Over at The Point, Spencer McAvoy writes about the language and vision of Joy Williams, a writer who “instead of drawing boundaries between us and whatever Other, posits language as an experience of self-limitedness.” Williams’s new collection of short stories, The Visiting Privilege, is one of the most anticipated books of 2015.
On the Limitations of Language
Tuesday New Release Day: Irving, Morrison, Mantel, Colbert, Patchett
Time to dust off the old John Irving Recurring Themes Matrix because his new book In One Person is out today. Also out are Home by America’s last Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s hotly anticipated sequel to Booker- and Rooster-winning Wolf Hall. Also out is I Am a Pole, Stephen Colbert’s “children’s book” that was inspired by an epic visit from Maurice Sendak. Out in paperback is Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder.
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Refusing the Rest
“My father’s life intersected with a century of conflict, horror and invention. He deciphered these histories for me, making me his scribe in a new century. My successes were his successes, and his stories thrum in every word I write. He taught me to see like a writer, to be attentive to the stories that spring up everywhere … It’s an attentiveness to the world, to ordinary suffering, to the love that persists in its midst. My sense of the world, of history and humanity flows from this awareness — and the attendant grim humor — my father used as his guiding lamp in the darkness cast by racism and poverty.” Over at The New York Times, Walter Mosley recalls the lessons taught to him by his father, Leroy.
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“What a world. It could be so wonderful if it wasn’t for certain people.”
Woody Allen wasn’t kidding when he said he wasn’t going to film in New York City ever again. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the setting for Allen’s next film will be Denmark.
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Book Ninjas
On Monday we mentioned that the MTA has started offering free e-books underground as part of its Subway Reads program, but they weren’t the first to make books an integral part of the public transit experience. London’s Books on the Underground was first, but then came a more interesting development in Australia: book ninjas. Books on the Rails is a gonzo experiment started by two Melbourne residents who began releasing free books – actual, paper books – into the wilds of the city’s tram system. About 300 books are currently in circulation in what’s possibly the world’s most open lending library.
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New Fiction by a Classic Writer
New Directions has just released The Complete Stories of Brazilian legend Clarice Lispector, newly translated by Katrina Dodson and edited by Benjamin Moser. There are eight stories in the collection that had never before appeared in English: “Covert Joy,” “Remnants of Carnival,” “Brasília,” “Beauty and the Beast or The Big Wound, “One Day Less” (one of the two final stories left in manuscript at Lispector’s death), “Gertrudes Asks for Advice,” “Another Couple of Drunks,” and “The Escape.” Check out Magdalena Edwards‘s Millions review of the collection.
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Crocodiles and Chinese Queer Classics
“It was only in 1987, when she went to National Taiwan University, that the censorship laws were relaxed. Yet the censorship laws seemed to have an opposing effect on her literary ambitions. ” Meet Qiu Miaojin, the first woman in Chinese literature to come out as openly gay. Ankita Chakraborty at Longreads has more on this remarkable writer.
Clickity Clack
Where did Modernism come from? Did it spring from the alienation engendered by the nineteenth century? Or did it spring instead from — as Hannah Sullivan argues in her new book, The Work of Revision — the typewriter?
Picture a Conflict
Bring Back the Illustrated Book! vs. The Illustrated Book: It Never Went Away! (Bonus: our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s novella has a cameo in the latter.)
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