The 2010 MacArthur Fellows have been announced, with three authors among the twenty-three winners. Journalist and television-guru David Simon, fiction writer Yiyun Li, and historian Annette Gordon-Reed now all have license to affix the word genius to their name.
Barnes and Noble chairman Leonard Riggio and his group of board of director candidates have withstood a strong challenge from Los Angeles investor Ron Burkle, as shareholders have voted to re-elect Riggio and his supporters. As shareholder Howard Tannenbaum put it: "Riggio and his brother built up the company. What does Burkle know about book selling?"
In The Guardian, Jonathan Franzen talks about Oprah, being called a Great American Novelist ("It paints a big bullseye on the back of my head,") and writing Freedom, and says that David Foster Wallace's suicide in 2008 angered him into finishing the book: "I was mad. I got motivated by anger at him. 'Well, goddamn it, Dave! I've got one advantage over you, and that's that I'm still alive, and I'm going to show what I can do.'"
Tonight at McNally Jackson Books, Darin Strauss reads from his memoir Half a Life.
