Out this week: Everything Love Is by Claire King; They Are Trying to Break Your Heart by David Savill; The Moravian Night by Peter Handke; All Joe Knight by Kevin Morris; Of All That Ends by Günter Grass; and A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women by Siri Hustvedt. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest fiction and nonfiction book previews.
Tuesday New Release Day: King; Savill; Handke; Morris; Grass; Hustvedt
The Crowning
After his death, fans of David Foster Wallace canonized him as a prophet, according him a degree of benevolence shared by almost no one in American letters. In New York Magazine, Christian Lorentzen argues that Wallace himself worried about this happening, and says he’d “probably be the last person to argue for his sainthood.” His essay pairs nicely with Jonathan Russell Clark on The David Foster Wallace Reader.
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A Poetic Road Map
We’re midway through National Poetry Month, so get reading! Are you finding yourself a bit daunted by all of the great writers out there? Then head on over to The Literary Hub for this lovely, comprehensive list of thirty poets you should be reading.
It’s not plagiarism… it’s angloglobalisation?
On the London Review of Books blog, Kaya Genç makes the case that the similarities between the successful Turkish author Elif Şafak’s work and Zadie Smith’s books is a fact of Turkey’s shifting cultural values rather than plagiarism: “Istanbul, the city Shafak returned to after writing her book in London and the setting for many of her earlier novels, resembles London more and more.” For a bit of context, here’s Lydia Kiesling’s rundown of the initial scandal.
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Contemporary Arabic Novels
Claudia Roth Pierpont writes about the contemporary Arabic novel in this week’s New Yorker, highlighting Iraqi, Palestinian, and Egyptian examples.
The Secret Life of Ayn Rand
Kevin Courier is re-running interviews he did for the CBC in the 1980s on the Critics At Large site. Here’s his 1986 interview with Barbara Brenden, author of The Passion of Ayn Rand. Brenden’s book, Courier writes, “not only unveiled this polarizing figure” of Ayn Rand, but it “also illustrated the perils of blind faith and idolatry.” Given the Objectivist’s influence on a certain vice presidential candidate, this one’s worth a read.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Abbott, Powell, Stedman, Wagner
Megan Abbott’s Dare Me is out today. Learn more about her in an essay we published a year ago. Also out are You & Me by Padgett Powell, ML Stedman’s debut novel The Light Between the Oceans, and Dead Stars by L.A. great Bruce Wagner.
Note the discussion that has ensued upon publication of Peter Handke’s MORAVIAN NIGHT
http://moravian-nights-discussion.blogspot.com/2016/08/main-moravian-night-discussion-page.html