“If the sentences are meticulously made, I’ll read anything, whether it’s as destabilizing as a Gary Lutz short story or as melancholy as a Chris Ware comic. The only books I give up on are texts where the writer’s attention is concentrated so heavily on narrative questions that his or her use of language becomes careless.” Anthony Doerr, whose All The Light We Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, discusses genre, Calvin and Hobbes, and the 2,080 books he still wants to read as part of the New York Times Book Review‘s By the Book series.
“I’ll Read Anything”
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Brow Raised
Not highbrow, not lowbrow, not even middlebrow - is American culture now dominated by the upper middle brow?
The Poetry of Yeezus
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The Harper Lee Industry Chugs On
Thirty-eight letters written from the To Kill a Mockingbird author to a friend from 2005-2010 are up for auction this week, including Harper Lee's reaction to Barack Obama's inauguration. See also: this close reading of the birds themselves.
Ready Made
Oddly, America's only exposure to the French political artist collective Tiqqun has come through onetime Fox News darling Glenn Beck. The Los Angeles Review of Books is here to right that wrong.
Shakar’s Story Continues
The Observer picks up Luminarium author Alex Shakar's narrative where his piece here at The Millions left off. (via @sarahw)
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Tuesday New Release Day: Wray; Tennant-Moore; Wink; Sorrentino; de Kerangal; Gustine; Barbery; Silva; Warlick; Enrigue; Amdahl
Out this week: The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray; Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore; Dog Run Moon by Callan Wink; The Fugitives by Christopher Sorrentino; The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal; You Should Pity Us Instead by Amy Gustine; The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery; Square Wave by Mark de Silva; The Arrangement by Ashley Warlick; Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue; and The Daredevils by Gary Amdahl. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Regarding the Pain of Others
Can confessional writing be literary? Kelly Sundberg writes, “When I sit down to write literary writing about my trauma, I am a writer first, and a trauma survivor second, but I am not ever not a trauma survivor, and as such, I am often interested in examining the roots and effects of my own trauma.”
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