It’s hard to get a better glimpse of the postwar white male American writer than the essays of William Styron. In My Generation, a new book of collected nonfiction, Styron writes about a raft of his contemporaries, including but not limited to Philip Roth, James Baldwin and Truman Capote. In the NYT, Charles Johnson reviews the collection. You could also read Alexander Nazaryan on a book by Styron’s daughter.
The Gang
Must’ve Been a “Ruff” Proofread
Aspiring authors, take note. If you want to sell your latest book, grow another set of legs, some fur, and bark adorably. That's what earned Uggie, the dog from The Artist, his forthcoming memoir, Uggie: My Story. Suddenly, our dog-book pun-a-thon from a while back seems prescient.
Jon Cotner’s Island Night
How’s this sound: an eight-mile midnight stroll through Fire Island, replete with Socratic dialogue and references to Sappho, Pythagoras, Diogenes and Hippocrates? Such is exactly what you get from Island Night, the latest project of poet Jon Cotner (previously mentioned for his We’re Floating and Poem Forest projects). As the poet explains to the NY Times, his mission with the walks was to revive “the ancient and endangered practices of walking and talking.”
Two Chapters of Train Dreams
You can read the first two chapters of Denis Johnson's latest novel Train Dreams on his Facebook page.
Raining Granduer
This year is all about #readwomen2014 and #weneeddiversebooks. Faint Promise of Rain, the debut novel from Anjali Mittar Duva, satisfies all these criteria. The book is just out from SheWrites press and is set in the turbulent, caste-driven setting of the Mughal empire. Read an excerpt over at Bloom.
Cather People
For The New Yorker Alex Ross describes the role Nebraska's prairies played in Willa Cather's writing, his encounters with Cather people, and how he became one himself. "From this roughshod Europe of the mind, Cather also emerged with a complex understanding of American identity. Her symphonic landscapes are inflected with myriad accents, cultures, personal narratives—all stored away in a prodigious memory. "
Times: New Film and Book Claim Five New J.D. Salinger Books to Be Published Starting in 2015
The Times is reporting that a new film and companion book (Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno) "include detailed assertions that Mr. Salinger instructed his estate to publish at least five additional books — some of them entirely new, some extending past work — in a sequence that he intended to begin as early as 2015." One of the books is said to include a retooled version of Salinger's unpublished (but available at the Princeton library) story "The Last and Best of the Peter Pans." Kristopher Jansma (The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards) wrote about the story for us in 2011. Bonus Link: Garth Risk Hallberg on Salinger's legacy.
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A Rear Window Darkly
It’s been a good year for Alfred Hitchcock, what with Vertigo beating out Citizen Kane in the once-a-decade Greatest Movie of All Time poll conducted by Sight and Sound. At Full-Stop, Rachel Baron Singer takes a look at Hitchcock and The Girl, both of which examine “the dark side” of Hitchcock’s genius.