Judge for yourself
Quick post: here’s an extract from Martin Amis’ Yellow Dog, and an interview with Amis.
Hasta el martes
Labor Day weekend is approaching. That means time off. And since many of you will be away from your computers anyway, there will be no guest tomorrow.
To put it more plainly: no posts until Tuesday.
Eat, drink and be merry, for next week — for all practical purposes — the summer ends. [...]
It is not the moon
Louise Glück is to be the new U.S. Poet Laureate. I’ve always been impressed with her work.
In an interview, Monica Ali (author of Brick Lane) says she started writing short stories with encouragement from online critique groups:
“I started off writing short stories. When I’d had my first child I’d go onto the Internet, [...]
Media focus
A. J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire, has another year to finish writing his forthcoming “book for Simon & Schuster based on his experiences reading the Encyclopedia Britannica cover to cover” but he’s already landed an monthly gig talking about it on NPR. (Via Karen Templer at Readerville.)
And because I can’t give it a rest, [...]
Before I go
Roy Kesey’s latest dispatch from China: Bonus Gymnastics Edition!
East Side Sushi Specials.
In The Atlantic
The Age of Murdoch, by James Fallows.
Electronic literary publications
Also in PW, Katherine Swiggart acknowledges the increasing importance of electronic literary publications. She mentions two excellent online offerings: Jacket and Richmond Review.
Otherwise, however, Swiggart seems to focus on the “collaborative” aspects of online journals, calling them “the open studios of editors, writers, and designers.”
2003 O’Henry Awards
The current issue of Poets and Writers also includes an article by Timothy Schaffert about Laura Furman’s selections for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003.
Schaffert takes note of Furman’s belief that commercial magazines, such as The New Yorker and Harper’s, “don’t publish enough fiction to properly represent the number of talented short story writers [...]
Why criticism, and more
In the latest issue of Poets & Writers, Mary Gannon explores the reasons Michael Dirda and other top-ranking literary reviewers are drawn to the oft-maligned profession. Gannon gives the obligatory nod to the Believer manifesto and observes that “snarky†reviews receive a lot of attention. She quotes not only Dirda, but also Sven Birkerts, [...]
Read this now
I’m sure you’re all checking in with Cowboy Sally every day anyway, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss
Calling Mr. Klaxon
Arcade fonts. (Via Things.)
Nelly Reifler’s debut
Nelly Reifler’s See Through is just out this week, and she’s interviewed in the current print issue of Time Out New York about her writing. Joanna Smith Rakoff, the interviewer, says the 14 stories in the collection vary in tone, style, and subject matter. Some of them “create a spooky, twilight world decidedly [...]
An old woman and some Jack Daniels
It takes something like a granny drinking bourbon and pronouncing, “All my children are going to hell, and my grandchildren, too,” to deter me from my forlorn wanderings through the TMFTML archives.
My own Granny had a sort of recipe involving a quart of bourbon. I’ve yet to try it. (Sorry for [...]
Dean in NYC
Geheimbundler says Howard Dean, in his Bryant Park appearance on Tuesday night, “showed the energy, the charisma, and the aggression that the Democratic nominee will have to possess to face down the Republican machine next year.”
Plot coincidences?
There’s been considerable coverage of The Storyteller, described by Sara Nelson earlier this month as:
an engaging, funny novel about an aspiring author named Steven (with a V, so as not to be confused with that guy who wrote The Shining) King, who inherits a friend’s manuscripts, retypes them and publishes them under yet another pseudonym—to [...]