Most of our discussions about changing the canon revolve around adding onetime marginalized writers. But there’s a flipside to this — who do we need to eject? In a Bookends column for the Times, James Parker and Francine Prose pick greats that are no longer great.
A Bit Rusty
Portland’s Mini Libraries
Portland neighborhoods are nurturing camaraderie with little red library boxes.
Tuesday New Release Day: Barnes, Brooks, Thompson, Le Clezio, Shteyngart, Amis
New this week is Julian Barnes’ new collection of stories, Pulse. We also have new novels from Geraldine Brooks (Caleb’s Crossing) and Jean Thompson (The Day We Left Home). There’s also a new collection available from Nobel laureate J.M.G. Le Clezio (Mondo and Other Stories). And new in paperback: Millions Hall of Famer Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart and The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis.
Zora Neale Hurston: A Blurred Life
Michael Adno examines the unknown life of Zora Neale Hurston, "maybe the most important American writer to have ever lived."
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The Slow Cookers
Dwight Garner, writing in the current issue of The New York Times Magazine, laments that so many high-end American novelists seem to be working on “the nine-year plan,” delivering a new novel roughly once a decade. He cites Jeffrey Eugenides, who will be out soon with The Marriage Plot, his third novel in 18 years, along with such slow cookers as Jonathan Franzen, Donna Tartt and Michael Chabon. One name Garner neglected to mention is the Pulitzer Prize-winner William Kennedy, who will be out next month with Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes, the eighth installment in his Albany cycle and his first novel since Roscoe appeared nine years and nine months ago. Look for our review of it here next month.
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Drinking Fitzgerald Under the Table
“Most of us can’t write like our heroes, but nearly every one of us can try to drink like them.” Ian Crouch examines the myth of the great alcoholic writer and Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend in The New Yorker‘s “The Book That Will Make You Never Want to Drink Again.”
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That Moment When
“I can still remember with complete clarity the way I felt when whatever it was came fluttering down into my hands that day 30 years ago on the grass behind the outfield fence at Jingu Stadium; and I recall just as clearly the warmth of the wounded pigeon I picked up in those same hands that spring afternoon a year later, near Sendagaya Elementary School. I always call up those sensations whenever I think about what it means to write a novel.” Haruki Murakami on “The Moment [He] Became a Novelist,” excerpted on Lit Hub from the new double edition of his first novels, Wind/Pinball.
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Venice by Couch
You can skip the intrusive cruise ship (and please the city’s residents in the process) by taking a tour of Venice’s canal system from the comfort of your own home. Thanks, Google.
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