I first got the news that David Foster Wallace was dead from a Laila Lalami post on Facebook, and perhaps because it was on Facebook, I instantly went into denial and thought it had to be some kind of sick joke. But it’s not. His wife came home last night to find the 46-year-old Wallace […]
I was there in New York on 9/11, on the 21st story of an apartment building in East Village. Watched them both fall. Looking back at all my writing about the event, I tried so many metaphors to describe the day. People covered in chalky dust like mimes. People streaming over the Brooklyn bridge like […]
Word on the literary street is that Ben Greenman — whose website, oddly enough, resembles a bank’s — is coming out with a new short story collection in October. Correspondences is aptly named: the book includes postcards for reader response and interaction. It’s also a limited edition letterpress, with three accordion books (which starts to […]
Over at the Guardian, there’s a judge from every year since 1969 to talk about the experience of judging the Booker. Here’s the dust-up: No one ever, ever, changes their mind about a book. Even after all the discussion between judges, everyone still hates the novels they hated and loved the novels they loved. As […]
The NY Times argues that experts are more easily mislead than amateurs. Would this apply to literary critics as well? If it does, then it not only applies to the critics who praise hyped books because they’ve been conditioned/influenced by the hype, but it also applies to those who demolish hyped books precisely because they […]
I’ve begun to feel guilty when I give someone a book. Or maybe not guilty, maybe something more akin to wariness — I’m afraid to give a book. Because when you give someone a book, it’s not giving someone a DVD or movie tickets, which requires two hours of time, two hours that requires virtually […]
BookFox has been tracking with the Random House decision not to publish the Islamically-offensive “The Jewel of Medina” from the beginning, but this blacklisting from The Langum Charitable Trust comes as a complete surprise. On the heels of a Random House defense from Stanley Fish and a rebuke from Salman Rushdie, the Langum Trust announced […]
Stanley Fish says that Random House’s deep sixing of “The Jewel of Medina” in order to avoid offending Muslims is not censorship, as Salman Rushdie asserted. Edward Champion tells us why Fish is wrong. Check out a whole database of Haruki Murakami book covers from around the world. (via Bookninja). Elizabeth Baines recalls the trials […]
The newest edition of The Drawbridge is out, with the theme of Opulence. A BookFox favorite, Tobias Wolff, has a wet-hay-stacking short story, one of the ones included in “Our Story Begins.” Also included is a story by the wonderful essayist John Berger, “Across Prison Walls.” (“Shit” might be one of my favorite essays of […]
Here’s the lovely treat of a 67 year old man, publishing his first book, which goes on to be an international bestseller. Lit-blog Co-op members might remember Sam Savage’s “Firmin,” which is now doing remarkable business abroad: Firmin … about the adventures of an erratic, paper-gobbling, self-pitying rodent, has spent the summer knocking Ken Follett […]
