Still haven’t read our own Edan Lepucki’s Colbert-endorsed novel California? Here’s another review to whet your appetite. In the latest Kenyon Review, John Domini writes that “Lepucki, however, not only upends expectation, but also parses out a few good surprises.”
Twists and Turns
“It’s all in the dark, all feeling around”
Speaking to Parul Sehgal, recent Booker and National Book Award finalist Jhumpa Lahiri confesses that in order to write, she must begin from “a place where I feel—and need to feel—completely alone and anonymous.” The Lowland author elaborates that the act of writing is “such an intimate thing; I can’t do it in front of other people. It’s a rich dimension in one’s head – to access it, the noise has to be shut off. And there is a lot of noise in the world.”
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Bayside High as Playboy Mansion
Parental Guidance Suggested: The 11 Most Scandalous Revelations from Dustin Diamond’s tell-all Saved By The Bell memoir. (I feel kind of ashamed of myself for even posting this, but such is life on the Internet.)
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We Read No More
Victor Hugo, when asked about the other parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy that aren’t the widely-read Inferno, had this to say: “The human eye was not made to look upon so much light, and when the poem becomes happy, it becomes boring.” Ouch. Is this why so many of us haven’t even read Dante, despite his being a kind of cultural icon?
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Anything that helps you to see. Anything that makes you look
On Flannery O’ Connor’s practice of making visual art, and how the habits of an artist informed her sensibility as a writer.
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Tuesday New Release Day
Julia Child fans may enjoy a new collection of her correspondence with her friend and “unofficial literary agent” Avis DeVoto. The letters follow Child through her life overseas. Also out now is a snazzy new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray with a cover illustrated by Ruben Toledo.
Silence, Please
For everyone who believes that “being out and reading is better than staying home and planning to read,” The New Yorker‘s Andrea Denhoed may have found just the thing: silent reading parties.
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Lambda Award Winners Announced
The Lambda Literary Award winners were announced, including Under the Udala Tree author Chinelo Okparanta, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Hasan Namir.