“Garth Greenwell’s project with What Belongs to You is to remind us how illicit cruising and anonymous sex figure within the modern gay identity. As the gay marriage movement helps sanitize (and de-sexualize) queerness, Greenwell brings the dark and sordid elements of sex and promiscuity back into sharp relief.” Over at Pacific Standard, Nathan Smith writes on the new gay novel. Pair with the Millions review of Greenwell’s book.
The New Gay Novel
Teach Yourself Italian
Recommended Reading: This essay by Jhumpa Lahiri on language and translation, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein. Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her collection of stories The Interpreter of Maladies.
Redesigning Infinite Jest
Next year marks the 20th anniversary of David Foster Wallace‘s Infinite Jest. To celebrate, Little, Brown is holding a cover design contest, with a $1,000 grand prize. Also, you know, the pride of seeing Infinite Jest published in your cover. Whatever, no big deal.
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Like This Passage?
Ad-driven e-books may be something we’ll all have to deal with in the future. At the Melville House blog, Dustin Kurtz explains why ads that pop up while a person is reading might well be an inevitable development. (If you’re like me, your reaction to this is simple: ugh.)
Something Pagan In Me
What is the greatest crime in literary history? Depending on who you ask, it was probably the burning of Byron’s memoirs. Shortly after his death, three of Byron’s closest friends, along with a few attorneys representing family interests, decided that the memoirs were too scandalous to publish and thus tossed them bit by bit into a fireplace. They claim to have been acting in his best interest, and, as Byron himself said, “There is no instinct like that of the heart.”
The Year of the Essay
“Reading fiction is one of my true loves, but essays help me to understand things about the world, the writer, and if they’re really great, myself.” Electric Literature‘s Jason Diamond argues 2014 was “The Year of the Essay,” and when we think over the collections published this year – The Empathy Exams, The Unspeakable and Loitering, among others – it’s hard to disagree.
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