“It suddenly went off: ‘Oh, fuck, I’m going to try it as a novel, aren’t I?’ A terrifying realization because John Lennon is such an iconic figure—and the feeling I get out around there, this kind of eeriness, this kind of strange haunted reverberation. I mean, the fuckin’ Atlantic is a really weird thing to grow up right beside.” Millions staff writer Bill Morris sat down with Kevin Barry to talk about his new book, Beatlebone, and about the trouble of getting John Lennon’s voice right on the page. Morris has brought you a bit on Barry in the past.
Imagine All the Islands
Tuesday New Release Day: Canin; Jansma; Majka; Griffin; Kennedy; Perabo; Dacey; Montes
Out this week: A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin; Why We Came to the City by Kristopher Jansma; Cities I’ve Never Lived In by Sara Majka; Hide by Matthew Griffin; The Blue Hour by Douglas Kennedy; Why They Run The Way They Do by Susan Perabo; We’ve Already Gone This Far by Patrick Dacey; and Perfect Days by Raphael Montes. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
On the Brilliance of Chris Ware
The folks at the outstanding Chicago-based journal The Point offer, as a teaser for their fourth issue, a lengthy consideration of the cartoonist Chris Ware.
Illustrated Goethe
At The Rumpus: illustrations by Harry Clarke for a 1925 edition of Goethe’s Faust.
Amy Tan on Being the First for Some Readers
Nicole Chung interviews Amy Tan about her new memoir Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, one of the highlights is when Tan ponders being one of the ‘first’ authors that people name/read when they think of Asian-American literature. “But when [“The Joy Luck Club”] came out, it did feel like there were many expectations from all areas — not just in the Asian American community, but in Asian culture itself, and in any ethnic studies community. There were people who said ‘At last!’ and there were people who said ‘How dare she?’ […] I wanted to say: I’m not writing sociology, it just so happens this is what happened in my own family.”
“Aftermath and Armageddon”
“There is something terrifying but also fascinating about contemplating the end of humanity,” and on Oct. 25th our own Edan Lepucki and Emily St. John Mandel (whose novel Station Eleven was just shortlisted for the National Book Award) will be discussing their recent apocalyptic fictions at the Texas Book Festival.
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Something Cannibalistic
“When it comes to the personal essay, we want so much and there is something cannibalistic about our desire. We want essayists to splay themselves bare. We want to see how much they are willing to bleed for us. This desire introduces an interesting tension for essay writers. How much should they bleed, and how much blood should they save for themselves?” Roxane Gay reviews Meghan Daum‘s The Unspeakable and reflects on the personal essay for The New York Times Book Review. Pair with our own Hannah Gersen‘s Millions review of the same book.