“The nice thing about talking to undergrads is that they are not stressed out yet about publication…Their love is still pure, and it’s very energizing.” For Lithub, R.O. Kwon talks to Maris Kreizman about book tours at colleges, losing religion, and her novel, The Incendiaries, now out in paperback. Pair with Kwon’s excellent Year in Reading entry from a couple years back.
R.O. Kwon Takes Faith Seriously
What’s the point?
“What’s the point of reading literature?” Electric Literature shares a video that offers a compelling 4-point answer.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Coates; Lee; Cline; Williams; Couto; Pulley; Liontas; Mohr; Newman; Kracht; Motion
Out this week: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates; Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee; Armada by Ernest Cline; Among the Wild Mulattos and Other Tales by Tom Williams; Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto; The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley; Let Me Explain You by Annie Liontas; All This Life by Joshua Mohr; A Master Plan for Rescue by Janis Cooke Newman; Imperium by Christian Kracht; and The New World by Andrew Motion. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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Columbia, South Carolina: Papa’s Home Away From Home
Fans of the Papa should head on down to Columbia, South Carolina, the newly anointed home of “the most complete collection of Ernest Hemingway’s published work.” If you’re in town, part of the trove is on display until October 26th.
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No Word on What He Thought of Richard Simmons
In a review of My 1980s & Other Essays, Adam Kirsch reveals that Wayne Koestenbaum once compared a verse from a Robert Lowell poem to Buns of Steel. (Yes, that Buns of Steel.)
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Not as Scary as Meeting Norman Mailer
Readers of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature most likely have a good idea of just how much the late Norman Mailer was a wellspring of jokes about writers. The pugilistic novelist, journalist and failed mayoral candidate did choose to title a collection of his work Advertisements for Myself, after all. Yet as Andrew O’Hagan notes in the LRB, it’s hard not to admire the cojones on a guy who once told a prominent editor he was “still too young and too arrogant to care to write the kind of high-grade horseshit you print in Harper’s Bazaar.”
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Book Nerd Gift Alert
I did not know this existed: Trivial Pursuit Book Lover’s Edition. I suspect that Millions readers would be quite skilled. Sample question: “What Hardy novel features a doomed title heroine who names her daughter Sorrow?” Bookslut took the game for a spin a few years back.
Covers That Were; Covers That Could’ve Been
Sean Manning of the Talking Covers blog spoke with a bunch of authors, editors and artists to take a long, close look at the work of Lorraine Louie, the designer “who came up with the uniform, De Stijl layout” of the inimitable Vintage Contemporaries. And while on the topic of book covers, check out Tammy Fortin’s “New Covers for Old Classics” series she put together for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.