“[G]uess what, spending hours of your spare time plowing through some dense and symbol-laden carnival of affectation and ambiguity only makes you resentful of the publishing industry that pushed the book on you in the first place.” Alex Balk at The Awl takes the piss out of recent studies that have suggested reading literary fiction might make us better people. Writer John Vaillant, whom we interviewed last year, might disagree.
The Empathy Exams
“praise the Hennessy, the brown / shine, the dull burn.”
Recommended Reading: “Praise Song” by Nate Marshall, one of America’s brightest young poets.
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Everyone’s a Critic
“A continuation of a book that has proved very popular seldom is successful, and we cannot say that we think Alice’s adventures by any means equal to her previous ones.” The Guardian digs up its original review of Lewis Carroll‘s Through the Looking Glass.
Making History at the Hugos
“To some degree, as I move outside of the exclusive genre audience, the exclusive genre issues don’t bother me as much.” The Atlantic talks with N.K. Jemisin, the first black writer to win speculative fiction’s Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Fifth Season. We wrote about Jemisin’s work when she was nominated for the Hugos a few years back.
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The Sot-Weed Movie
Steven Soderbergh is interested in bringing The Sot-Weed Factor – John Barth’s “750-plus-page satire of picaresque novels” – to the big, silver or computer screen. You should start getting excited about this if you’re from Maryland, interested in literature, or tickled by the word “beshit.”
“A rabbi…once said all Western literature was commentary on the Torah. I’ll buy that exaggeration”
Seventeen Jewish authors weigh in on the question “is there such a thing as Jewish fiction?,” recalling Gabriel Brownstein’s excellent inquiry, “Are You, Or Have you Ever Been, a Jewish Writer?”
Lucy Ellmann’s 45-Hour Audiobook
Actress Stephanie Ellyne narrates the audiobook version of Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport, which spans 45 hours and 34 minutes.
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