“His books used to be ink on paper; now we have to squint through the cloud of the Ellroy Phenomenon.” And the James Ellroy Phenomenon looks like it will only continue: the author has announced plans for a second L.A. Quartet, the first of which, Perfidia, comes out next week.
The James Ellroy Phenomenon
The New Gutenberg
In the latest issue of Harvard magazine, Nathan Heller writes about Arion Press, the last remaining “full-service letterpress in the United States.” Apparently Arion, which has “an in-house foundry where lead is melted into ingots,” sells editions of canonical titles (like Ulysses) that retail for thousands of dollars. (h/t our own Kevin Hartnett)
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On American Sonnets
Stephanie Burt writes about Terrance Hayes, Wanda Coleman's American Sonnets, confinement, and the mechanics of lyric poetry.
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Indie Lit Wish List
The recently-revived HTMLGiant previewed twelve indie lit books being published in 2017, and the list is a terrific supplement to our own Great 2017 Book Preview.
Sick and Wrong
Recommended Reading: Dan Kois on his favorite books of the year. On Alissa Nutting’s Tampa, he writes: “Tampa mixes deadpan social satire, lurid true-crime storytelling, and out-and-out porn into a poisonous stew.”
Being Ernest
Is your family concerned about you? Are all your Victorian relatives vaguely scandalized by your presence? Then you just might be in a character in an Oscar Wilde play. At The Toast, a list of ways to tell.
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