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
Point and Click
Recommended Reading: Owen Hatherley at the London Review of Books discusses postcapitalism and a world run by clicks: “The sin of ‘original research?’ – a solecism nearly as grave as ‘citation needed’ – is another reminder that the non-postcapitalist labour of academics is the basis of nearly the entire operation. Wikipedia is less a new form of knowledge than a novel packaging of an old one.”
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The Annotated Frank Sinatra
We didn’t think it was possible to make Gay Talese’s famous Esquire profile “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” any better, but Talese recently annotated the article for Nieman Story Board.
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Polish Book Covers
An eerie collection of Polish book cover art from the 1970s and 80s.
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A Very Special Bunny
“Welcome to the resistance, bunny.” Currently sold out on Amazon after topping the book charts for days, The New Yorker writes about John Oliver‘s charming children’s book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Pair with: an essay about reconnecting with childhood favorites as a parent.
Allen Ginsberg, Beat Historian
“It’s not often one gets the opportunity to take a course on a major literary movement taught by a founding member of that movement,” but Allen Ginsberg‘s lectures on “the literary history of the Beats” are now available online via Open Culture.
Looking for Some Literary Tumblrs?
For bookish Tumblrs, I suggest you start following Awesome People Reading, Writers No One Reads, and CoverSpy.
A Curious Ambivalence
Colin Dickey for Hazlitt has written a fascinating essay exploring the myth and superstition behind the ritual veiling of mirrors while in mourning. Did our own Sonya Chung cover her mirror while she mourned the passing of Mad Men?
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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.