Out this week: Barkskins by Annie Proulx; Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramona Ausubel; I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro; The Course of Love by Alain de Botton; and The Girls by Emma Cline (which we reviewed). For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Proulx; Ausubel; Notaro; de Botton; Cline
Not for Kids
What makes an idea too odd to sustain a children’s book? The answer: characteristics that make it, as Steven Heller explains, “so high concept or clever [it’s] deemed difficult for a child to enjoy.”
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Batuman the Bestseller
Brilliant, funny essay by Elif Batuman about “life after a bestseller,” including the time she asked Jonathan Franzen if had any weed. Bonus Link: Batuman at The Millions.
On the Auction Block
It exists! The long-lost letter from Neal Cassady that inspired Jack Kerouac to write On the Road will be auctioned next month at Christies, ending an 18-month-long battle over its ownership and another 60-year-long battle over its existence. As Kerouac said, “It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves.”
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Talking with Colum McCann
“I’ve been writing about ‘real’ characters and placing them in a shaped, or fictional, world. Writing TransAtlantic, there was never really a plan, at the early stages, to question the line between fiction and nonfiction. I just went on instinct, and then these worlds started to braid.” The Rumpus interviews Colum McCann.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hill; Donohoe; Bausch; Hall & Hobbs
Out this week: The Nix by Nathan Hill; Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe; The Legend of Jesse Smoke by Robert Bausch; and Sex and Death, a new story anthology including pieces by Kevin Barry, Wells Tower and Yiyun Li. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
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Double, double, toil and trouble
The summer issue of Lapham’s Quarterly is here; The latest issue is magic themed and offers a smorgasbord of writing on sorcery, metamorphosis, and visitations. Most magic of all, much of it is available online for free!