Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2010

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In Defense of Comic Novels, Part II

by Celeste Ng

Recently we discussed a Times article about why comic novels often get overlooked when it comes to literary awards. Over at BlackBook, author and Columbia professor Sam Lipsyte adds his thoughts on the status of funny fiction today: Do you feel that literary fiction is afraid to make people laugh these days? I think there’s a worry that if it’s funny then perhaps there’s something slight about it. That it’s not as important as a deeply researched, earnest, historical novel, or a kind of humorless tale of contemporary life. I think there possibly was a moment in the ‘60s and […]


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March Madness for Books

by Celeste Ng

So it’s March, which means that if you work in an office, all you probably hear are things like “Northern Iowa upset KU?!” and “Can you believe Cornell is still in this thing?” and “OMG all this is really f*ing up my bracket.” If, like me, you could not care less about college basketball but secretly wish that you, too, could have the thrill of completing a tidy little chart and enjoying some head-to-head competition, The Morning News has a solution: the Tournament of Books. Yes, the very concept of a matchup between books is a little silly—especially when the […]


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The End of Publishing: The Video

by Celeste Ng

We’ve had book trailers and vooks and now… a video about the end of publishing. (Or is it?) DK (Dorling Kindersley) Books put this clever video together for a sales conference: The Penguin website offers some insight into the creation of the clip: We asked DK to give us a list of facts and statistics about publishing in 2010, and where they see it going in the future, and then our scriptwriter, Jason LaMotte took this information and wove the facts into the current script.


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President Sends Fan Mail…to Novelist

by Celeste Ng

As if we didn’t already know Obama was the Reader-in-Chief, here’s further proof: recently, President Obama sent a fan letter to author Yann Martel. Galleycat reports: Today novelist Yann Martel posted a piece of fan mail he received from President Barack Obama. The president wrote: “My daughter and I just finished reading Life of Pi together. Both of us agreed we prefer the story with animals. It is a lovely book–an elegant proof of God and the power of storytelling.” Martel’s response? If there was a way of tattooing it on my back, I would. What amazes me is the […]


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In Defense of Comic Novels

by Celeste Ng

In the art world, comedy seldom gets its dues: if it’s funny, many assume, it can’t also be “real” art. At the Oscars a couple of years back, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly lamented the plight of “A Comedian at the Oscars”: “the saddest man of all / Your movies may make millions, but your name they’ll never call.” Something similar happens in literature, Erica Wagner points out in the UK’s Times: Comic novels — let’s call them terrific novels that happen to be funny — tend to fall through the cracks, especially where prizes are concerned. […]


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Day Jobs of Famous Writers

by Celeste Ng

If you’re reading the FWR blog furtively, hunched in your cubicle over your TPS reports, this post is for you. You are not alone: almost all writers need a day job to support their art. Lapham’s Quarterly reveals the day jobs of some famous writers, such as Charlotte Bronte, Franz Kafka, and William Faulkner in trading-card format. Or quiz your friends: Which novelist helped create the modern London police force? Which novelist made only $1838 per year in today’s dollars? If these writers could turn out masterpieces like As I Lay Dying and In the Penal Colony and the Chronicles […]


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The Second Pass, and life after print

by Anne Stameshkin

Tonight I stumbled (for the first time, I’m ashamed to admit) upon The Second Pass. This fantastic lit site, edited by freelance writer and former Harper Collins editor John Williams, features a blog and an impressive range of features: essays, interviews, and reviews covering both new releases (Circulating) and backlist titles (Backlist). Another section, The Shelf, features reviewlets of recent titles, with links to and excerpts from other reviews across the bookosphere. To celebrate the site’s first year anniversary, twelve contributors (including the editor) wrote pieces on their favorite out-of-print books. Williams introduces the combined result, “Tales of the Unread,” […]


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Andrew's Book Club: March 2010 Picks

by Anne Stameshkin

This month, Andrew Scott — our Oprah of story collections, long may he reign! — recommends the following books: Big House Pick: Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, by Brad Watson (Norton) “The dark and brilliant tales of Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives capture the strangeness of human (and almost-human) life. In this, his first collection of stories since his celebrated, award-winning Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson takes us even deeper into the riotous, appalling, and mournful oddity of human beings. In prose so perfectly pitched as to suggest some celestial harmony, he writes about […]




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