“I have come to realize how much I have, throughout my life, bought into the narrative of this alluring myth of personal responsibility and excellence. I realize how much I believe that all good things will come if I—if we—just work hard enough.” Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay writes for VQR Online about “The Price of Black Ambition.” Pair with our review of An Untamed State.
The Price of Black Ambition
“I’ll Read Anything”
"If the sentences are meticulously made, I’ll read anything, whether it’s as destabilizing as a Gary Lutz short story or as melancholy as a Chris Ware comic. The only books I give up on are texts where the writer’s attention is concentrated so heavily on narrative questions that his or her use of language becomes careless." Anthony Doerr, whose All The Light We Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, discusses genre, Calvin and Hobbes, and the 2,080 books he still wants to read as part of the New York Times Book Review's By the Book series.
Virtual Poetry Seminar
The University of Iowa’s International Writing House is offering a free 7-week virtual poetry seminar this February. The course will be taught be poet Margaret Ross, and it is open to anyone with an internet connection. Attendance will be capped at 15, however, and the deadline for applications is January 28th. More details can be found here.
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Balzac in the 21st Century
Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the 21st Century, has said that he drew inspiration from the social-criticism novels of Austen, Dickens, and Balzac. According to the LA Review of Books, the new Gilded Age that Piketty critiques has generated--and will continue to generate--social novels of its own.
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We at The Millions Now Trademark “Zuckerberg”
Sorry, everyone who works in publishing. Looks like it's time to call it quits. Per Facebook's new user agreement, the firm asserts trademark on the word "book."
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Books on the Radio
In case you missed it the first time, Tulsa's KWGS the week re-aired an interview with my co-editor Jeff Martin on our book that came out earlier this year, The Late American Novel.
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Early Fire
Amazon says it's shipping the Kindle Fire a day early, i.e. today.