Junot Diaz, whose novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, has been deemed “un-patriotic” and “anti-Dominican” by the Dominican Republic’s consul in New York City. Diaz had been working in Washington with Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat in the hopes of urging the U.S. government to take action against the abhorrent treatment of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic.
State of Terror
Jane Austen Was Born in a Log Cabin
The Onion continues its blockbuster literary coverage with a look into the mind of an ordinary English professor. Her epiphany? No matter what she says, her students will believe her.
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Our Correspondent
As a poet, historian, critic, translator and editor of The New Republic, Malcolm Cowley was a genuine literary polymath, which is why it’s not surprising that he wrote eloquent letters. In one, for example, he described Larry McMurtry, who Cowley taught when McMurtry was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, as a “wild young man from Texas, expert in pornography.” In the Times, Dwight Garner reviews The Long Voyage, a new collection of Cowley’s letters.
Podcasts For Writers
Writers, are you looking for some great podcasts to play on your way to work? Jon Reiss is rounding up his favorites just for you, then. Here’s part one, which we especially endorse because our friend Brad Listi gets mentioned first.
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No Slight Thing
Recommended Reading: This bizarre little story by Diane Williams as recommended by Deb Olin Unferth at Electric Literature. The story can be found in Williams’ recently published collection of stories Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine.
Halloween Reading: Existential Horror Edition
“Every year, as Halloween draws near, I get to thinking about what makes books scary,” writes Ben Dooley in his introduction to Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. It’s a book that “’gets’ existential horror,” Dooley claims. Intrigued? Well be sure to check out not only his review of the book, but also our interview with its author.
Weekend Links
When I was a kid, I read the whole Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder and never thought about it being “for girls.” At Slate, Emily Bazelon writes about why it’s wrong that “the conventional educational wisdom holds that boys don’t like to read about girls.”The New York Public Library’s 25 Books to Remember from 2005 (via Conversational Reading)It’s Perfectly Normal, a sex education book by Robie H. Harris tops the American Library Association’s list of 10 Most Challenged Books of 2005. Also on the list: The Catcher in the Rye and the Captain Underpants series.The Ten Worst Autobiographies as listed by The Independent. Not sure where else you’d find Hillary Clinton, James Frey and Hitler on the same list. (via Books Inq.)A New Orleans resident auctions off a bunch of “first-edition books, handwritten manuscripts and letters by Beat Generation writers” to raise money for Jon and Gypsy Lou Webb who published some of Charles Bukowski’s earlest works and were left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
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It’s Bracket Season
The Morning News Tournament of Books is almost here, and to stoke our excitement, the editors drew up this neat-looking circular bracket. If you squint at the top left, you’ll see our own Edan Lepucki, who’s judging The Round House by Louise Erdrich and The Fault in our Stars by John Green.