After thirty years, Larry Kramer has finished his novel The American People, which he prefers to consider a new form of nonfiction. In the novel, a narrator based largely on Kramer writes a historical expose, also titled The American People, in which numerous American icons are described as having been gay. As Kramer says, he wrote the book in part out of a feeling that gay people are excluded from history books.
A People’s History
Extra Salter
If you enjoyed Sonya Chung’s interview with James Salter, you’ll want to check out this video of the author reflecting on his life, and what led to his decision to “write or perish.”
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A Change in Tone
In an illuminating interview for Slate, James Wood revises his opinion on David Foster Wallace and discusses how aging can change critics. As he puts it, “At exactly the moment that I wanted really to write, and started writing poems and then trying to write bad fiction, I was reading with a view to learning stuff. I was reading poetry. How did Auden do his stanza forms? And I was trying to copy those. What’s a successful poem, what’s an unsuccessful poem? […] What’s a good sentence? I don’t think I’ve changed. I am as sincerely interested in novels that fail as I am in novels that succeed. I just want to work them out. It’s a pleasure for me actually.” Top it off with Jonathan Russell Clark’s essay on Wood’s The Nearest Thing to Life.
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Maya Angelou Has Died
Maya Angelou, poet and author of many memoirs — most famously I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — has died at 86. This video of Angelou reading her poem “And Still I Rise” may serve as a good start to a celebration of her life.
Saving Hughes’s House
Last-minute signal boost! You have a few more hours to donate to I, Too, Arts Collective‘s campaign to convert Langston Hughes‘s former home into a non-profit cultural center. See also: our own Emily Wilkinson’s review of his Tambourines to Glory.
Amazon Releases Its Best 100 Books of 2012
Amazon is kicking off the year-end deluge of lists with its 100 best books of 2012.
The Sound and the Fury and the Pretty Colors
Thanks to advances in printing technology, a limited edition run of The Sound and the Fury will now be printed just the way Faulkner wanted—in different colored inks.
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