An anonymous literary agent calling herself Miss Snark runs a blog where she dispenses blunt, pointed comments and criticisms that are engaging and entertaining. You can submit work to her and she’ll run it through the Crapometer and post her thoughts. She also responds to comments. One viewer asks “I see a lot of agent…
Via MaudNewton, I learned of a brief and entertaining article examining Lolita at 50. The article explains the genesis of Nabokov’s idea, how his wife just managed to convince the author from burning the manuscript, and how many readers have mistaken certain elements over the years. Particularly interesting is the treatment of Lolita‘s foreward. In…
Jay McInerney provides an interesting review of Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel in Sunday’s New York Times. In a quick wrap-up, McInerney describes the recent history of coming-of-age novels by writing, “In its modern form the American bildungsroman (the novel of formation) descends from The Catcher in the Rye‘ (1951). Reinvigorated by feminism in the 70’s,…
Joe Meno, author of How the Hula Girl Sings is appearing Olsson’s in Dupont Circle, 1307 19th Street NW in Washington DC, tonight at 7pm. Meno’s new novel begins “exactly where most pulp fiction usually ends, with the vivid episode of the terrible crime itself. Three years later, Luce Lemay, out on parole for the…
Aimee Bender is scheduled to appear at Powell’s today in support of her newest collection, Willful Creatures. The reading is at 7:30PM at Powell’s Burnside location: 1005 W Burnside in Portland. Bender is a fantastic writer so this appearance shouldn’t be missed by those folks in the Northwest.