Among the better tidbits from Gary Shteyngart’s diary of his book tour for Little Failure is the fact that he’s apparently had fellow Russian immigrants ask him to sign books for “a failed paralegal” and “a worse failure than even you.” If, after reading that, you’d like another dose of Shteyngart, you could do worse than his Year in Reading entry.
Such a Disappointment
Tuesday New Release Day: DeLillo; Millet; Russo; Morgan; Haslett; Erens
New this week: Zero K by Don DeLillo; Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet; Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo; The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan; Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett; and Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens (who we interviewed). For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Cowboys and Indians?
“Even if they have to fly to Pakistan to do it, our cowboys are always hunting Indians.” Amira Jarmakani on the perpetuation of Wild West stories even though our idea of the frontier has changed.
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Highly Recommended
Some kind soul has put the title story from Alvin Levin's under-appreciated collection Love Is Like Park Avenue online for all to enjoy. That means you.
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Archipelago Interview
Bibi Dietz interviews Jill Schoolman, founder of Archipelago Books, about "the archipelagic quality of book translation, the spiritual quality of discovering a great text, and the best bookshops from here to Buenos Aires." So, basically everything we would ask Jill Schoolman about if we got the chance. The full interview up at BOMB Magazine.
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Literary Tastemaker Extraordinare
“In a new biography, The Lady with the Borzoi: Blanche Knopf, Literary Tastemaker Extraordinaire (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Laura Claridge argues that Blanche Knopf was actually the more important and influential of the two Knopfs. That’s a stretch, but her book is still a long-overdue acknowledgment of the pioneering role Blanche played at a time when women were nearly invisible in the business world.” Find out more about Blanche Knopf at The New Yorker. Edan Lepucki’s 2011-2012 list on why not to self-publish is still relevant.
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Faulkner and the Black Arts Movement
Frank Kovarik explores the controversy over whether Faulkner was racist and why Faulkner was singled out for these charges.
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The Birth of the Novel
Recommended Reading: On Herman Melville and his reputation for “being sexually dangerous, and even depraved.”
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