In a conversation from Upstairs at the Strand, Year in Reading alumnus Junot Díaz and Hilton Als discuss masculinity, science fiction, realism and truth, and representations of Latino culture. Pair with Paul Morton’s Millions interview with Díaz.
Compressed Madness
“Neither word exactly conjures security”
You may have heard that Vulture editor Adam Sternbergh was nominated for an Edgar Award for his book Shovel Ready last week. Now, to give Vulture readers a taste of his literary style, he’s published an annotated excerpt of the sequel Near Enemy, which came out earlier this month. As the introduction puts it, the excerpt includes “thoughts on history’s first murder, the dubious appeal of Pepé Le Pew, and just how crazy New York apartment locks used to be.”
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The Winning Team
Graywolf Press – the publisher behind Citizen, The Empathy Exams, The Argonauts, and On Immunity: An Inoculation – has built a reputation as “a scrappy little press that harnessed and to some extent generated a revolution in nonfiction, turning the previously unprepossessing genre of the ‘lyric essay’ into a major cultural force.” Over at Vulture, Boris Kachka writes about the history of one of the nation’s leading independent literary publishers.
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The Paper Trail
What writers are actually earning money? Over at Electric Literature, Lincoln Michel takes a look at the new Author Earnings report, which scours Amazon bestseller lists and extrapolates the data to make claims about the state of publishing and self-publishing. Here’s an older Millions piece by Edan Lepucki on self-publishing as supplemental and influential to the traditional route.
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Shepard’s Final Word
“He wrote the first drafts by hand, and when that became too difficult, dictated sections of the book into a tape recorder.” Before his death in July, playwright and actor Sam Shepard wrote a novel called Spy of the First Person, which is forthcoming from Knopf in December. From our archives, a list of writers who also act.
Whose Tale
“At first blush, bringing an eight-year-old to one of William Shakespeare’s quirkier plays in an effort to help her see herself, an Asian American girl, in popular culture did seem a rather odd decision.” Nicole Chung for Hazlitt on The Winter’s Tale, representation, and parenting in the age of Trump. And wouldn’t you know it, we have a piece specifically about that very play – “three/fifths wintry tragedy, two/fifths vernal comedy, and wholly a masterwork” – right here.
Revisiting the Archive
Recommended Listening: Esquire has a new podcast on classic stories from their archive. The latest installment features Nick Flynn on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up, which first appeared in the magazine in 1936.
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Wait, What Was I Writing About?
In a fantastic piece for Full-Stop, Jesse Miller checks out Nicholas Carr (whose book was picked in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Year in Reading), Paul La Farge, David Foster Wallace, and our diminishing ability to concentrate.