Curiosities
May 21, 2013
The Man Was Hard on Himself 0
by Thomas Beckwith
Hot on the heels of The New Yorker, The Paris Review is excerpting Calvino’s letters. In Monday’s entry, POSTERITY IS STUPID, the author writes the following: “Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious and at the slightest flattery I immediately start to strut like a turkey.”
May 21, 2013
Finding the Red Moon 0
by Thomas Beckwith
ICYMI: Brad Listi interviewed Benjamin Percy as part of his Other People Podcast. Among other things, they talked about Percy’s new novel.
May 21, 2013
Holden Caulfield Has No Friends 1
by Thomas Beckwith
Chances are you’ve heard that in a recent interview, Claire Messud responded to a patronizing question about one of her characters — “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you?” — by giving her interviewer a smackdown that resonated across the blogosphere. At Page-Turner, several authors (including Rivka Galchen, Jonathan Franzen and Year [...]
May 21, 2013
Brooklyn is Coming to Eat Your Children 0
by Garth Risk Hallberg
The reach of literary Brooklyn grows ever larger, as local hub BookCourt mounts a $300,000 campaign to convert the “Bibliobarn,” 160 miles north in the Catskills, into a “bookshop, event space, and writers’ retreat.” Upstaters, lock up your house-cured salume and artisinally sharpened pencils!
May 21, 2013
The Mind Reels 0
by Thomas Beckwith
Alcohol. Promiscuity. LSD. All three are said to inspire creative minds. And if Sarah Dunant’s well-researched new novel, Blood and Beauty, is credible, we can add a new one, syphilis, to the list. (Wait, what?)
May 21, 2013
Tuesday New Release Day: Hosseini, Nesbø, Tarttelin, Tolkien, Packer 0
by C. Max Magee
New this week: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini; The Redeemer, a new Harry Hole novel from Jo Nesbø (see our interview); and Abigail Tarttelin’s debut novel Golden Boy. Also out: The Fall of Arthur, J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic poem, and George Packer’s The Unwinding. Bonus Links: You can now subscribe to listings of literary [...]