Sound the Franzen alarm! The Corrections and Freedom author will release a new book in 2015. Called Purity, the book will supposedly feature elements of magical realism (or something like it). Head over to Vulture for more.
New Franzen in 2015
The State of Literature in Translation Today
Chad Post ran the numbers to calculate “the state of literature in translation today,” and in so doing he found that AmazonCrossing has been publishing more works of fiction and poetry in translation than any other press except Dalkey Archive. Additionally, the “overall number of works of fiction in translation being published in the U.S. is growing pretty nicely.” To get a full account of what’s coming out this year, check out his 2013 Translation Database.
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But Then Again, Who Wouldn’t Be?
I’m not that into ballet, but if I had to be, I’d be into 1,000 frame-per-second footage of German ballet dancers prancing around to a dance-y remix of Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place.”
Hitler at Home
Read about Hitler’s vacation homes and how they shaped his image via propaganda in an excerpt from Hitler at Home by Despina Stratigakos at The New Republic. We reviewed Ben Urwand’s book The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, which discusses other propaganda surrounding the Nazi regime.
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Approaching Your Literary Heroes
“Why can’t we keep our literary heroes where they belong, at the top of the bookshelf next to all the others? And why must we ache for their approval, their admiration, their love?” Alex Gilvarry posts about writers who dare to approach their literary heroes for the Paris Review Daily.
Living and Translating is Wearing Me Out
The premier English-language translator of modern Chinese fiction, Howard Goldblatt, says flatly that Western audiences don’t read Chinese books. However, with last year’s Nobel Prize win for Mo Yan (and the rave review his novel Pow! received in the Times), Goldblatt and other scholars are hoping that could change.
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The Very Picture of Guilt
If the prospect of dealing with Frankenstorm is harshing your mellow this Halloween, you might want to look at The Paris Review Daily’s illustrated Telltale Heart.
Hooray! 10 months of ridiculous JFranz hype!
The “magical realism” bit is just hilarious. A hit of intellectual crack for the boring-ass upper crust white folks he writes his entertainments for.
And the title – I think he’s eventually just going to start arrogantly titling every book “Life”.
The only silver lining? Perhaps this will present an opportunity for critics to revisit Freedom, realize how utterly terrible and dated that entertainment is, and retract the insane praise previously lavished upon it.