At the New York Times, Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his newest book, The Committed, a sequel to the Pulitzer-winning The Sympathizer, and how it allows him to explore paths in life he may have missed. “That idea of an alternative life, parallel life, alternate universes, has always haunted me,” Nguyen says. “It haunts a lot of us who are refugees from Vietnam, what our lives could’ve been, and so I think that sense saturates my fiction and my nonfiction.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s on Exploring Parallel Lives Through Writing
Steve Martin on the Banjo
Actor and comedian Steve Martin‘s album The Crow: New Songs for the Five String Banjo has been nominated for six International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. Listen to tracks from the album and read more about Martin’s musical side at NPR.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Want to get a little background on The Millions? Yours truly is interviewed at the Blog Ads blog today.
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“I’m The King of the World!”
David Foster Wallace wrote the best bitter takedown (PDF) of the cruise ship industry ever, but he only had to endure a 7-night vacation. Imagine his horror, then, if he had been forced to spend significant time on The World, a $20,000+/month ship that continuously circumnavigates the world and has permanent passengers in its 165 private residences. For a more detailed glimpse at life on board the ship, check out Anthony Bourdain’s Gourmet piece on his 2003 visit.
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I Mean, Why Not?
Two minutes of gorgeous West Indian manatee footage, and you’d better believe I’m linking to it.
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How Meta a Work is Man
A Shakespearean consulted for Arthur Phillips‘ buzzed-about new novel, The Tragedy of Arthur, reviews…The Tragedy of Arthur. In which he appears. Alongside “Arthur Phillips.”
Calm Before the Storm
Huzzah! 336 issues of the avant-garde magazine The Storm (1910-1932) have just been digitized and are available for download. Some notable contributors to The Storm included Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and many others.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Unferth; Grodstein; Carter; Journey; Brown; Lethem
Out this week: Wait Till You See Me Dance by Deb Olin Unferth; Our Short History by Lauren Grodstein; Lucky You by Erika Carter; An Arrangement of Skin by Anna Journey; The River of Kings by Taylor Brown; and More Alive and Less Lonely by Jonathan Lethem. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Curiosities: Seekers, Idiots, Grazers, Browsers, Campers, Independents, Time-Sucks
Lots of action with the online mags: There’s a new issue of The Hipster Book Club, with a review of Aleksander Hemon’s Love and Other Obstacles, and an interview with Glen David Gold. There’s a new Quarterly Conversation, which includes Scott Esposito’s thoughtful consideration of Cormac McCarthy. Issue 3 of N1BR is out. And the first issue of The Point includes a piece on David Foster Wallace’s legacy.Brooklyn gets a new bookstore: Greenlight!Corpus Librus, the BEA editionIn an interview with Ed Champion, Sherman Alexie clarifies his comments about the Kindle being elitist.Tibor Fischer shares a first look at Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming Inherent Vice.The seven types of bookstore customers. (via)An incredible collection of pocket paperback colophons.Coming soon from The Onion, Inventory, a collection of “obsessively specific pop-culture lists.”The Ask Metafilter crowd suggests what to read after 2666.For fans of style guides, here’s one from The EconomistFOUND Magazine founder Davy Rothbart is crazy about vintage NBA jerseys. (via)Further Reading: Edan’s post on gifting books in a digital age generated a bunch of interesting comments. Be sure to check them out. On a related note, in PopMatters, Michael Antman bemoans the disappearance of the “physical manifestations of contemporary culture.”
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