Lit-Link Round-up

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Narcissists believe themselves more creative than others, and consequently engage in more creative pursuits. A finding in equal parts hilarious and depressing?

Faulkner’s “splendid failure.”

Congratulations to MAKE literary magazine and to The Guild Complex (where I gave my first ever reading and got high in the bathroom because my ex-boyfriend from England was supposed to show up), alongside other Chicago arts organizations that received MacArthur awards.

The scandal-that-isn’t-really-a-scandal continues for Dave Eggers. I’ve gotta say, I find the alleged parallels between these two books pretty weak. Wouldn’t those be present in any book someone wrote about a Facebook-like company? I also find it weird that “evidence” for Eggers’ plagiarism seems, to some journalists, to include the fact that he wrote from the perspective of a Sudanese kid. All you writers out there who base fiction on people who’ve inspired you and who…are not you…better watch your backs?

Hemingway’s Macho Letter to Fitzgerald. (Really, it’s pretty adorable, if only one were unaware of how it all turned out for them…)

And here are excerpts from the young Scott’s teen-angst diary, on Flavorwire.

Fifth Wednesday literary journal is seeking a Managing Editor, preferably in the Chicago area. There doesn’t seem to be anything online about this, but if this is your dream gig, contact Vern Miller at the mag…

Dude, do you have $250 burning a hole in your pocket and a major crush on Joan Didion? This PEN event tomorrow night is for you.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve subjectively downed the Alice Munro Kool-Aid or not: her Nobel Prize win is a major event for the short story form and its devotees. A lot of giddy, joyful tears out there in the ethersphere over this. And if there is a literary writer out there today who elicits a stronger, almost spiritual devotion among readers, it’d be hard to say who that might be…

Flesh-eating knock-off heroin? Well, sure, who doesn’t want to pay for that?

Why unsuccessful writers give better advice than famous ones, says Salon.

Why no one is (make that was) talking about the fact that Chris Brown was raped.

I don’t think enough people have read this Rumpus piece, “What Men Talk About When They Talk About Mary Gaitskill.” An impassioned and smart analysis of Gaitskill’s work, it’s also a pretty merciless indictment of the ways men are (in?)capable of reading it properly. I thought this piece would really spark a heated debate, as most of the serious male readers I know are big Gaitskill fans. I was looking forward to reading the responses to this piece, but the comments board has been surprisingly quiet and tepid. What gives, people?

 

Gina Frangello is the author of four books of fiction and a forthcoming memoir, Blow Your House Down. Her novel A Life in Men (Algonquin 2014) is currently under development by Netflix as a series produced by Charlize Theron’s production company, Denver & Delilah. Her most recent novel, Every Kind of Wanting (Counterpoint 2016) was included on several “best of” lists for 2016, including Chicago Magazine’s and The Chicago Review of Books’. She has nearly 20 years of experience as an editor, having founded both the independent press Other Voices Books, and the fiction section of the popular online literary community The Nervous Breakdown. She has also served as the Sunday editor for The Rumpus, and as the faculty editor for both TriQuarterly Online and The Coachella Review. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism have been published in such venues as Salon, the LA Times, Ploughshares, the Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and in many other magazines and anthologies. After two decades of teaching at many universities, including UIC, Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies, UCLA Extension, the University of California Riverside Palm Desert, Roosevelt University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago, Gina is excited to be a student again at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Program for Writers, where she has returned to complete the PhD she left unfinished twenty years ago. More from this author →