Following last year’s Pulitzer Prize, which Donna Tartt won for her first novel in eleven years, it means something when a critic draws a favorable comparison between The Goldfinch and a new book. For Laura Miller, though, it’s a natural reaction to the latest from Sarah Waters, which seems poised to “scratch the same big-novel itch” as Tartt’s novel did last year. (FYI, Sarah Waters wrote a Year in Reading entry for The Millions.)
Eleven-Year Itch
Letters from the Frontier
Recommended Reading: The New Republic on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s new collection of letters and the end of the frontier. “Wilder was disillusioned by a country that no longer seemed to value the achievements of her generation.”
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5 Women Under 35
For the first time ever, this year’s National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” winners are all women. Congrats to Molly Antopol (The UnAmericans), NoViolet Bulawayo (We Need New Names, which was also just shortlisted for The Booker Prize), Amanda Coplin (The Orchardist), Daisy Hildyard (Hunters in the Snow), and Merritt Tierce (Love Me Back).
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Docudrama
Recommended Reading: Daniel Green on Harold Jaffe’s Induced Coma.
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Kafka as Comedy
“When you think Franz Kafka, what comes to mind? Mitteleuropean gloom, perhaps… What you don’t think of is standup comedy.” Two young comedians are staging a new version of Kafka’s The Trial to hit the London stage next month.
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Welcome Ujala!
We’d like to introduce you all to our new intern, Ujala Sehgal, who beat out 50+ other applicants for the position. Ujala lives in Manhattan and recently left a nascent career in corporate law to travel and focus on her writing. Her first full-length piece, about negotiating one’s limitations as a reader and writer, has been published today. Welcome Ujala!
LeBron James, Cleveland and the Personal Essay
“No one in his or her right mind would read James’s essay in order to vouch for or against its literary quality, but I am here to do just that.” Ryan Lejarde parses LeBron James‘s “I’m Coming Home” for The Rumpus and comes to myriad conclusions about sports, literature, and what it means to love Cleveland.
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The Golden Age of Women Essayists
The essay is more popular than ever. At Salon, Michele Filgate talks to Leslie Jamison (author of The Empathy Exams, here’s our review) and Roxane Gay (author of the forthcoming Bad Feminist) about the power of the genre. Gay believes our interest in essays is because of a “cultural preoccupation with the exposure of the self.” They also discuss if we’re in a golden age of women essayists. “Sometimes when men write about private feeling, it’s seen as exploratory or daring, and when women write about private feeling it’s seen as limited or in the vein of a kind of circumscribed emotional writing,” Jamison says.
Happy Baby Shower
The Rumpus’s Stephen Elliott is using Kickstarter to raise money for the film adaptation of his novel Happy Baby. However you could also fund the project in a more three dimensional plane by attending November 29th’s Fundraising Party (which we’re co-sponsoring!). The party will include comedy by Eugene Mirman and readings by Jami Attenberg and Rick Moody.
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