A Way Out

Rumors of John Cheever's death? Greatly exaggerated.HarperCollins sets out to test the proposition that there really is no such thing as bad publicity.BHL rips Valkyrie and Tom Cruise.Maud lauds Marlon James, author of The Book of Night Women.The New York Public Library names Millions guest contributor Sana Krasikov a finalist for its Young Lions award. Congratulations, Sana!More Intelligent Life interviews Jon Fasman, another Young Lion in waiting and author of The Unpossessed CityAlso at MiL: Lorin Stein wants a stimulus plan for book critics. (Hear! Hear!)Millions-fave Paul Theroux interviewed by the Boston Globe: "People say to me: How can I become a writer? I always say: one, leave home; two, tell the truth."xkcd takes on the Kindle."Jack Kerouac's 'lost' novel The Sea is My Brother, which he wrote during his years as a merchant seaman, is to be published in its entirety for the first time."Soon there will be a literary prize for everyone: "The St. Francis College Literary Prize is designed for a fourth published book of fiction." ($50,000!)The strangest title shortlistVia Gwenda, the Wikipedia find of the week: "A book curse was the most widely-employed and effective method of discouraging the thievery of manuscripts during the medieval period."The best reasoning yet for why the Kindle/"Text-to-Speech" uproar is dumb. Meanwhile, Amazon backs down."I", "we", "two" and "three" the oldest English words.A resourceful group of Chinese enthusiasts creates bootleg translations of every issue of The Economist.Shark-jumping: "HarperCollins Pays Big Advance For A Book Of... Tweets"Stuff White Readers Should Like

What effect, if any, are video games having on literature? Tobias Carroll at Hazlitt explores the surprising liminal space between video game narratives and literary fiction. This essay from The Millions is a nice complement.

"I think the key to social media for authors is remembering this: its main purpose is really to show that you are a real human being who lives in this world." Year in Reading alums (respectively) Celeste Ng, Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, and Adam M. Grant talk to LitHub about how to be a writer on the internet.