Mark Sarvas’ praise for the depiction of fathers and sons in Sándor Márai’s novel The Rebels led me back to Kafka’s Letter to Father (a gift a friend brought me from Prague several years ago). It’s an illuminating document — complex, sad, highly self-serving — but not a work of art. Writing about the feelings a father inspires is difficult. . . .
Architectural renderings based on Emily Dickinson’s poetry have the clean lines of her work, and suggest a glass box. (Thanks, Max.)
“We are not caught in the old template of how publishing has been done.” Dzanc Books is profiled at Wired.
Benjamin Lytal considers the legacy of Donald Barthelme, whose writing Gore Vidal dismissed in 1976 as “heterosexual camp.”
Douglas Coupland claims people hate his new book because it bucks homogeneity. No, says John McNally, it’s because he writes like an undergrad.