A while back, our own Mark O’Connell argued that Flann O’Brien, in The Poor Mouth, was the funniest writer who ever lived. Now, in an essay, Erin Somersin says the title should go to Mordecai Richler instead. She writes about the Canadian author’s unique sense of humor in a piece for the Ploughshares blog.
Barrels of Laughs
Tuesday New Release Day: Future, Foer, Food, Info, Boxing, Pym, Patterson, and More
My book, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books is out today (more on that here), and also out this week is Joshua Foer’s (the latest of the Foer’s to throw his hat in the authorial ring) Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, buzzed about food memoir Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, a new look at the modern world’s most ubiquitous commodity James Gleick’s The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, Library of America boxing anthology At The Fights: American Writers on Boxing, Mat Johnson’s Poe-inspired Pym, and Victoria Patterson’s This Vacant Paradise. New in Paperback: Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask and Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered.
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****!
Oh, shit: looks like many of our curse words are quickly going extinct. (There is good news, however, contained in this delightful sentence: “Still, according to Sheidlower, f-bomb enthusiasts need not fret too much.”)
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Strange Cults, Powerful Elders, and Other Features of Academia
Does this harrowing plot summary describe a critically acclaimed film of the 2010s, or does it describe your PhD program?
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Detroit Students Wait for Books
Seven weeks into the academic year, schoolwork is well under way at Detroit Public Schools. But many students—potentially thousands—are still waiting to receive textbooks.
More On Hitchens
In tribute to the passing of Christopher Hitchens, The Browser has collected some of his essays. His final memoir will be released in the states in April of next year.
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Feel the Tingle?
Recommended Reading: On Chuck Tingle, self-published writer of gay erotica, who beat the notorious Sad Puppies at their own game: “Question: If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?”
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