J. G. Farrell Bookforum’s new summer issue maps utopia, and though the word means “no place” in Greek, that absurdity hasn’t inhibited a great many dreamers and schemers: History is littered with attempts to realize some portion of heaven on earth, and literature is rife with depictions of worlds gone right and worlds gone very wrong. When he died in 1979, J. G. Farrell was hailed as his generation’s greatest historical novelist. Thirty years later, the view still holds, at least among the judges of the “lost” Booker award, who granted the prize to Troubles, his wicked 1970 satire of Anglo-Irish relations set during
Robert Walser’s microscripts The new City Lights catalog cover seems to be saying “Smash your Kindle,” according to eBookNewser, but in a long letter in response, publisher Elaine Katzenberger says they’ve got it all wrong. Rock, paper, Twitter: Christopher R. Weingarten plans to be the Last Rock Critic Standing, but it sure isn’t easy. Weingarten tweeted more than one thousand reviews last year, wrote for the Village Voice and rollingstone.com, produced a book, and often contributes to online music message boards, though he thinks the Internet is diluting serious music and criticism: “We all wanted to democratize art. And now that we did, nobody’s
Peter Beinart In 2006, Peter Beinart proclaimed that liberals were the only ones who could “Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again,” putting a lefty gloss on the neocons’ war plans, but oddly he didn’t mention Israel’s role in America’s “War on Terror.” Now, in an essay in the New York Review of Books, Beinart writes that “morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral,” thanks to its uncritical support for Netenyahu’s hard-right coalition government in Israel, against the express wish of most American Jews—especially younger ones—to re-engage the Palestinian peace process. Writing from Tel Aviv, Jim Sleeper responds to Beinart’s essay,
Encrypt your data and watch your back: Lisbeth Salander returns. The book world is buzzing over next week’s new Stieg Larsson novel, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Knopf has unveiled a flashy book trailer, dubbing Larrson’s heroine Lisbeth Salander “a one woman vengeance machine.” At Salon, Laura Miller writes that Larsson’s prose is “as flat and featureless as the Scandinavian landscape,” but that the underlying drama, between the flawed order of institutions and a Lisbeth-like anarchy, is “a contest that still captivates us because we all feel those warring impulses within ourselves.” At Time, Lev Grossman details the battle over Larsson’s legacy (he died
Vivien Leigh test shot photo, from the Harry Ranson Center archvies In search of “literary pyrotechnics with a heart,” Bloomsbury USA, known for its non-fiction, is expanding its fiction list, including a new novel by Matthew Sharpe, author of 2008’s Jamestown. As the labyrinthine BEA conference comes to New York next week, the array of events, tables, and booths at the Javits center (as well as the off-site parties) will be a little easier to navigate with the BEA To Go mobile app, which, contra Apple, will work on any web browser. Aside from schedules and maps, the app will have news,
Remain alert and have a safe day. Slouching towards Williamsburg with a Macbook and a book deal: The “hipsterati” and those who hate them have created a vortex of satire and meta-satire that book publishers love to throw money into. Russian lit is safe for toddlers, as long as it is in Touch ‘n Feel form, (“Run your hand over Raskolnikov’s scratchy face. He is feverish and pale”) but Moscow subway stations decorated with Dostoevsky’s gloomy visage could cause people to hurl themselves onto the tracks. Triple Canopy’s Molly Springfield profiles the Mundaneum, an early twentieth-century Internet, and its visionary creator Paul Otlet.
Jorge Luis Borges Sloane Crosley, author of the hit memoir I Was Told There’d be Cake, has been promoted to deputy director of publicity at Vintage. Crosley is taking two weeks off from her new gig this summer to embark on a tour for her forthcoming essay collection How Did You Get This Number?, observing first-hand the rigors of on-the-ground book promotion, and picking up tips for her clients as well as plenty of fodder for future volumes. Little Orphan Annie has survived many hardships, but has become the latest victim of newspapers’ decline. Novelist Rebecca Goldstein writes as Jorge Luis Borges, penning
Stephen Prothero A long-awaited galley is a signifier of literary cool that outranks all others (at least on the F train); this week in New York, publishing biz insiders will nod knowingly at this hot lit accoutrement, disdaining the lowly iPad—at least for now. Style points aside, we’re hoping to find a read so gripping that we miss our subway stop. Next month, the New Yorker will publish its double fiction issue, in which it will ordain twenty writers under age 40 as the next great American authors—the first such list the magazine has compiled since 1999. The writers on the shortlist will learn
A writing studio designed by Andrew Berman A room of one’s own: Andrew Berman creates the ideal private library and writing studio, but with all that foliage in view, who could get any work done? Would Jane Austen wear Prada? “Most readers and writers would admit clothing is pretty important in literature as well as in film and drama. There’s a lot of dressing-up going on in the arts,” writes Helen Barnes-Bulley. In the 1930s, Nancy Drew had some sexy secrets, including “dainty lingerie,” but implored a partner-in-crime to tone down her feminine wiles: “We are going to use strategy, but not charm, so put
