Buzzfeed interviews Naomi Alderman author of The Power, a 2016 book receiving heightened attention this year for its timely feminist premise. “In the book, women develop the ability to electrocute people at will, and as the dynamic between the genders shifts after centuries of oppression, women (finally) begin to take control back from men.” Why all the newfound attention? Alderman believes that it’s due to the subject matter and it being released in the States. ‘It’s only just been published in America and some American reviewers have responded to it as if it was written in response to Donald Trump, but in fact no, it was written before that. I think some of the things in the world have not changed and that is why you can mistake it for having been written yesterday.’ But she adds: ‘I think actually one thing that has really changed is that women are really fucking angry.'”
Reading The Power in 2017
Mere Electronic Wallpaper
Remember that time that sci-fi master J.G. Ballard predicted the rise of social media all the way back in 1977? Neither did we. Bonus: here's a Millions review of Ballard's Kingdom Come.
New DeLillo
Details are just now starting to trickle out about a new Don DeLillo book out early next year. In Point Omega, DeLillo "takes on the secret strategist in America's war machine," according to publisher Scribner.
The Contrived
It’s a common saying among actors that the script does most of the work. Which raises an interesting question: is it possible for a great writer to make art out of a bad story? At The Kenyon Review’s blog, Amit Majmudar says it is, using Shakespeare as proof. Related: five experts on the Bard’s greatest plays.
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Everybody Kafkas
It’s hard work writing Kafka stories appropriate for children, but a guy named Matthue Roth is willing to do it.
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Witt on Einhorn
In Emily Witt's last piece (she got a book deal) for the New York Observer, she profiles Amy Einhorn and her self-named imprint. (via)
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Next Up: The Norton Anthology of Infographics
Now that they’ve announced the impending publication of The Best American Infographics, it might be prudent to revisit Reif Larsen’s classic Millions article, “This Chart Is a Lonely Hunter: The Narrative Eros of the Infographic.”
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On my to-read list. At the moment I am reading The Beauty Mith
Wouldn’t electrocuting people to death be murder, i.e., illegal, and so how would them having this power be any different from the real world as it exists today? I’ve never shot anybody but I have fired some guns and it’s not especially hard, and I’ve seen women do it, so it would seem women already have the ability to kill people by shooting them (or by poisoning them or running them over with cars–there’re many way to kill people). Is there some special dispensation for killing people by electricity that permits women to do so in the world of this book without legal repercussions? Because otherwise it wouldn’t differ from the common reality that we all know.