Out this week: Ember Days by our own Nick Ripatrazone, Early Warning by Jane Smiley; Madam President by The View co-host Nicolle Wallace; Black Run by Antonio Manzini; Devotion by Maile Meloy; Collected Poems by Michael Gizzi; Volume 5 of The Letters of T.S. Eliot; and Book 4 of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Smiley; Wallace; Manzini; Meloy; Gizzi; Eliot; Knausgaard
The Rights of Southern Writers
Recent estate sales, auctions, and rights deals concerning the legacy and works of William Faulkner are “raising complex questions about what happens to the works of great writers after they die,” writes Stefanie Cohen. “For their part, Faulkner's heirs say they aim to both honor the writer's work and raise funds.” (Bonus: the ongoing, public legal battle over rights to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.)
●
●
Replacement Burrito
Recommended Reading: This moving essay on secrecy, shame, and binging by Michael Sinert over at The Rumpus: "Our task is to de-son-of-a-bitch all this."
Dick Wimmer is dead! Long live Dick Wimmer!
Any writer who has felt the sting of rejection---that is, all writers---will be inspired by the story of Dick Wimmer, who has died at the age of 74. Over the course of 25 years, a total of 162 agents and publishers rejected Wimmer's first novel, Irish Wine, before it was finally published by Mercury House in 1989. The New York Times called it a "taut, finely written, exhaustingly exuberant first novel." The L.A. Times invoked James Joyce in its review. Wimmer, the iron man of the rejection wars, went on to publish two sequels, Boyne's Lassie and Hagar's Dream (All three books are now available in a single volume from Soft Skull.) The moral of Wimmer's story? Never give up.
Davis Illustrated
Check out an illustrated adaptation of Lydia Davis’s “In a House Besieged” by Roman Muradov at The Paris Review Daily. Pair with a piece on Davis’s short short stories and Twitter.
●
●
Pride and Prejudice Continued
The short shelf of books written by Jane Austen has been recently supplemented by many imaginative efforts--Jane Austen as an amateur detective, and several works depicting Austen characters (or Jane herself) as a vampire, a zombie or some other Gothic monster. So what's next? Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James is Pride and Prejudice continued.
Bloggers Sue Huffington Post
A group of bloggers led by Jonathan Tasini have filed a class-action lawsuit against Huffington Post for $105 million, claiming a lack of compensation for their contributions. Tasini hopes to set a precedent for content creators in the digital age.
●
●
Project Yosemite
Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty's Project Yosemite is "an ongoing adventure to timelapse Yosemite in a extreme way." Their first video is (ahem) extremely beautiful.