“I really do hate the idea that black joy itself is a joy derived in spite of. While it may indeed include that, limiting it to such assumes that joy among black people only exists as a defiant response to oppression from white people. I’d rather believe that black folk are capable of this deep supernatural sense without having to be enslaved or disenfranchised.” For the Boston Review, Jericho Brown on poetry and joy.
Poetry and Joy
All the Beginnings Have Endings
"Every story I have ever told has a kind of breach to it, I think. You could say that my writing isn’t quite right. That all the beginnings have endings in them." Lidia Yuknavitch, who recently published an essay, "There is No Map for Grief," in the Millions, now has an essay on violence, beauty and and storytelling in Guernica.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Buckley; May; Vallgren; Miller
Out this week: The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley; Paradise City by Elizabeth May; The Merman by Carl-Johan Vallgren; and The Penguin Collected Plays of Arthur Miller. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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What Knoll Knows
Jessica Knoll shares the survival story that informed her novel, Luckiest Girl Alive.
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Geoff Dyer on Novelistic Essays and Essayistic Novels
Need to kill 37 minutes? Check out "The Novelistic Essay and the Essayistic Novel,” a lecture by Geoff Dyer from this past year’s Key West Literary Summit. (h/t Mark O’Connell)
She Has Haunted Me in Spectacular Ways
“Lillian haunted me when she was alive. And she has haunted me since her death in July 2015. And she has haunted me in spectacular ways since I published my memoir a month ago.” Sherman Alexie has cancelled the rest of a book tour to promote his new memoir about his relationship with his mother, reports The Guardian. See also: our interview with Ellen Forney, who illustrated Alexie's National Book Award-winning YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
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New Releases Tuesday
Today sees the arrival of a unique title from the Center for the Art of Translation. Wherever I Lie Is Your Bed provides translated poetry and fiction from 30 writers and is meant to introduce English-speaking readers to writers whose work would otherwise be difficult or impossible to find in English. Elsewhere, the biggest literary release of the week is Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura, which has caused no small amount of consternation among critics, and Alice Munro's latest collection, Too Much Happiness, which can be expected to be more warmly received. On the non-fiction side, a new collection of Zadie Smith essays came out last week.
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Famous Authors’ Pseudonyms
At The Washington Post, Tawny Tipples (not his real name) takes a look at famous authors' pseudonyms, and why modern writers continue to hide behind them. (via Book Bench)
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