Features & Reviews
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Bertha, The Child-Flower
Raymond Roussel clipped “Bertha, The Child-Flower” from the final manuscript of his masterpiece Locus Solus (1914), but here she blooms again.
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Things Are Still Falling Apart
Chinua Achebe was briefly interviewed in NYT Magazine last week. In the interview he talks about current Nigerian politics, focusing on the weakness of the Nigerian Acting President, Good Luck Jonathan, who “suddenly doesn’t seem to bring good luck.” Click…
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THE BOOKOPTICON
“To become a literary star, having talent helps, but so does carving out a place in the tangled, incestuous web of the publishing world. Our interactive field guide illustrates how 10 young authors with potential best-sellers coming out this Spring…
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Notable New York, This Week 3/29 – 4/4
This week in New York Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood holds a reading series, Threepenny Review celebrates its thirtieth birthday, A Public Space throws a launch party for Issue 10, Paris Review holds a Fiction Salon, Meghan O’Rourke reads, Ryan McGinley shows…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Robot journalists! What could possibly go wrong? (via Book Bench) “Houses are not homes – they are holes and caves.” Apparently, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is a short story writer. And he’s not very good. Happy birthday to the Millions!…
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The Rumpus Books Sunday Supplement
Rumpus Books has been busy with tons of excellent reviews. Also, illustrations and cute book excerpts. Come check it out.
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“I had more to say, but this was enough.”
“Last year a friend came to stay with me for a night, when he was between apartments. […] “Now I enjoy weird, unresolved sexual tension as much as the next person who makes a living writing about sex and relationships,…
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“He Didn’t Know What He Was”
“The year my boy Danny turned six, my wife Penny and me took him down to Lexington and got him good and scanned because that’s what everybody was doing back then, and, like they say, better safe than sorry.” “The…
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An Oral History of Love in Contemporary America: Selections from Us #2
Kayla James, Age 5 Bellingham, Washington “He had a lot of cool toys, and I really liked the toys.”
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Show Me More Funny Books Please
“But there is another issue, too: one for which you can’t blame publishers or booksellers. The thing about being funny is that it’s really hard. “It’s a lot harder than being serious. It requires wit, grace, agility, sensitivity; it requires…
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Life Is Not Karaoke Booth
In this debut novel, an American woman running from personal tragedy falls headlong into the confusions and solaces of Japanese culture.
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The Strange World of Shirley Jackson
“Shirley and Stanley lived with their children and 30,000 books in a rambling Victorian house near the post office in the village where Shirley had so memorably set her classic 1948 short story, ‘The Lottery.’ “Shirley did the family driving,…