Last week, I directed you to a piece in The Atlantic by John Yorke on the substance of stories. His argument: that all stories have one thing in common–their plot. Now, Lincoln Michel at Electric Literature suggests that rather it is all story structure models that have one thing in common–and that thing is bullshit.
All Stories Are Stories
Tuesday New Release Day: Basu; Fuller; Bollen; Spencer; Fallon; Laird
Out this week: The Windfall by Diksha Basu; Quiet Until the Thaw by Alexandra Fuller; The Destroyers by Christopher Bollen; River Under the Road by Scott Spencer; The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon; and Modern Gods by Nick Laird. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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Children Coming Together
Lynda Barry illustrates Carrie (of horror fame) and Heidi (of childhood book fame) meeting for the first time.
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OK, this is complicated
Nigella Lawson, British domestic goddess and former book critic, seems to have offended her novelist friend Sophie Waugh in a move reminiscent of the beginnings the hallowed hissy fit between V.S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux.
War and Sociology
What can we learn about Leo Tolstoy by reading the German sociologist Max Weber? Let Jeremy Klemin from 3:AM Magazine explain. While we’re on Tolstoy, here’s a complementary piece that asks the age old question–who’s better: Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky?
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