New this week: The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota; The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien; Chicago by Brian Doyle; The Destroyer in the Glass by Noah Warren; Dothead by Amit Majmudar; Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead by Millions contributor Buzz Poole; and New and Collected Poems: 1975-2015 by Jay Parini. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Sahota; O’Brien; Doyle; Warren; Majmudar; Poole; Parini
Patron Half-Elephant
Francine Prose has an idiosyncratic theory that the Hindu god Ganesh is a vital part of her writing process. In a VQR essay, she explains that her portrait of the deity (which she purchased forty years ago at a bazaar in Mumbai) gives her a kind of confidence that goes beyond superstition. As support for this belief, she points out that Ganesh is known in some quarters as “the writer’s god.”
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“The truth of poetry is not the truth of history”
Philip Levine is the current US Poet Laureate, and that’s great, but wouldn’t we all rather live in this alternate world fashioned by The Onion?
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This is your brain on metaphor
Annie Murphy Paul looks to neuroscience to understand the pleasure of the written word.
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Inspiration, Via Goat
Literary prizes are nothing new, but prizes that give writers real estate are a thoroughly modern development. At Salon, Michele Filgate investigates our odd new economy, in which lucky writers win leases to homes, inns and (in one case) a goat farm. You could also read our own Nick Ripatrazone on the Amtrak residency.
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Live fo Ecruos
I’ve recommended a couple of articles in recent weeks about the new novel by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Unfortunately, as Liam O’Brien explains at the Melville House blog, it may not be a good idea to read it, especially if you’re impressionable. Why? The book contains a hidden trove of Satanic messages. (h/t The Rumpus)
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The State of Book Reviews
At Poets & Writers, National Book Critics Circle board member Jane Ciabattari offers a 4,000-word look at where the dust has settled as newspaper book reviews have shrunk and online book sites have proliferated.
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