Out this week: Local Girls by Caroline Zancan; The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson; The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens; Kay Boyle: A Twentieth-Century Life in Letters; Killing Monica by Candace Bushnell; and a new translation of the poems of Catullus.
Tuesday New Release Day: Zancan; Jackson; Lansens; Bushnell; Catullus
A Wasted Life
“I have wasted my life.” Over at the Paris Review, Dan Piepenbring takes a look at James Wright‘s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” and the many interpretations readers have brought to its famous last line. Among those readers is David Mitchell, who wrote about the same poem in an essay for The Atlantic‘s By Heart series earlier this year.
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Like, Stop
Those of you who remember the hubbub surrounding “vocal fry” will probably not be surprised to learn that, generally speaking, articles that slam the way women speak pop up at least once a year.
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An Irish Books Mule
Anne Enright remarks on Irish censorship, and she recalls the time her own mother was used “as a books mule.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Ford, Theroux, Johnson
This week brings Richard Ford’s latest novel, Canada, as well as a new novel from Paul Theroux, The Lower River. And Millions favorite and Pulitzer finalist Train Dreams by Denis Johnson is now out in paperback.
The Annual Fund
“And, it really means so much to us to watch our birds fly out of the high school nest and into an income bracket that could really benefit the Annual Fund this year. I mean, we have 85% of our goal, but as you know, that’s only a B. And we know that you are an A student.” Ah, what a heartwarming and totally genuine letter from my private, nonprofit high school congratulating me on my new job. Thanks, McSweeney’s.
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By Way of Beijing
After spending eight years in Beijing, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos is leaving to work in DC. To commemorate his long period of international journalism, he wrote a farewell post on his blog, Letter from China.
“If only we hadn’t read it before.”
“The stories that dominated the serious magazines and journals seemed to share a flat fireless quality… Characters dropped half out of love, or endured a minor crisis, or just wandered around treasuring their sense of dismay about, you know, the fallenness of the world.” In case you missed it: Slate’s review of Stuart Dybek‘s new collection of stories, Paper Lantern, also delivers an acerbic take on the modernist past and current “revitalization” of the American short story.
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