Paper Trail

Tony Tulathimutte on rejection and corniness; an evening of impassioned criticism with 4Columns

Tony Tulathimutte. Photo: Clayton Cubitt.

The fall issue of the Paris Review is out now, with prose by Josephine Baker and Morgan Thomas, poetry by Hannah Arendt and Sara Gilmore, interviews with Rosemarie Waldrop and Javier Cercas, and more. 

Online at n+1, read A. S. Hamrah on a sampling of this summer’s movies. On Osgood Perkins’s Longlegs: “Ordinary things like birthday cards can start to feel off when they’re handled by Satan’s prop department.” On Zach Clark, the writer and director of The Becomers: “There’s no reason Clark isn’t the next Jonathan Demme, besides a general, society-wide incompetence that can always find the money for anything as long as it isn’t good.”

Tony Tulathimutte’s linked story collection Rejection is out today. At Interview, Tulathimutte talks with Leah Abrams about how his concept of the book changed since he started it in 2013, “writing across difference,” and his working definition of corniness: “It’s such an occupational hazard for writers. I’m not even sure I’ve arrived at a really satisfactory definition, but the way I think about it right now is that feeling when you sense that the writer has taken for granted the validity of the effect that they’re trying to achieve with their work and is really overconfident in having achieved it.”

The shortlist for the 2024 Booker Prize has been announced: Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake, Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, Percival Everett’s James, Anne Michaels’s Held, and Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep

Tomorrow at KGB Bar, 4Columns editor in chief Margaret Sundell will host an evening of impassioned criticism: “Join us to judge Team Love Letter and Team Break-Up Note, each consisting of 4 critics who have either written amorous reviews or scathing smack-downs for the magazine, which they shall read aloud for the drinking public. At the end of the evening, the audience will vote through applause for the team that won their hearts.” Melissa Anderson, Andrew Chan, Aruna D’Souza, Sasha Frere-Jones, Jennifer Krasinski, Sukhdev Sandhu, Helen Shaw, and Pamela Sneed will read.