Recommended reading: An excerpt from Denis Johnson‘s upcoming novel, The Laughing Monsters, is available from Work in Progress.
The Laughing Monsters Excerpt
Looking Over the Shoulders of Giants
Ever want to watch someone write a novel? Nows your chance. Sorta. Silvia Hartmann, UK author of thriller novels, is inviting readers to observe as she types up her next novel in a Google doc.
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“The heart belongs to the tide and the deep alone”
The upcoming Supreme Court decision on gay marriage is drawing a lot of attention. But what about the other ruling — the one aimed at grizzled old men? At The Onion, a report on Justice Alito’s recent decision, which tersely states that marriage is a pact between a man and the sea.
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Lambda Literary Award Finalists
Congratulations to the Lambda Literary Award Finalists, who were announced this week. Finalists include Carrie Brownstein, Matthew Spender (our review of his memoir), and Truman Capote.
True Crime, True Empathy
Why are women the primary consumers of true crime literature while an overwhelming majority of the genre showcases violence towards women? Over at Hazlitt, Casey Johnston has a few ideas about this seemingly irreconcilable paradox. Here is a complementary piece by Ujala Sehgal for The Millions on the female True Detectives of literature.
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“Life is not personal.”
“This notion of investigation offers an alternative to confession. Its goal isn’t sympathy or forgiveness. Life is not personal. Life is evidence. It’s fodder for argument. To put the “I” to work this way invites a different intimacy—not voyeuristic communion but collaborative inquiry, author and reader facing the same questions from inside their inevitably messy lives.” Year in Reading alum Leslie Jamison writes for The Atlantic about alternatives to the confessional mode in literature.
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Welcome to the Book Tour
Our own Emily St. John Mandel gives a glimpse of her life on the road. “I’d been on tour for so long that I had to take a picture of my hotel room door every time I checked into a new place, because otherwise I’d forget my room number,” she writes. For more of her writing, check out her Millions essay on the place where writers work.
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Readers Pick Favorite Indie Books
More from The Huffington Post’s series on independent books: Readers’ Favorites From Indie Publishers.
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