Mexican novelist and part-time literary prankster Mario Bellatin is up to his old tricks again. This time, the one-armed author/provocateur has decided to wage war against his own publisher. Bellatin claims the twentieth anniversary edition of his classic Beauty Salon was published too early and without his express consent–a brief “coda from the author” was included which Bellatin insists was nothing but a draft in progress. As such, he has been urging fans not to purchase his book.
Salon de Huh?
Poems in Extremity
Recommended reading: Sean Singer reviews Poetry of Witness for The Rumpus and calls for readers to see “poems as ethical and political act[s] in the face of extremity.” Pair with selections from editor Carolyn Forché‘s essay on 20th century poetry of witness.
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Aargh!
An analysis of the unsexy history of the word “Argh” with a catalog of its appearance during sexually explicit scenes in 5o Shades of Grey. Cf. Elizabeth Minkle’s Millions essay on 5o Shades and fan fiction.
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Cohen on Joyce
On Bloomsday, Joshua Cohen highlights Joyce’s heirs around the world.
…And If You Still Want More on The Pale King
I can’t recommend John Jeremiah Sullivan‘s 7,000-word article on The Pale King highly enough – not because he gets everything right, but because it’s what long-form writing about books should look like: passionate, lucid, wide-ranging, and awfully fun to read. I salute GQ for running it, and hope to see more literary coverage there in the future.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Lee; Jiles; McCarthy
New this week: The Boy Who Escaped Paradise by J.M. Lee; News of the World by Paulette Jiles; and The Hollow Men by Rob McCarthy. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest fiction and nonfiction book previews.
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It’s a Mystery
There are many possible answers to the question “where do you write?”, but one of the strangest, and most unexpected, has to be “I don’t know.” At The Rumpus, Brendan Constantine admits that he doesn’t write in any one place, and that his memory for where he’s written before is “completely unreliable.” We surveyed our own staff a couple years ago to see how they answered the question.
By Way of Beijing
After spending eight years in Beijing, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos is leaving to work in DC. To commemorate his long period of international journalism, he wrote a farewell post on his blog, Letter from China.