Penelope Fitzgerald has been getting a lot of attention lately, largely due to Hermione Lee‘s newest biography. In an article for the Paris Review, Bridget Read considers the impact a better understanding of Fitzgerald’s life could have on her modern reputation, and argues that “it is not extraordinary that she became a prize-winning novelist, though you may have heard otherwise. … It is vital to emphasize that Fitzgerald’s novels were not achieved in spite of her domestic life; they were borne directly out of it. Her work is radical in that it suggests that, in fact, a feminine experience, a liminal experience, might be better equipped than a male one to address the contradictions of human existence taken up by the greatest literature.”
Biography and Reputation
Rising to the Surface
“In real life, we are often so bound by social convention, but at the same time we all have secret, inexplicable aspects of ourselves. The parts that nobody else sees. In fiction, we are not bound by social convention, so the things that mystify and unsettle are allowed to rise to the surface.” Salon interviews Laura van den Berg about her new novel, Find Me, which we covered in our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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Tuesday New Releases: Russell, Brockmeier, Hale, and More
New this week are Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer by Wesley Stace (the pen name of singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding), and buzzed about debut The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale. On the nonfiction side is a new biography, Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall. And new in paperback is Millions Hall of Famer The Big Short by Michael Lewis.
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Some things
Kate Atkinson’s editor at Little Brown, Reagan Arthur, has posted at the LBC blog and there’s some good Q & A going on in the comments.I just surreptitiously spy on people reading, but Ed – prompted by an idea from Sara – marches right up to them and quizzes them on their literary knowledge.Been enjoying a couple of new (new to me, anyway) book blogs recently: Using Books Weblog and BookLust.
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The Latest from Lemony Snicket
Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket, released his latest YA novel in October. Who Could That Be at This Hour? is a prequel to A Series of Unfortunate Events. Handler was recently interviewed for the New York Times Magazine.
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Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts
Recommended Reading: Clare Cavanagh on the experience of translating the work of Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska.
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Class Notes
This week, the Ransom Center at UT-Austin opened up its archives of the works of J.M. Coetzee. Because the Nobel Prize winner is an alumnus, he says it’s “a privilege to have graduated from being a teaching assistant at The University of Texas to being one of the authors whose papers are conserved here.” (Fun fact: his starting salary was $2,300 a year.)
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