees the two driving a Prius across America to promote their latest novels. Now, in their latest dispatch, they reflect on the differences between writers like themselves and midcentury writers like Andre Dubus and Norman Mailer.
Different Times
The Modern Office
Our own Lydia Kiesling writes for The New Yorker about workplace fiction by women. As she puts it, “If the author is a woman, workplace fiction is also domestic fiction, easily disguised as ‘chick lit,’ ‘girlfriend literature,’ or even ‘erotica.’ Regardless of the packaging, these books provide mapping, contextualizing, and rich illustration of women’s working lives.” For more of her writing, check out her essay on the San Francisco housing market for The Millions.
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Jonathan Safran Foer, Cut Up
Did you know that a new Jonathan Safran Foer book is coming out this week? We didn't until we saw a mention of it at Kottke. More surprising is the form of the book itself. Foer has created a new work called Tree of Codes by cutting out sections of one of his favorite books, The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Shulz. The die-cut, Kindle-proof volume is the first major title by London-based Visual Editions. Vanity Fair has more.
“Telegraphic art”
Recommended Reading: Christopher Benfey on Emily Dickinson.
Thursday Story: Chris Womersley
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Coffee House + Emily Books
Coffee House Press recently announced it will be partnering with Emily Books, whose co-founder Emily Gould is a Year in Reading alum, to form their first imprint, which will publish two original titles a year. Their news pairs well with Electric Literature's "2015 Indie Press Preview."
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Will to No Power
Freudians know that Eros and Thanatos are opposites in the human psyche. The former, the love instinct, pushes us to survive, while the latter, the death instinct, pushes us to destruction. In an essay for Bookslut, Jelena Markovic explores the importance of Thanatos in daily life, using as an example a man she knew with an “instinct for nonexistence.”
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Wrecked Modern Romance
"[Virginie] Despentes has become a kind of cult hero, a patron saint to invisible women: the monstrous and marginalized, the sodden, weary and wildly unemployable, the kind of woman who can scarcely be propped up let alone persuaded to lean in." On Virginie Despentes's Bye Bye Blondie and French feminist pulp that pulls no punches.
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