paper trail

Feb 19, 2013 @ 12:47:00 am

David Markson

HTMLGiant has found a way to complete a David Markson interview that didn’t quite make it into Bookforum.

Haruki Murakami announced this week that he’ll be publishing a new novel in April, and fans are already beside themselves trying to guess what it will be about. The New York Daily News states (probably correctly) that it’s "safe to bet that there will be cats (that may or may not talk) and probably some awkward sex," while another reader proposes that "it will contain ear porn, a lonely man, a teenage/under-age girl, the war in Manchuria [and] some cooking."

Hilary Mantel, whose novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are set during the reign of Henry VIII, ripped into Kate Middleton at a recent talk hosted by the London Review of Books, calling the Duchess of Cambridge a “‘shop window mannequin,’ whose sole purpose is to deliver an heir to the throne.”

This Saturday in Toronto, DT Max, author of Every Story Is a Love Story, will talk about David Foster Wallace in a salon about artists and depression.

Is bad coverage better than no coverage? In light of Camilla Long’s award-winning takedown of Rachel Cusk’s novel Aftermath, the British media is taking a long look at the art of the negative book review. The Irish Times examines the the question, concluding that even if the review is a hatchet job, for most writers, “the possibility of being excoriated is preferable to the horror of being ignored.”

Ayn Rand fans and haters, take note: The Atlantic has launched its Atlas Shrugged book club.