“He is now even upon the point of marrying—shall I proceed!—of marrying his Sister! I fly to prevent incest!” Dan Piepenbring writes about reading The Power of Sympathy, America’s first novel, for The Paris Review.
The First American Novel
The Birth of Memory
“So a single image can split open the hard seed of the past, and soon memory pours forth from every direction, sprouting its vines and flowers up around you till the old garden’s taken shape in all its fragrant glory.” Read an excerpt from Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir at Longreads. Pair with Beth Kephart’s essay on how memoir can be a conversation between reader and writer.
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Dispatch from Palestine
“Palestinian literature is a literature of exile, a quest for identity in a hostile world, a writing of fractured lives and displaced hopes, a record of a human tragedy.” In the most recent issue of Asymptote Journal, Fakhri Saleh looks at Palestinian writing since 1948. Pair with Words Without Borders’s special Palestine issue, selected and introduced by Nathalie Handal.
Keeping Pace
“I wish I were jogging shirtless but / I need somewhere to clip the mic,” says Jon Cotner as he records his poem, “Long Meadow,” while jogging through Prospect Park.
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PW’s Top 10 of 2009
Publisher’s Weekly has released a Top 10 adult books list for 2009, fiction and non-fiction. Click here for the (perhaps surprising) list, including reviews.
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David Fincher to Join the Gone Girl Team
David Fincher, who helmed the American cinematic adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, may join the team working on the film for Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Flynn herself penned the first draft of the screenplay. As you wait (im)patiently for the project to get underway, you can take our own Michael Bourne’s advice and treat yourself to Flynn’s earlier books.
Houellebecq Wins France’s Top Literary Award
Controversial writer Michel Houellebecq finally wins France’s top literary award, the Goncourt Prize, for The Map and the Territory (published in French last September).
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Journalistic Disturbances
In 2009, Rivka Galchen wrote a lengthy piece in Harper’s about the quest to predict and control hurricanes. Now that her article is sadly apropos, it’s available for free on the web. (Said quest had a major role in the author’s excellent first novel.)