Does literature have to be timeless? Over at Electric Literature, Kevin Pickard debates pop culture references in novels. Pair with Bill Morris’s Millions essay on books about the near future.
A Matter of Time
Il Maestro
Everyone knows that Joyce grew up in Dublin, but few people know that he spent much of his life in Italy. At Open Letters Monthly, you can read a long piece on his years in the city of Trieste. (You can also try your hand at our quiz.)
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Davies; Koch; Roy; Cardenas; Butler; O’Neil; McWhorter; le Carré; Shetterly; Boggs; Hochschild; Foer
Out this week: The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies; Dear Mr. M by Herman Koch; Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy; The Revolutionaries Try Again by Mauro Javier Cardenas; Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler; Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil; Words on the Move by John McWhorter; The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carré; Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly; The Art of Waiting by Belle Boggs; Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild; and Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
BLOOM Seeks Social Media Intern and Editorial Assistant
●
●
Background Noise
We hear a lot about the books writers read while drafting their own novels and stories. But we don’t hear as much about the music, TV shows and other forms of art that kept them going throughout the process. At Page-Turner, Amy Bloom catalogues the influences on her latest novel.
●
●
On Forgiveness and Thoughts of Transgression
At BOMB Magazine’s website, an interview with A.M. Homes, conducted by (who else) a friend who accompanies her to synagogue. Among other things, the two discuss Yom Kippur, adoption, and May We Be Forgiven, the author’s latest novel (which we reviewed).
Between Life and Death
Over at the Public Domain Review, Sharon Ruston examines the scientific background to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, from resuscitation to galvanism.