Has Edward St. Aubyn killed the existentialist novel? Jacob Kiernan at Full Stop Magazine has a few ideas about it. If it’s existential quandary you’re after, this essay for The Millions on the beautiful afterlife of books–which may not be so much of an afterlife, after all–will be perfect for you.
Author as Commercial Mechanism
Freeplay
StoryBundle, a new service that lets you pay as much (or as little) as you want for preselected bundles of ebooks, announced on Wednesday that their latest bundle is a collection of writing about video games. Among other things, it includes two books by Jordan Mechner, the man behind Prince of Persia, as well as two issues of Kill Screen.
Team Betty
Archie finally chooses between Betty and Veronica–but, don’t worry, there are 5 more issues in the series… (via @largeheartedboy)
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An Objective Look at Seven M.F.A. Rejections
At McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, an objective look at seven M.F.A. program rejections compared to other historic rejections.
Time Out of Mind
Are we now living in a golden age of the uncanny? The Millions contributor Porochista Khakpour suspects that we are, and she also suspects that our historical moment, populated as it is with alienating developments and surreal art, is key to understanding the work of Helen Oyeyemi. In the Times, Khakpour reviews Oyeyemi’s new novel. (You could also read both writers’ Year in Reading pieces.)
Chicago’s Conscience
“If Gwendolyn Brooks wrote fiction, we’d say she was brilliant at world-building–but the world she builds is the real one, the part that didn’t used to make it into the pages of literary magazines.” On the continued relevance of Brooks’s poetry in the context of racial violence in Chicago. Pair with a piece on the power of reading poetry aloud.
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“I don’t remember any of these pages.”
“Audiobooks Read By You: Just like reading a book without actually reading a book, by reading a book and recording it in a studio.”
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Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s Book of Genesis
Daniel Mallory Ortberg tackles a wide array of subjects in his next book, including William Shatner, HGTV's House Hunters, and the Book of Genesis.
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