“I almost understand why God laid this affliction on him.” A new piece of fiction by Annie Proulx is always worth a read. Fun fact: there was a time in her career when Proulx had to pretend she was a man in order to be published.
Resolution
Even the Editors Get Rejected
Perhaps someone should compile a Salon des Refusés of Poetry Magazine‘s rejected poets.
Poetic Pugilists
For anyone searching for some weighty longreads about the current state of poetry, look no further than the lively (and longwinded) debate between Matvei Yankelevich and Marjorie Perloff sparked by the latter’s piece, “Poetry on the Brink.”
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“My name is Geoff Dyer and I endorse this.”
Geoff Dyer endorses Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station , John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead –our own Bill Morris loves it too!–and a generalized aversion toward seafood in his interview with Morten Høi Jensen for Book Forum. While they ostensibly met to talk about Zona–reviewed on The Millions here–it’s perhaps unsurprising that they managed to digress so liberally: “we chatted about his review of Richard Bradford’s Martin Amis: the Biography, and by the end he was giving me advice about which David Markson book I should read first. Our interview, in other words, assumed the shape of a Geoff Dyer book.”
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Clash of the Esoterics
Two guys who can talk about just about anything – Nicholson Baker and NPR’s Tom Ashbrook – did just that yesterday on On Point, as Baker promoted his latest opus, The Anthologist.
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Surrealist and Sweet
I’ve written before about Haruki Murakami‘s advice column, but at that point it was still a work-in-progress with few details or samples available. A month later, the submission period for questions is over and Murakami’s responses are being published. The Washington Post calls the column “surrealist and sweet,” and NPR has reported on the ongoing Mr.Murakami’s Place project as well, with an emphasis on semi-magical stories involving cats.
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