McSweeney’s takes us behind the scenes of the Butterball hotline during the holiday craziness. You could also check out Alexander Cockburn’s short piece on Thanksgiving.
Butterball HR
James Franco + n+1
It’s time for another literary James Franco sighting. This time he’s popping up in the table of contents for the next issue of n+1.
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Considering the Bittersweet End of Susan Falls
The 12th Caine Prize
NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story “Hitting Budapest” (pdf).
Unknown Parables
“The rest of her speech to the U.N. that day is an exact outline for what she wanted the rest of the Parable books to be about — a way out that she did not live to write herself.” For Electric Literature, Kristopher Jansma explores the unwritten Parable books of acclaimed sci-fi author Octavia Butler. Pair with our consideration of Butler’s novel Kindred.
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Stop the presses. Or, rather, restart the presses!
Owing to a successful Facebook campaign and some outcries from the Press’s authors, University of Missouri administrators have decided to reinstate the University of Missouri Press—which was recently shuttered—and “rehire” its editor in chief, Clair Wilcox. The goal now, according to the university system’s president, is to “reinvent [the press] in a more cost-effective technological model.”
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Mass-Market Edition is Dead
Harper Lee’s estate will no longer allow publication of the mass-market paperback edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, which was popular with schools. Over at The New Republic, Alex Shephard writes that “Without a mass-market option, schools will likely be forced to pay higher prices for bulk orders of the trade paperback edition—and given the perilous state of many school budgets, that could very easily lead to it being assigned in fewer schools.” For more about the author’s legacy, read Robert Rea’s Millions essay on his travels to her home.
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Ada Limón on Reading Ray Bradbury in High School
"I had never read stories like this." Ada Limón on being given Ray Bradbury's The October Country by her high school English teacher.
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The Literary Criticism of T.S. Eliot
“[M]ore people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art.” Who other than T.S. Eliot could get away with questioning the artistic quality of Hamlet?
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