This summer Antosha Chekhonte’s (aka Anton Chekhov‘s) first book The Prank will finally be published after more than 130 years of waiting, and it’s been described as “frankly indispensable for readers of Chekhov, or Russian literature, or comedic literature, or parody, or any and all literature” generally. Pair with our own Sonya Chung‘s essay, “I Heart Chekhov.”
I Heart Antosha Chekhonte
Runways for Days
“I took my son to Paris fashion week, and all I got was a profound understanding of who he is, what he wants to do with his life, and how it feels to watch a grown man stride down a runway wearing shaggy yellow Muppet pants.” Michael Chabon writes a beautiful piece for GQ about going couturing with his son, Abraham. Pair with yesterday’s essay by R. J. Hernández on fashion in literary fiction.
Back in the High Life Again
Self-styled music critic Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel American Psycho, certainly had a lot to say about 80s mainstays like Genesis and Huey Lewis and the News. Over at The New Inquiry, J. Temperance argues for Steve Winwood as Patrick Bateman’s musical doppelgänger. Go ahead and take a look at this essay by Bill Morris of The Millions on The Canyons, a film for which Ellis wrote the screenplay.
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The Yellow King’s Clue
Recommended Viewing: Artist Todd Spence has drawn True Detective as a series of Hardy Boys novels. Pair with: Our essay on what female detective novels to read after True Detective.
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Books, Faced
It’s not all Kindles and ebooks and the death of print media out there: the book-themed social media site Goodreads is exploding in popularity, perhaps solving the “discoverability” problem of digital reading.
Tuesday New Release Day: Diamant; Horowitz; DFW; Davis
New this week: The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant; Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz; a limited edition of The David Foster Wallace Reader; and The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems by Olena Kalytiak Davis (which I wrote about last week). For more on these and other recent titles, go read our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
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Feel Good, Inc.
“Take a quick break from the apocalyptic news and end your week with this list of books to eagerly anticipate (assuming the world doesn’t end) instead!” The Rumpus lists some books that could make you feel a little bit better.