“I’ve been asked what differentiates war literature as a category, and I don’t think there is anything.” The Daily Beast interviews Phil Klay about the National Book Award, Redeployment, and the concept of war literature.
Phil Klay on “War Literature”
In Memoriam, Edward Albee
“For example, I don’t feel that catharsis in a play necessarily takes place during the course of a play. Often it should take place afterward.” The Paris Review offers a manuscript page from playwright Edward Albee, who died this past weekend. See also: this amazing piece of lore behind the titling of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
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Football Book Club: ‘The Case Against Satan’
It’s a brand new week and Football Book Club is reading Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan. For those of you scoring at home, that’s an exorcism novel written by a former executive editor of Playboy. Plus posts about Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction and Carmen Giménez Smith’s Milk and Filth.
Revolution Girl Style Now
Listen up, rebel girls! The October issue of The Believer features selections from New York University’s riot grrl collection, curated by archivist Lisa Darms.
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With Very Small Font, Of Course
Ireland debuted a new stamp featuring a 224-word short story written by Dublin teenager Eoin Moore.
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What Labor Is
Over at Slate, Pamela Erens explores how descriptions of childbirth have disappeared from contemporary novels. Also check out Claire Cameron’s Millions interview with the author and Martha Anne Toll’s review of Erens’s new novel, Eleven Hours.
I Want My MTV
For those among us who have missed the eighties, from now until November 8th, Esquire magazine is hosting a special pop-up edition of SPY, that late-millennial stalwart of satirical journalism. Co-founder (and novelist) Kurt Andersen said he was moved to bring the magazine back because “lots more people, pretty much every day, said to me, ‘SPY really needs to be rebooted, if only just for the election.'”
If it’s election satire you want, we highly recommend our own Jacob Lambert‘s literary cagematch: Hemingway vs. Faulkner vs. Trump.