“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.
Rising to the Surface
Paula Fox
Paula Fox, celebrated novelist and winner of the 1983 National Book Award (among other honors), died this week. Contributing to our Year in Reading series two years ago, Parul Sehgal said she couldn’t stop rereading Desperate Characters, perhaps Fox’s most popular book for adults. “It’s really a wallop of a book,” Sehgal wrote. “A barbed portrait of a marriage, not to mention a brilliant take on gentrification, white fears of black and brown people, the hostile insularity of the nuclear family, and how power reproduces and how power conceals itself.” (Bonus: Dominic Smith wants to send a scene from that novel into space.)
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God, CEO of Heaven
Here’s the story of one entrepreneur so intent on disrupting the antiquated status quo within his industry that he quit his organization and set out to found his own start-up. You’ve heard this story before. It’s John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and supposedly it can help your career in ways you haven’t even realized.
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Our correspondent reports from AWP
Presenting another installment of #LitBeat: The US and UK Poets Laureate at AWP 2012.
Sarah Baracuda, In Her Own Words
Sarah Palin‘s memoir, Going Rogue, arrives in bookstores on November 17th; For those who can’t wait, may we suggest The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring and Activity Book?
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Bad Review Bingo
Print out your playing cards and start sifting through the comment sections of negative book reviews. It’s a new game called “bad review bingo.” (inspired in part by the frothy commenters to our own Janet Potter’s blistering review of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.)
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The Book of Mormon, on Broadway
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park and Team America World Police, are turning their wild imaginations to a new subject and a new genre: “The Book of Mormon,” a musical the duo co-wrote with Robert Lopez, will open on Broadway next year.
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Bookstore Fairy
Recommended Reading: On the mysterious benefactors keeping St. Mark’s bookstore alive.
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