Writing a novel together might seem like a recipe for conflict, but Gavin Kovite and Christopher Robinson, who co-wrote War of the Encyclopaedists together, argue the exercise ended up deepening their longtime friendship. At Salon, they explain why.
Together
Bookstore MFA
“There’s something about shopping for books where you’re open for anything. You’re faced with a wall of books, and you don’t know anything about most of them. At some point, it’s just you and the poems.” Carl Adamshick talks with the Los Angeles Review of Books about Powell’s and the “bookstore MFA.” Pair with our own Janet Potter‘s essay on loving bookshops.
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Literary One-Hit Wonders
Second Act lists the renowned literary one-hit wonders, including John Kennedy Toole, Sylvia Plath and Ralph Ellison. (via AuthorScoop)
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Michel Houellebecq on the Art of Fiction
Susannah Hunnewell interviews Michel Houellebecq, France’s controversial literary icon, for The Paris Review’s “The Art of Fiction” series: “There is a need for intensity. From time to time, you have to forsake harmony. You even have to forsake truth. You have to, when you need to, energetically embrace excessive things.”
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Never Before Seen
The world’s oldest multicolor print book has just been opened for the very first time, and what does one do with a never-before-seen artistic treasure? Scan and upload it to the internet, of course.
Tuesday New Release Day
New this week: Gary Shteyngart’s much buzzed about Super Sad True Love Story, Rick Moody’s The Four Fingers of Death (another literary dystopia), and a new Roberto Bolaño collection, The Return. Bonus for GN’R fans: GN’R drummer Steven Adler’s tell-all memoir My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, and Drugs, and Guns N’ Roses.
Eden Walk
“Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek discusses plans for his epic journey around the world and a groundbreaking experiment in slow journalism.”
A Free Scotland
What would happen if Scotland seceded from the United Kingdom? Check back in 2014 to find out.
Winesburg, Ohio Online
The University of Virginia Library (last mentioned for its William Faulkner recordings) has made the text of Sherwood Anderson‘s Winesburg, Ohio available online in its entirety.
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