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
New Elmore Leonard Stories on the Way
Jennifer Schuessler reports that a book of unpublished Elmore Leonard stories will be published in 2015. In 2010, our own Bill Morris touched on one element of what made Leonard’s writing so special.
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The Women Warriors
“As I read her words, I experienced a feeling previously unknown to me: recognition. I had always turned to books for pleasure, as portals to other places. Reading The Woman Warrior, for the first time I saw myself on every page and in every word.” For Catapult, Alexis Cheung writes about representation, being an Asian-American writer, and reading and interviewing Maxine Hong Kingston. From our archives: Kingston’s work was featured in Alexander Chee‘s 2015 Year in Reading.
Going Places
“Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. Made me realize my whole life has been pretty much a waste. I suspected this anyway; he explained why: because I’d not surfed.” Geoff Dyer over at the New York Times on the best book he’s read recently. Our own Janet Potter interviewed Dyer on the release of his most recent book, White Sands.
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The United States of Poetry
Poetry readership among U.S. adults is the highest it’s been in 15 years—with young adult readership (among 18-24 year olds) nearly doubling—according to the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). (For what it’s worth: The Millions has always loved poetry).
What We Talk About When We Talk About Books
“The [book] review’s pre-eminence is irrefutable: most people are acquainted with far, far more books through reviews than they could ever hope to read. And that is, generally, to the good.” Joseph Mackin explores why we write and read book reviews for the New York Journal of Books.
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Route Nine’s Alumni Omnibus: 50 Years in the Making
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program, the school’s literary magazine – Route Nine – gathered work from over 80 alumni to create a special Alumni Omnibus issue. The collection just went online recently, and it’s tremendous.
A Dissociated World
“We live, in short, with local exceptions, in a dissociated world held together by fragile links of utility and self-promotion underpinned by laws of mutual advantage—a materialist ethos and cosmos that cannot but influence cultural representations and, hence, art, including poetry.” On John Donne and the humanity in art.
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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.