paper trail

Jan 11, 2012 @ 1:00:00 am

Moe Angelos in "Sontag: Reborn." Photo by James Gibbs.

Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart, home of Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Leonard Cohen and Alice Munro, has just been bought by Random House.

Lev Grossman rounds up the seven books he’s most looking forward to in 2012. Noting that they’re all written by white dudes, The Rumpus’s Roxane Gay writes an addendum: “A Random, Deeply Subjective Selection of Books I Am Looking Forward To in 2012 Mostly Written by Women but Also Some Men.”

Portrait of the intellectual as a young woman: Moe Angelos’s “Sontag: Reborn” is a new play about the “artist (and thinker) in the process of self-creation.” It’s based on her journals, and spans the years 1947 to 1963.

“Dear Bernard-Henri Levy, We have rien in common except that we are both rather contemptible individuals. A specialist in farcical stunts, you dishonour even the white shirts you always wear unbuttoned to the waist. You are an intimate of the powerful, you wallow in immense wealth and are a philosopher without an original idea. Moi? I'm just a redneck. A nihilist. An unremarkable author with no style.” Jim Crace channels Michel Houellebecq in a review of Public Enemies, a dialogue between Houellebecq and Henri-Levy.

The Omnivore website (not to be confused with our own omnivore) inaugurates their Hatchet Job of the Year award, designed to promote the most "angry, funny and trenchant" book reviews.