At BOMB Magazine, Leah Hampton discusses her debut collection, F*ckface: And Other Stories, which takes a closer look at lives in the modern-day American South. “My mother’s side is just like my dad’s—very working class, factory-floor socialist types,” Hampton says. “Everybody in my family always worked, and I’m the first person to finish college, write a book, etc. I often like to say I’m a bifurcated woman, half European in my thinking, half pissed-off mountain girl. Half in this Appalachian world, and half out. I think that’s a good vantage point from which to write fiction. Especially if you’re writing about a place that’s as bittersweet, complicated, and storied as this region.”
Leah Hampton on the Bifurcated Vantage Point
Fine Editions
We’ve seen a proliferation of junky editions of out-of-copyright classics, but we’ve also noted gorgeous new hardcovers from Penguin and now from much smaller outfit White’s Books, including Emma, Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens’ Christmas Books, and several others.
Time to Read
One Reddit user wants to know, “What are some good books to read [in jail]?” Might we recommend some works by the 19th century Russian masters?
Six Plots Part II
I’ve written before about Matthew Jockers‘s claim, as reported and presented by the Paris Review, that there are only about 6 plots in fiction. Now Dan Piepenbring returns to the Review to respond to critics who and attempt to answer the questions “is it really possible to assign every word a reliable emotional valence? And even if the answer is yes, can we really claim that all the plots in the history of literature take so few basic forms?”
And She’s A Mary Ann
“You heard me: I said, Ann M. Martin is queeeeer.” A longtime Baby-Sitter’s Club fan gets her mind blown. Pair with this celebration of Martin’s oeuvre.
When Five Years Pass
“New houses get built, and new songs are sung … and I am the same, in the same trembling state.” Things are not going very well at the newly built Federico García Lorca center in Granada, Spain. Patience is wearing thin as members of the García Lorca Foundation continue tangling with government officials over control of the center, which is intended to house nearly 20,000 items — manuscripts, drawings, musical compositions and artworks valued at more than 20 million euros.
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Franzen on HBO’s The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen dishes about the forthcoming HBO adaptation of The Corrections.
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