This September, Jonathan Frazen breaks new ground with a memoir: The Discomfort Zone. I’d like some more fiction from him, but perhaps since much of his fiction (especially The Corrections) came from personal experience, there really isn’t that much of a difference in terms of themes. I’ve read excerpts from the new non-fiction, most notably […]
The New York Sun published a two-part open letter to Gunter Grass in response to his recent admission that he was a part of the Waffen SS during World War II. The open letter is heartwrenching; never have I read a letter so full of choken tears and resentment. Daniel Johnson, the author of the […]
It’s been fifty years since Harper’s Magazine published a serial novel, and an abridged version of J. Robert Lennon’s novel Happyland has won the honor. Although Harper’s has fiction in every issue, at least a single short story, it seems serialization gives more weight to fiction, a weight desparately needed after most magazines have relegated […]
The new Pynchon book, Against the Day, comes out December 5th. And not to mix metaphors, but it’s Russian-Novel/Ayn-Rand sized, weighing in at the sumo-like bulk of 1040 pages. The description of the book – which he wrote himself – betrays his idiosyncraticities: With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is […]
Ed has verified (with multiple unnamed and secret sources, because he’s the literary version of a John Le Carre character) that Thomas Pynchon is publishing a new book in December. Let’s hope it’s not another Vineland. By the way, if you’re new to Pynchon, here’s the first three books you should read (in this order): […]
