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Ferris’ debut novel v. Lethem’s latest

Round 2 of the 2008 Tournament of Books kicked off yesterday with my friend Mark Sarvas’ judgment. Today I choose between books by two novelists I admire, Joshua Ferris and Jonathan Lethem. Here’s how my decision opens: Jonathan Lethem is a gifted literary thief. I mean no insult. Last year, after all, he published an essay, “The Anxiety of Influence: . . .

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When the novel confesses the murder

No doubt David Grann’s utterly riveting Letter From Poland was the talk of the blogosphere when it appeared last month, but I only just rescued that issue of The New Yorker from the box of mail I packed up to move, and I spent an hour I couldn’t spare on this story about a brutal murder perpetrated in November 2000, . . .

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