In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast has rocketed to number one best-seller status in France as an emblem of cultural defiance. With a title in its French iteration that roughly translates to “Paris is a celebration,” the sudden popularity of the book run even Amazon out of stock.
Paris Est Une Fête
A state of shock.
When a professor of literature wrote Flannery O'Connor for a master key for interpreting her story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," he probably did not expect her particularly unimpressed reply: "Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it." (Via the ever-excellent Letters of Note.)
Bibliophilic Crack
In the spring of 2006, John Unsworth taught a graduate seminar on "Twentieth-Century American Bestsellers." It led to one of history's finest class projects--a browsable database of bestsellers, 337 in all. As with any bestseller lists, you'll find a range of titles, everything from Thomas Wolfe to Tom Clancy, but click through and find that each entry includes an extremely detailed description of the book's history (these were compiled by graduate students, after all); a mini-essay on its reception; images of covers, page layouts, and even some ads; and more. It is, in short, bibliophilic crack. (Thanks Craig)
Keep It to Yourself
Recommended Reading: Against book lending and borrowing.
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Best Screams
Peruse the complete ballots for Leroy Stevens' "Favorite Recorded Scream" project. "Won't Get Fooled Again?" Oh, yes, it's in there.
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I wonder if Garth speaks Hungarian?
László Krasznahorkai is giving a reading in NYC, and our own Garth Risk Hallberg is acting as host. You might also enjoy this: Paul Morton interviewed Krasznahorkai for The Millions just last month.
All the Sad Young Literary Women
Are New York Times book reviewers biased toward writers who are “white and male and live in Brooklyn”? Chris Jackson at The Atlantic laments all the sad young literary women.