Apropos of nothing, here are some books to read when your country is invaded by Russians.
Red Dawn
Yea or Nay
In the mid-90s, David Foster Wallace published a scathing review of a John Updike novel, Toward the End of Time, that became a key text for critics of the celebrated author. Now, at The New Republic, David Baddiel argues that Updike gets a bad rap, while Jeffrey Meyers backs up DFW’s position. It might also be a good time to read James Santel’s review of Updike’s Collected Stories.
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Waffle House Accuracy
If your characters go on a road trip, do you have to take one, too? When Mary Miller wrote The Last Days of California about a family driving from Alabama to California to meet the rapture, she hadn’t even been to the desert herself. To ensure it was accurate, though, she mapped important destinations on the route. “For Western Louisiana, I thought, ‘Is there actually a Waffle House within forty miles of this border?’ because I wanted it to be accurate. So I had maps, and I was tracking mileage,” she told Down & Out.
Edan Lepucki to Help Judge the Tournament of Books
Our own Edan Lepucki will be among the judges for the 2013 Tournament of Books. Yeah here come the rooster, yeah / Which book’s gonna win?
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Literary Graphic Novels
At Paste, eight literary works that deserve the graphic-novel treatment. (via AuthorScoop)
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Tuesday New Release Day: Eggers, Russo, Heti, Frayn, Winslow, Henkin, Brunt, Maraniss
Dave Eggers’ latest, A Hologram for the King, is out today. Also out this week is an under-the-radar, new effort from Richard Russo, Interventions, a collection that’s a collaboration with his artist daughter Kate Russo. Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? is out (Don’t miss our illuminating interview). And Michael Frayn has a new novel, Skios. More new fiction: Don Winslow’s The Kings of Cool (a prequel to Savages), Joshua Henkin’s The World Without You, and Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home. In non-fiction, There’s David Maraniss’ Barack Obama: The Story.
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Can The Millions (and The Rumpus, and every other somewhat-left-leaning lit site) please not traffic in fearmongering regarding Russia? What Sessions did in his confirmation hearing was a terrible and all-too-telling precedent, and there certainly are a whole lot of stray connections between figures involved in Trump’s campaign (and the right-wing / international nationalist movement more generally) that one can conjecture about. But there is as yet no concrete *evidence* of a Russian “invasion.” In the meantime, there are plenty of terrors in the Trump admin’s regard for immigrants and brown and black people for us all to focus on, educate ourselves about, and resist. Same goes for their stance on government agencies and regulations. How about a deregulation reading list, or one that probes Steve Bannon’s desire to gut the government…?