Inside VQR rejections
“A bawdy limerick? Really?” Virginia Quarterly Review posts some in-house notes on rejected submissions. (See also.)
The envelope, please
My friend Terry Teachout announces the schedule and cast for his (and Paul Moravec’s) opera based on Maugham’s The Letter.
A quick history of bestseller lists — and their limitations
UK bestseller lists date to 1974. Iris Murdoch’s The Sacred and Profane Love Machine sold well that year; it was probably confused with the Jacqueline Susann love machine.
Madame Houellebecq speaks
Michel Houellebecq’s mom — octogenarian Lucie Ceccaldi — will publish her own book, L’Innocente, to clear the record.
Rhodes’ latest ignored Stateside?
A Dan Rhodes interview at Bookslut is the first inkling I’ve had that Gold is out here. Did anyone other than PW review it?
I was told there’d be cat photos
At a book party last night I witnessed what I’m tempted to call the New York media version of an Abbott and Costello routine — except it was an actual conversation, and I was a participant. Here’s how it went.
Critic: [Upon introduction.] Maud Newton… Wasn’t there a novel called that this year?
Me: I [...]
Gurganus on Robinson
Allan Gurganus says the first chapter of Housekeeping contains “enough dramatic incident to stock any three other novels.”
Lesser-known pastimes of Robbe-Grillet & Barthes
It amuses me to picture Roland Barthes drunk-dialing Robbe-Grillet at midnight to say, “But Alain, I’m a fake, aren’t I?”
A short story I enjoyed this week
“My father said I wasn’t going to be a man until I got comfortable lying to the women in my life.” Please read Baird Harper’s Intermodal.
Censorship presented as author’s option in Iran
Iran’s culture minister warned writers yesterday to self-censor their books or face banning.
Health concerns force Matthiessen, nearly 81, to cancel LA Times Book Fest appearance?
Galleycat reports that Peter Matthiessen, recent Paris Review honoree and author of the newly-condensed Watson trilogy, may be ill.
Harry Crews in The Georgia Review giveaway
If my brief excerpt from Harry Crews’ autobiography-in-progress got you curious to read more, you’re in luck, maybe. Today I’m giving away a copy of that issue of The Georgia Review.
It’s funny: I haven’t been to the Peach State since I drove through from Tallahassee while moving here in ‘99, but as luck [...]
Nedelkoff posts Keogh story
Theodora Keogh’s only known published short story, “The Man Who Loved Old Ladies,” appeared in Dude, a minor Playboy imitator, in 1957.
Sleep & the writer
AL Kennedy’s office hours are from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Also, Teresa Nielsen Hayden contemplates writing & narcolepsy.
Pale Fire lives?
Vladimir Nabokov may have had a touch of clairvoyance.
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