Harper, $26.99.
Lionel Shriver wrote her latest novel, The New Republic, before the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and, according to the book’s foreword, held it back until both her sales record and the public appetite for a terrorism-themed satire increased. Her first stroke of good fortune came swiftly when her 2003 novel We Need Read More
Later this month, Paul La Farge will publish his fourth book, Luminous Airplanes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pages, $25.00), a novel of fewer than 250 pages of words on paper but quite a bit more than that on a website specially designed to extend the story, with new chapters continually added over the next year or so. By the time it’s done, the site will contain a work “about three times larger than the book,” according to Mr. La Farge, who discussed the project with The Observer over email. Read More
A certain literary discourse, about what others should or shouldn’t be doing with their art, will probably always exist as a distraction from writing novels. I discerned this afresh while studying said discourse for my addition, arguably, in terms of “the future of the novel,” to the discourse. My addition–herein, itself a distraction from the Read More
Avid readers rarely question their job requirements. The endeavor of entering and acquainting oneself with a fictional world seldom seems odd. Not only is it fun and natural, but morally and intellectually justifiable, too. Made-up stories teach us the formal qualities of narrative; they encourage us to tell ourselves about ourselves-and each other. They provide Read More
The saga of Jonathan Franzen’s stolen glasses has come to its appropriate end: the man who took the Freedom author’s glasses hostage Monday night has come forward and identified himself. James Fletcher, a 27-year-old student at Imperial College London, detailed the full narrative of his eyewear-snatching to GQ UK, and the tale he Read More
Two British writers are up in arms about a new fad that’s become all the rage: the present tense. Three of the six finalists for the prestigious Man Booker Prize employ this stylistic device, a cheap trick that serious novelists would never resort to, writers Philip Pullman and Philip Hensher told The Daily Telegraph. Read More
