At The Rumpus, Sequioa Nagamatsu discusses How High We Go in the Dark, his much-awaited debut novel told through interconnected first-person narratives about people living in a future beset by the Arctic Plague. Nagamatsu discusses the various media and books that were influential to his conception of the book, what eco-conscious novels can contribute to the environmental movement, and how he went about choosing the particular professions of the characters featured in this prophetic novel. “In thinking about how the world in my novel has been unhinged, I wanted to explore how society’s relationship with death, grief, and climate evolve while still staying close to the everyday movements and concerns of a person trying to hold onto life and move forward,” he says. “The professions I chose nodded at these societal evolutions while also giving me a rich basis for considering how their jobs would elevate or influence personal struggles. And for many of my characters, the pandemic simply highlighted or fast-tracked an existing problem or inner anxiety.”
Sequoia Nagamatsu’s Dystopian Debut Is a Must-Read for the New Year
Lost Jupiter Hammon Work Unearthed
An English student at the University of Texas has unearthed previously unpublished writing from Jupiter Hammon, the first published African-American poet. Some of Hammon’s work – which dates back to 1760 – can be found online courtesy of The Poetry Foundation: “A Poem for Children with Thoughts on Death” and “An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Atwood; Watkins; Walsh; Jollimore; Coetzee; Kurtz; Myles; Levi
New this week: The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood; Gold, Fame, Citrus, by Claire Vaye Watkins; Vertigo by Joanna Walsh; Syllabus of Errors by Troy Jollimore; The Good Story by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee and Arabella Kurtz; I Must Be Living Twice by Eileen Myles; and The Complete Works of Primo Levi. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
Drink It Up
Depending on your persuasion, this blog post listing six songs about whiskey is either a funny article or a kind of public service.
Teju Cole on the Leonard Lopate Show
Something you should hear: Open City author and prolific tweeter Teju Cole on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show.
Mind the Label
“By casting my book as personal rather than professional—by marketing me as a woman on a journey of self-discovery, rather than a reporter on a groundbreaking assignment—I was effectively being stripped of my expertise on the subject I knew best.” Suki Kim on writing a work of investigative journalism that was miscategorized as memoir. Pair with this Millions piece in defense of memoirs.
Just Kids Playlist
As Rachel Syme points out, the person who made the Spotify playlist of every song mentioned in Patti Smith’s Just Kids deserves a free drink or two.
Bond. Sixty Years of Bond.
Beth Carswell takes a look at sixty years’ worth of James Bond book designs. Which one is your favorite?