Would You Want to Be Friends With Humbert Humbert?: A Forum on “Likeability”

Eff yeah, Claire Messud!

newyorker:

Our Page-Turner blog asked a group of novelists how often the question of likeability has been posed about their characters: http://nyr.kr/16CpZCS

Illustration by Roman Muradov

(Source: newyorker.com)

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theparisreview:

We are honored to guest edit Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading today.

The winner of this year’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction, Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Bettering Myself” is a story, as editor Lorin Stein notes, that “improves (and makes me laugh) each time I read it.”

Check out Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Bettering Myself” here.

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TONIGHT!

bycheng:

Thanks to Alex Gilvarry who sent this to me (who I will be in conversation with at 7:30 this Tuesday)

ALSO on display is The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (of which I am hearing tons of great things) and is that Neil Gaiman’s looking roughishroguish out through the glass?

"Excitement for audio erotica had been building long before Fifty Shades of Grey. Susie Bright, the Best American Erotica series editor and editor­-at-­large at Audible, says that the Internet changed everything: ‘There was a growth in fantasy, fan fiction, kinky sexual expression, having a female writer… All of that had an impact.’ Tina Engler, who founded Ellora’s Cave in 2000, the vanguard of e­book erotica publishing, started her company when traditional publishers rejected her racy manuscripts. Says Ellora’s Cave publisher Raelene Gorlinsky, ‘They all loved her writing but said, ‘Oh, no, women won’t buy this stuff with explicit sex in it. You have to take all that out.’ And she said, ‘Yes, they will!’’"

Read more of my latest Publishers Weekly article “Aural Sex” on audiobook erotica (subscription required)

scottcheshire:

Claire Messud talks with the Tottenville Review about her new and wonderful novel The Woman Upstairs, claustrophobia, and Katy Perry (among other things).

“In the list of things we should be angry about, the manipulations of the media is one that we seem to be strangely docile in accepting. I don’t quite understand why we don’t have any ire about that…”

Click on the photo above to read more.

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emilygould:

elanormcinerney:

Janet Malcolm | The Silent Woman

Amazing book. Elanor, I hope you also read “Bitter Fame” along with it for best possible Silent Woman reading experience.

"As partygoers arrive, ask them to write their name on a slip of paper and place it in one of two jars labeled with the possible genres. Then at the end of the party, pick out a name from the “correct guess” jar and give the winning guest a small gift, a galley or two hundred bookmarks with the address of your website. Give everyone else instructions on how to write an Amazon or Goodreads review when the book is out. These can be printed ahead of time and folded into the shape of a crane."

Jessica Francis Kane, “How to Host a Genre-Reveal Party,” McSweeney’s

Ha! So clever and delightful.

The 10 Best Imaginary Countries in Books →

Nabokov, Bellow, Kafka, and 7 other authors who created places so good they seem real.

"

I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I’m writing for the New Yorker, I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.

I remember my friend, George—people used to say to me, other women, when I was young and at the New Yorker: “How did you get your job?” And I would say, “Well, I met George Trow, and he introduced me to the editor.”

And they’d say, “No, no, no. How did you get your job?”

And I said to George, “I don’t know why they ask me this.” And he said, “Oh, just tell them your father owned the magazine.”

And so the next time people said, “How did you get your job?” I said, “Oh, my father owned the magazine.” And it stopped.

"

novelist Jamaica Kincaid, quoted in Salon

(Source: salon.com)

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latimes:

The intersections between Los Angeles and literature

Yesterday marked the debut of our Literary L.A. feature, which highlights literary hotspots across the city. Want to go where Ray Bradbury wrote “Fahrenheit 451” on a type writer fueled by dimes? We have you covered.

And of course, the tool’s a work-in-progress, so send over your feedback on authors, works or mentions you’d like to see included!

Check out the tool here, or get psyched for this weekend’s Festival of Books, running from April 20-21 at the USC Campus.