“This question of presence seems crucial to Tillman’s project. Her position in a text is tricky—she operates both inside and outside of it, which allows her to thwart distanced critical authority and also perform the aesthetic slippages she admires in others’ work.” On Lynne Tillman’s new story collection.
In/Out
Drinking with Journalists
At the LARB, Scott Korb interviews Rosie Schaap, who offers up a theory that bars and churches are both a kind of “sanctified space.” To get more insight, you could also check out her Rumpus interview, or even go watch her mix cocktails with Kurt Andersen of NPR. (You could also just go buy her book.)
Pimpin’ with Remnick
Correction of the day, courtesy of The New York Times: “He did not say that it would not be a ‘pimped out’ version of the article.”
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The Rise of Annotated Literature
Recommended Reading: On how Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice paved the way for the modern trend of literary annotation.
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Did You Pack Those Books Yourself
“This test protocol was designed so X-ray operators could have a clearer view of carry-on baggage at checkpoints. Like many tests TSA performs at checkpoints around the country, we collected valuable data but, at this time, are no longer testing or instituting these procedures.” Inside Higher Ed reports that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration has abandoned a program that required passengers to remove books from their carry-on luggage during security screenings. And we have just the reading recommendations for flying for you, too.
Tell Us Something We Don’t Know
Interested in writing a bestseller? You may want to check out Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers‘ newest book, The Bestseller Code. Or maybe not: “At times, it seems like Archer and Jockers are trying to retrofit a closed system. They found that best-sellers have lots of contractions—the better, they explain, to mimic contemporary speech—and exclamation points only rarely … They conclude that best-sellers consist of ‘shorter, cleaner sentences, without unneeded words,’ and that best-selling characters ‘make things happen.’ Active verbs predict best-sellers better than passive verbs. ‘Hesitation doesn’t keep pages turning,’ Archer and Jockers decide. After all that work, in other words, the algorithm ends up confirming the uncontested tenets of craft and style.”
Populist Is Popular
“The demagogic spirit of the ‘radio priest’ Father Charles Coughlin and the ‘minister of hate’ Gerald L.K. Smith has been reborn in the candidacy of Donald Trump, just as the exhortations of the Louisiana boss and rabble-rouser Huey Long, who declared war on ‘the superrich’ and proposed a ‘Share Our Wealth Society,’ all but predicted Bernie Sanders’s attack on ‘the billionaire class.'” Examining what political books can tell us about the election season with Sam Tanenhaus at The New York Times.
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