In 2013, Mo Yan became China’s first resident Nobel Laureate in Literature, which prompted a huge swell of interest in his books in the West. In the Times, Janet Maslin reviews Frog, his latest novel to get an English translation. Sample quote: “Mo Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye, says everything he needs to about the Cultural Revolution with a scene in which Tadpole and other schoolboys eat coal and claim to find it delicious.” You could also read Alan Levinovitz on modern Chinese literature.
One Child Fiction
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.
Sonya Chung at Sweet: Actors Reading Writers
My inner dramatist will have a debut outing at Sweet: Actors Reading Writers, Thurs. 12/2 at 7:30 pm, Three of Cups (First Ave at 5th Street, NYC). Actor Tonya Edmonds will perform an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Sebastian & Frederick. Other featured writers: Ed Park, Amanda Filipacchi, Jonathan Dixon, Maya Pindyck.
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Raised on B-Movies
I’ve loved old sci-fi B-movies forever, and a staggering number of my childhood memories involve Ray Harryhausen. For this reason, I’m really geeking out over The New Yorker’s entire science fiction issue, but in particular this piece by Colson Whitehead deserves your time.
“History is filled with irony”
Casey N. Cep ponders oppositional forces at work on two statues harkening back to the days of Maryland’s slaveholders. “More than tragedy or romance, history is filled with irony,” she notes.
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Outsourcing Tech Manufacture and the Cost of the Kindle
According to Steve Denning at Forbes, “the U.S. has lost or is on the verge of losing its ability to develop and manufacture a slew of high-tech products.” He says the U.S. will never be able to manufacture a Kindle on its own soil. But if the environmental cost of producing just one e-reader, as VQR‘s Ted Genoways says, is “roughly the same as fifty books,” why would anyone want to?
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Alone in the Dark
For the most part, your average writer’s retreat is a pretty cushy place. Its amenities are designed to let its guests turn their energies to the difficulties of artistic work. At The Paris Review Daily, Rex Weiner writes a dispatch from a different sort of retreat — a haunted house for writers in Mexico. To read about a more traditional experience, check out our own Michael Bourne on his time at Bread Loaf.
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You Will Survive
“You can only advocate for yourself when you know what it is you want from the experience. You’d be surprised by how many people go into this process and are unclear about what they hope to get out of it.” Over at the Amazon Author Insights blog, Katrin Schumann offers a checklist of seven tips to survive submitting your writing to editors, including this note about articulating your goals beforehand. (Ed. note: Amazon helps us pay the bills around here!)
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