At Electric Literature, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer take a look at fantasy’s impact on comtemporary pop culture, in their introduction to the new collection, The Big Book of Modern Fantasy. “Fantasy becomes something of use to a writer to make a political or social statement,” they write. “It’s not just a mode, it’s a tool allowing conversation with predecessors and conversation with an often bewildering and sometimes horrifying world; it’s no surprise that absurdism and surrealism arose when they did.”
Ann and Jeff VanderMeer on Fantasy’s Influence on Today’s Literature
Alyssa Cole on Leaning Into Anxiety
Alyssa Cole discusses her new book, When No One Is Watching, and the difference between writing romances and thrillers.
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The World According to Zadie
The first reviews of Zadie Smith‘s new collection of essays, Changing My Mind, are in and the general line’s a non-committal, guarded praise. I think it’s wunderkind jealousy, myself. Voici: The L.A Times review and The San Francisco Chronicle review.
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Subjected
As an Editor-at-Large at Interview Magazine, Christopher Bollen has talked with everyone from Joan Didion to Renata Adler to Michael Stipe. Last Friday, he became an interview subject himself, sitting down with Tom Barbash at Salon to talk about his new novel, Orient. Sample quote: “I know I’m supposed to have the young characters constantly on Snapchat and Instagram and every adult is falling asleep at night to a Netflix marathon.”
Journalistic Disturbances
In 2009, Rivka Galchen wrote a lengthy piece in Harper’s about the quest to predict and control hurricanes. Now that her article is sadly apropos, it’s available for free on the web. (Said quest had a major role in the author’s excellent first novel.)
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The Art of the Novella
Taylor Antrim at the Daily Beast explores the art and business of the novella, and offers up a few recent “unexpectedly revelatory” suggestions.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Fence has a new web site. And a new fall issue! My story “The Art of Forgetting” appears online, alongside new work by Ariana Reines, Mary Jo Bang, and Thomas Israel Hopkins.
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Almighty Beyoncé
“O Unslaked Bill Maher, is it true that everything sucks? It probably is, but I didn’t think we were supposed to know that yet.” Fathers of pre-teen girls appeal to higher powers of various, disparate denominations over at McSweeney’s.
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