Fans of the French Oulipo movement will know about A Void, the Georges Perec novel written entirely without the use of the letter “e.” What very few readers of any kind know, however, is that in 1939, thirty years before Perec’s novel was published, Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a book in English, Gadsby, that hewed to these same constraints. At The Atlantic, Nikhil Sonnad investigates how this experiment plays out in the book.
Emazing
Two New Leslie Jamison Books on the Way
Leslie Jamison, whose collection Empathy Exams was widely praised on The Millions, has earned a two-book “mega” deal with Little, Brown. The new deal promises to deliver another essay collection entitled Ghost Essays, as well as a work of “narrative nonfiction” entitled Archive Lush. (Bonus: We interviewed Jamison for the site last May.)
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Decoding Moments of Tension in Edith Wharton’s ‘The Age of Innocence’
Sam Jordinson reflects on the many moments of sexual tension found in Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence.
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Is Social Publishing the Future?
Loudpoet has an interview with former Soft Skull Press publisher Richard Nash about his new social publishing venture Cursor. ““Social” is taking the book and making it much easier to have a conversation with the book and its writer, and have conversations around the book and its writer.” Is this a way forward for beleaguered publishers? (via The Lone Gunman)
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Rethinking Motherhood
This motherhood book list ranges from Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born to Ada Limón's The Carrying.
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Dubliners, 100 Years Later
At Flavorwire Jonathan Sturgeon considers what we’ve learned from Dubliners in the hundred years since it was first published and argues that “when it comes to realism, Dubliners, more than even Chekhov’s short fiction, is the model we routinely fail to live up to.” Sturgeon’s reflections on Joyce‘s free indirect discourse pair well with Jonathan Russell Clark‘s Millions essay on close writing, and his essay isn’t completely without hope: he concludes with a few books that, “on the surface, look nothing like Dubliners, but, in spirit… show that Joyce’s book still lives 100 years on.”
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