David Lipsky writes for Harper’s about Letters to Véra, which collects Vladimir Nabokov’s letters to his wife of fifty-two years. As he puts it, “Companion, agent, live-in editor, bodyguard, and the dedicatee of almost all her husband’s books, Véra Nabokov, née Slonim, has reached a strange elevation in our cultural sky.”
Letters to Véra
Make Way for Ward
Jesmyn Ward signed a deal for two books with Simon & Schuster: one adult novel with Scribner and the other a middle-grade novel with Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, according to Publisher’s Weekly. From our archives: Ward’s 2017 Year in Reading entry and our interview with the two-time National Book Award winner.
Tournament of Books Kicks Off
Today marks the opening round of the always-worth-following Morning News Tournament of Books. In the ring, Adam by Ariel Schrag faces off against The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, in a match refereed by Matthea Harvey. For background, you could read our review of The Bone Clocks.
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Equal Rites
Discworld author and “professional morbid bastard” Terry Pratchett has announced that his daughter will in the future take over the long-running fantasy series due to his battle with Alzheimer’s.
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“Any given moment”
In mid-January, ten days after moving to California, Geoff Dyer suffered a stroke while throwing away trash in his new home. At the hospital, he recovered quickly, but the incident left him “conscious that the ground could open Adairishly beneath my feet at any moment.” In the LRB, he writes about the experience. (Related: Dyer wrote two Year in Reading entries for The Millions.)
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Outkube
The Onion‘s tired of incendiary comments left by trolls reading their articles. (Who isn’t?) So the publication has created Outkube, a “decoy website” rife with troll-bait. It’s hysterical. Elsewhere, they’ve started curating a list of people who just don’t get the joke.
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By the Horns
Chances are that Hemingway is the only writer who comes to mind when you think of Spanish bullfighting. Well, clear some space in your mental sphere, because A.L. Kennedy wrote another entry in the bullfighting canon. On the Ploughshares blog, Miles Wray takes a look at Kennedy’s 2001 On Bullfighting.
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