Posts by author
Jake Slovis
-
Sacred Literature
For the New York Times, Alexandra Alter interviews Salman Rushdie about his new novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. Their discussion covers the stylistic choices that went into the novel, as well as the role of mythology and polytheistic religions…
-
Books Aren’t Born
For Electric Literature, Stephanie Feldman challenges the cliché that “a book is the author’s baby”: Using writing as a metaphor for birth, or birth as a metaphor for writing, belittles each: the raw, nerve-shattering physical labor of one, and the years…
-
Books That Save Lives
For the Guardian, Erwin James reflects on his experience reading while in prison, and how books like David Levering’s Prisoners of Honor reshaped his life: I was without skills or abilities, but I could read. I’m sure the six books a week I was…
-
Can’t Read Italian? Ask Mom To Translate
After reading the first two books in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series, Sara Goldsmith enlisted her mother to translate the third book from Italian so that she didn’t have to wait another year for the English release. Now, for Slate, Goldsmith shares how…
-
Don’t “Fake” Read Ferrante
In preparation for the release of the last book of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, Electric Literature’s Emma Adler offers a comprehensive “study guide” to the previous three books. While the article is “complete with hard-to-pronounce names, flashbacks and flash-forwards, and enough plot…
-
Ishiguro’s Indiscriminate Archive
The University of Texas purchased Kazuo Ishiguro’s archive for just over $1m, which consists of early drafts and notes that the novelist threw “indiscriminately” into a cardboard box under his desk during his drafting process. In addition, the collection includes…
-
Book Titles Made Easy
For The Millions, Janet Potter offers a “handy” guide to help authors come up with catchy titles for books at various stages in their careers. For those writing “the disappointing sophomore effort,” Potter advises: Get out your favorite album. Rank the…
-
Mitchell Finds His Inner Tolkien
After reading from his forthcoming release Slade House at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, David Mitchell announced that he has created “his own version of middle earth.” Like Mitchell’s prior works, Slade House will incorporate various genres and points of view: I like to…
-
What Could Have Been
For the New York Times, Alexandra Alter explores how Truman Capote and Harper Lee’s childhood friendship influenced their work, and wonders if the famous duo’s careers would have developed differently if their relationship wasn’t “strained by bitterness and rivalry.”
-
Home, Even in the Most Dangerous of Times and Places
For the Guardian, Julia Eccleshare explores why homelessness is rarely represented in children’s literature. What she finds is that novels for young readers tend to capitalize on the idea of “home” as a place of “fundamental security,” a theme that young readers…
-
Lydia Davis: A Prolific Tweeter
For The Millions, Adam Boffa compares Lydia Davis’s short stories to social media. He argues that Davis’s compressed language, as well as her emphasis on routine and tragedy, works to “recreate a phenomenon that occurs daily on social media”: Davis’s work, and…
-
Fitzgerald Can Be Funny, Too
The most recent issue of the Strand magazine includes a previously unpublished short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story, titled “Temperature,” was discovered in the Princeton archives by the managing editor of Strand, Andrew Gulli, who described the manuscript as one of…