Excerpting Kingsley Amis’ Everyday Drinking at length in any discussion thereof is both crucial and inadequate: crucial because nothing anyone could say about it would be as entertaining as the text itself, and inadequate because the only way to convey how consistently funny it is would be to reproduce the book verbatim. In their persistent humor and charm and their . . .
Kelsey Newman, the narrator of Scarlett Thomas’ forthcoming Our Tragic Universe, aspires to literary greatness but actually ghostwrites YA thrillers. Her descriptions of the ever-evolving Serious Novel she’s been writing for years remind me so much of my own experience, laughing at them feels like laughing at myself. “I realised a while ago that I was always trying to make . . .
Publishers Weekly calls Amitava Kumar’s forthcoming A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb a searching and humane look at the U.S. war on terror.
Bookmarked for later digestion: J.M. Coetzee argues that histories of censorship should acknowledge “the censor as an historical actor.” (Via.)
In a video interview, Marilynne Robinson discusses John Calvin, the new atheists, and her latest book, Absence of Mind. (Via.)