Stick ’em up, partner! In a confusing marriage of literature and implicit violence, a bookstore in Austin, Texas is offering a ten percent discount to any customers openly carrying a handgun in their establishment.
Gun Fight at the O.K. Bookstore
As I Sit Writing
"I had invented a writing table out of a wheelbarrow in the coal bunker, just beyond a wall from where a dynamo ran. It made a deep, constant humming noise. There was no more work to do until about 4 a.m., when we would have to clean the fires and get up steam again." The University of Mississippi power plant where William Faulkner wrote his self-styled "tour-de-force" As I Lay Dying is slated to be demolished. Here's a nice, complementary piece on slowing down to read Faulkner.
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Death and Dishonor
At Granta’s website, the novelist David McConnell explains his fascination with the “honor killing,” a hate crime targeted at gay men that inspired his latest book.
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The Best Book for Every State
This week in book-related internet graphics: "A Map of the Best Book for Every State," complete with the promise that "every last one will let you understand a time and place in a more profound way than you maybe thought possible."
Debut Novel from n+1 Co-Editor Brings in Big Bucks
Those who watch the book deal emails from Publishers Lunch know that Chad Harbach, an editor at n+1, recently sold his first novel, The Art of Fielding, but a Bloomberg article today reveals it went for an eye-popping $650,000. The book centers around baseball at a fictional Wisconsin college, and Bloomberg pegs the deal as "one of the highest prices for a man’s first novel on a topic appealing to a male audience." Possible buried lede: n+1 compatriots Benjamin Kunkel and Keith Gessen saw their first novels sell 48,000 and 7,000 copies respectively, according to Neilsen BookScan.
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