B-Sides and Rarities: Donovan Hohn
B-Sides and Rarities is a semi-regular feature in which we highlight interesting sections of interviews that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Does the Novel Have a Future? Tao Lin Will Tell You.
“I do, sometimes—rarely, I think—want to know, ‘What do you think other people are going to be thinking about in 20 years?’ or ‘How do you feel humankind, generally, is going to feel like in 50 or 100 years?,'” writes Tao Lin in “Does the Novel Have a Future? The Answer is in This Essay!” “But mostly I want to know, ‘What are you thinking about?’ and ‘How do you feel?'”
“Wilderness is now, inescapably …. this human creation. Which is a paradox, because it’s supposed to be the area beyond human creation. When we think we’re experiencing the wild, we’re often imagining the wild. What would be genuinely wild? I think you’d almost need a new language.”
I Celebrate Myself: The Walt Whitman Self-Review
The Age of Self-Promotion has a new patron saint.
Each month we feature a young critic we admire and ask them a series of questions about their work and their perspectives on writing today.
Flatmancrooked, the innovative indie publisher of novellas, is shutting down.
Ozzie Guillen Would Like to Tell You About The Great Gatsby
Dan Bulla, who also co-wrote and directed this clip, perfectly channels Guillen’s unique approach to language: one part Spanish, one part English, and thirty parts profanity, none of it remotely decipherable. Sample dialogue: “And then all kinda thing starts to happen: [indecipherable cursing].” Also, the book apparently ends with Nick Carraway sticking his dick in the ocean. Oh, the things I missed in English class.
A Brief Rant Regarding the “Hoarding” of Books
It’s not hoarding if you derive pleasure from most of what you’re collecting. Medley’s library isn’t eighty years of newspapers stacked on top of one another, but a result of his passion for books — in short, it’s not pathological. Perhaps I’m going too far, but I can’t sympathize with Medley’s inability to part with whatever sucky books are cluttering his apartment. THERE ARE USED BOOKSTORES THAT WILL GIVE YOU STORE CREDIT FOR THE “CRAP” IN YOUR LIBRARY. Box that shit up. Trade them for books you may actually enjoy.
“Frankly, the business side of this whole thing, which is what the publishers care about and what the journalists write about, is boring. There’s really not much nuance there. It’s all about finding the right business model to navigate through this transition, one that will maximize profits and minimize carnage. But for the writers, this is all so much more interesting. Are they scared or excited? How do these shifts change how they think about their art?”
The Late American Novel at McNally Jackson
Tonight at 7 PM at McNally Jackson Bookstore C. Max Magee, one of the editors of the excellent The Late American Novel, and a few fine folks who contributed to the book, including The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet author Reif Larson, will be discussing the future of the novel. I will be there, taking […]