New this week: The Dying Grass by William T. Vollmann; Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal; Gonzo Girl by Cheryl Della Pietra; How to Be a Grown-Up by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus; Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans; and The Night Stages by Jane Urquhart. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Vollmann; Stradal; Pietra; McLaughlin & Kraus; Evans; Urquhart
The Real World
Recommended Reading: Tyler Stoddard Smith’s satirical essay on the new literary movement “The Real Newism” at Hobart. “Did Virgil go to hell? No. Did Virginia Woolf go to Disney World? No, and it turns out that Orlando isn’t a place, but a dude. And did Truman Capote ever have breakfast at Tiffany’s? Yes, but the eggs Benedict was cold and the bloody marys were ‘bullshit.'”
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Brow Raised
Not highbrow, not lowbrow, not even middlebrow – is American culture now dominated by the upper middle brow?
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HBD EB!
Happy first birthday to Emily Books! The Observer ran a little recap of the book club-slash-store’s lascivious first anniversary party, where Kate Zambreno and Tamara Faith Berger both read from their recent novels. Here’s the Million’s interview with Zambreno, and here’s a #LitBeat from one of Berger’s previous readings from her steamy wonder of a novel, Maidenhead.
Poet Cops
“The worlds of poetry and law enforcement would seem to share little. But a few poet cops hope to change that perception, one line at a time.”
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Hat in Hand
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Hearing the Voices
“Macbeth has a twist that sets it apart from every other Shakespearean tragedy: Macbeth murders his voice. Mad with fear that Banquo’s heirs will seize the throne, Macbeth has Banquo killed. After that, our antihero is on his own. There is no one left to verify what is real and what is not … When Macbeth’s voice dies, everything else disappears, too. Macbeth is alone.” This excerpt from Jillian Keenan’s Sex With Shakespeare touches on everything from sexuality in Singapore to The O.C. fan-fiction.
Double, double, toil and trouble
The summer issue of Lapham’s Quarterly is here; The latest issue is magic themed and offers a smorgasbord of writing on sorcery, metamorphosis, and visitations. Most magic of all, much of it is available online for free!