Out this week: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid; South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion; All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg; Ill Will by Dan Chaon; The Accusation by Bandi; The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge; and American Berserk by our own Bill Morris. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Hamid; Didion; Attenberg; Chaon; Bandi; La Farge; Morris
Twenty Years of Jest
Recommended Reading: Tom Bissell reflects on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest twenty years after its publication. You could also read our review of The David Foster Wallace Reader.
So wait, the really rich are getting richer and richer?
There was an interesting piece on the intangible economics of fine art in this weekend’s NYT Magazine that explains the difference between the markets for art and other luxury goods (like gold and property): “Because the art market isn’t regulated like financial securities, insider dealing is generally not illegal.”
●
●
Occupy Writers
Scores of authors have banded behind the Occupy movements via the (intermittently overloaded) site OccupyWriters.com. Among them is Lemony Snicket, who’s penned thirteen observations about the protestors (kindly mirrored by Neil Gaiman).
●
●
Long Lists of Everything
“I started keeping a journal when I was eight, but even before then I was a kid who loved making long lists of everything I could see or remember. Coconut, tricycle, jeepney, air freshener, I would write, for example, and my lists would lengthen and become even more specific as I grew to know the world around me. […] Reading and writing always seemed a part of my life and identity.” For The Rumpus, Swati Khurana interviews Janine Joseph about writing poems as teenagers, writing from experience, and what it meant for Joseph to “come out” as an undocumented immigrant.
●
●
On people braver than us:
Erika Anderson recites her teenage poetry at readings and shares her reasoning for doing so. “I want to live where irony meets kindness, where daring meets bullshit, where everything that failed meets the hope that something might not. I hope my readers do too.”
●
●
Bradbury’s Legacy
As Ray Bradbury’s 90th birthday approaches, Slate explores why his stories have seeped into the culture.
●
●