“It was astonishing. Utterly astonishing. Everyone of them seemed . . . entranced by him.” Sometimes older books get a second life given contemporary contexts; such is the case with Sinclair Lewis‘s 1935 It Can’t Happen Here, reports Time. The book, which was written as Hitler came to power, has sold out online. See also this New Yorker piece about a recent stage adaptation of Lewis’s semi-satirical novel.
It Can Happen Here
Some doubles adverbial terms
If you happen to be looking for a long essay on peculiar and systematically ambiguous language of contemporary writing on fine art, and it’s strangely anti-local lexicon Triple Canopy’s got just the thing.
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Are Young Writers in Their Prime?
Sam Tanenhaus, musing about the New Yorker “young writers” list points out that, far from being a writer’s formative years, many of the great classics in literary history were penned by writers in their 30s, or younger.
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Larceny Lit
Recommended Reading: Sarah Gerard records her phone calls with inmate Matthew Seger as he tries to find time to write in prison. “I feel like all of these ideas I have will someday, maybe, be of some use. I don’t want to let any of them go.” We interview Matthew Parker, the author of the graphic memoir, Larceny in My Blood: A Memoir of Heroin, Handcuffs, and Higher Education.
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The Awl’s Poetry Section
Poet Mark Bibbins is the author of The Dance of No Feelings, and he is also the poetry editor for The Awl. So far he’s published poems from Michael Shiavo, Rebecca Keith, Ben Lerner, and many others.
The End of the Beat Generation
The “grande dame of the Beat Generation” has died at age 90. Carolyn Cassady passed away last Friday near her home in England. She was the inspiration for Camille, Dean Moriarty’s overburdened second wife in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Yet Cassady was a writer in her own right and published two books, Off the Road and Heart Beat: My Life With Jack and Neal, about how the Beat Generation was misunderstood.
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Trystero Coffee
At Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg has coffee with Thomas Pynchon–well, not exactly…
The Great Goldfinch Debate
“No novel gets uniformly enthusiastic reviews, but the polarized responses to The Goldfinch lead to the long-debated questions: What makes a work literature, and who gets to decide?” Vanity Fair has big questions and lots of opinions about Donna Tartt‘s latest novel, which we’ve covered pretty extensively ourselves.
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Amis Scoffs at Literary Prizes
Martin Amis told the Hay Festival in Wales that only unenjoyable books win prizes, but the Telegraph’s lede implies sour grapes.
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