Next year marks the 20th anniversary of David Foster Wallace‘s Infinite Jest. To celebrate, Little, Brown is holding a cover design contest, with a $1,000 grand prize. Also, you know, the pride of seeing Infinite Jest published in your cover. Whatever, no big deal.
Redesigning Infinite Jest
Homework Diary is Currently Full
“Dear Mrs D, Thanks for your homework. Your idea of writing a Christmas ghost story was a good one, but it’s not really the kind of thing I tend to do — it’s a little bit too genre for my tastes. Try Kevin, who sits next to me. He loves that stuff.” Over at McSweeney’s, Nick Hornby advises his son on excuses for failing to hand in his English homework, excuses which Hornby learned are acceptable during a thirty-year career in journalism, books, and film.
Top Longreads of 2011
They say you’re only as good as the company you keep. If that’s the case, we’re thrilled to have published Jim Santel‘s piece on The Moviegoer, which has made The Awl staff’s list of “Top Longreads of 2011“.
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day
New releases this week are Lydia Davis’ new translation of Madame Bovary, Ingrid Betancourt’s memoir Even Silence Has an End, The Prizefighter and the Playwright, a book about the unlikely relationship between George Bernard Shaw and boxer Gene Tunney, and the poetry collection Human Chain by Nobel-Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney.
●
●
American Literature in the 19th Century
“American literature in the 19th century speaks in the 21st in terms we have not yet abandoned – for all our technology, globalism, and panache.” (via Arts and Letters Daily)