The 48 Hour Magazine team is still a bit groggy from this weekend’s editorial drag race, but the project has been deemed a success, though the WSJ blog wrinkles its brow in consternation at the thought: “Creating a magazine from start to finish in two days sounds like an insane, nearly impossible task.” The end product, a sixty-page first issue called (what else?) Hustle, will soon be available for purchase on magcloud. The editors have posted a blog of inspiring YouTube clips that helped them along the way—certain to come in handy when you’re up against a tight deadline—as well as a list of contributors and
Neal Cassady in 1955, from the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition “Beat Memories.” Allen Ginsberg saw the best minds of his generation pose rakishly, and snapped many of the era’s defining pictures. An exhibition of his photographs, which opened last week at the National Gallery, features the usual suspects; a shot of Neal Cassady under a movie marquee heralding The Wild One and Tarzan the Ape Man looks staged as the Beat apotheosis—or perhaps a scene from this year’s film Howl, starring James Franco as the bearded bard. Franco, recently caught napping during a lecture at Ginsberg’s alma matter, must have been channeling the poet’s truant spirit—Ginsberg spent his Columbia days
Jon Meacham On the heels of last year’s redesign—the equivalent of a cry for help—Newsweek is up for sale, leading to earnest proclamations that the end of the newsweekly era is upon us. Editor Jon Meacham is scrambling to round up bidders to buy the magazine. In an interview with Jon Stewart, a long-faced Meacham talked about the future of reporting, “in a time when people don’t want to pay for news,” (here’s part 2). An inevitable Meacham backlash is beginning, with media commentators like David Carr, Jack Shafer, and James Fallows piling on the beleaguered editor, while Fishbowl NY rounds up the 5 ways the story is being told. Recently axed journalists can get a byline
Jayne Anne Phillips The Atlantic’s fiction issue provokes a couple of reactions: First, we’re glad to see the monthly that all but foreswore short stories five years ago (after regularly publishing them since 1857) is back in the game; and second, we wonder how Washington, DC (the magazine is headquartered there) fosters such provincial taste? They don’t have any trouble finding international authors in Rochester or Champaign, but apparently the vantage from the capital of the free world allows editors to spy out mostly homegrown luminaries like Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Theroux, and T. C. Boyle. As the VQR review points out, the issue has plenty of young
From Wilson by Daniel Clowes Google is elbowing its way into the e-book business this summer. The Literary Platform profiles book-based experiments from across the web; recent posts include a look at a nineteenth century text revolution, an interview with intriguing book app inventor Peter Collingridge, and an essay about making Alice in Wonderland for the iPad. Hari Kunzru’s story, “Memories of the Decadence,” has won a 2010 Pushcart Prize. Maud Newton’s notes on eight years of book blogging. Daniel Clowes reads from Wilson at the Strand tonight.
Percival Everett An early Thomas Bernhard story, “Two Tutors,” gets its first English translation. Pico Iyer has always had a problem with William T. Vollmann. So what’s he doing reviewing Vollmann’s Kissing the Mask in the Times? In the new issue of The Believer, Percival Everett’s seventeenth novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, wins the Book Award, and Rick Moody raves about Charlie Smith’s forthcoming fiction Three Delays: “Want to read about how harrowing and essential love can really be? Dip in here. Be made alive.” Emily Gould offers a free audiobook excerpt from her memoir, And the Heart Says Whatever, and cooks the books. Mark McGurl writes of the Zombie Renaissance: “Perhaps the zombie attack
Salman Rushdie In the battle of fatwa versus fiction, Salman Rushdie has the last word: “One of us is dead, do not mess with novels.” Rushdie, in conversation with Christopher Hitchens, gave the keynote of the PEN World Voices Festival last night. Catch up on a world of authors with blogs from the fest, excerpts from participating writers’ work, photos, video and audio clips. Highlights include Patti Smith’s chat with Jonathan Lethem, a Utopia and Dystopia panel, and A. M. Homes’s talk with Philippe Djian. Toronto’s Comic Arts Festival is in full swing. Tonight at McNally Jackson books, Marisa Silver, author of the recent story collection Alone With You, talks with blogger and novelist Mark Sarvas. The comma,
Inga Kuznetsova, a PEN American Center World Voices panelist A curtain call for Ted Willams at the Library of America, as John Updike’s classic essay on Williams, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” is republished as a new volume, fifty years after the Splendid Splinter’s last at bat, in which he blasted a homer and then didn’t tip his cap to the crowd. Surfing the Voice Literary Supplement’s online archives with artforum.com editor-at-large Brian Sholis. Take a long lunch break—or the day off—and wander over to the PEN American Center’s World Voices Festival this afternoon. Among the many edifying events is “Utopia and Dystopia: Geographies of the Possible,”
The 1930s Kindle, Allen Lane’s Penguincubator In the 1930s, publisher Allen Lane installed a book-vending machine, the Penguincubator, in places where books were not supposed to be. What can we learn from Lane? “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” Emily Dickinson wrote, and scholars have been slanting her life-story ever since. Lyndall Gordon tips the familiar Dickinson myths and spills new revelations in Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family’s Feud. Gordon places Dickinson at the center of a “seething Peyton Place of adultery, betrayal and lifelong feuding,” and posits that perhaps Dickinson was epileptic. Getting over the “Anxiety of Influence” of the Dead Poets’