“Like actual endangered species, independent bookshops induce a fiercely protective kind of love; paradoxically, it’s often their precarity that saves them.” The Guardian profiles Philippe Ungar and Franck Bohbot, the men behind “We Are New York Indie Booksellers,” which features the 50 remaining indies in and around Manhattan. (Pair with: Janet Potter‘s history of bookstore love).
Indie Strong
David Foster Wallace In Brief
"Wallace’s fiction contains enormous cruelty... But it is also a deeply moral body of work. Its difficulties, and many of its cruelties, exist for specific reasons. Whether Wallace’s fraught projects are successes or failures is up to the individual, but these are judgments that all serious readers should want to make for themselves." Chris Power considers David Foster Wallace's short stories in an essay for The Guardian and argues that after Infinite Jest they just might be the most important work he produced.
●
●
Harper Lee Sues Museum
The Guardian reports that Harper Lee is suing the local museum in her Alabama hometown. The octogenarian author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who currently resides in an assisted-living facility, claims that the museum is profiting off her fame without providing her due compensation.
●
●
Egan On E-Readers
Jonathan Franzen isn't the only writer opposing technology and digitization. Jennifer Egan, in a panel discussion last week, compared Facebook to a "huge Soviet apartment block."
●
●
50th Anniversary of “Silent Spring”
The environmental movement is gearing up for 2012, with today being the fiftieth anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
●
●
It’s Not TV, It’s Jonathan Franzen.
To celebrate the official HBO adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, The New Yorker has compiled a list of "Franzen Facts."
●
●