Suspend Your Disbelief

Recent Posts

Reviews |

Legend of a Suicide, by David Vann

by Greg Schutz

The stories in David Vann’s second book, Legend of a Suicide, circle compulsively around a central fascination—a father’s suicide. Partway through “Sukkwan Island,” the central novella in the collection, I decided I had to put the book down—just for a day, until I felt ready to read on. I mean this as praise. Legend of a Suicide is a very difficult book for the very best reasons: it is written with great honesty and journeys unflinchingly into darkness. It is a reckoning.


Shop Talk |

Netherland awarded PEN/Faulkner

by Anne Stameshkin

Congratulations to Joseph O’Neill, whose novel Netherland has won the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. If you want to read more about the book, Natalie Bakopoulos wrote an in-depth review of Netherland and its reviews for FWR last year. The PEN/Faulkner finalists were: Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, A Person of Interest by Susan Choi, Lush Life by Richard Price (see FWR’s discussion review), and Serena by Ron Rash.


Shop Talk |

bestsellers or bust?

by Anne Stameshkin

In this rather depressing Haaretz article (found via the Practicing Writer), Super-Agent Binky Urban remains “optimistic” about the future of publishing but expresses concern about the fate of “mid-list authors”: Urban: “So fewer books will be published, and those whom we call midlist writers will no longer get published. The major writers will keep publishing, debut books will always be published, and the ones in the middle will have a problem.” So you won’t be able to nurture writers. Urban: “That’s exactly the point. When I met Richard Ford for the first time, he already had published three novels, which […]


Shop Talk |

lit and tech linkage

by Anne Stameshkin

Can Twitter help publishers and stores sell books? Check out Ann Kingman’s findings on the Booksellers Blog. David Pogue hearts the new Kindle and answers concerns about the end of print publishing with three words: “Don’t be silly.” But Tim O’Reilly offers this “bold prediction”: “Unless Amazon embraces open e-book standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years. […] Open allows experimentation. Open encourages competition. Open wins.” Launching in March, Kachingle is a new online service that will encourage people to donate to newspapers, […]


Shop Talk |

r-e-s-p-e-c-t for novels by American women

by Anne Stameshkin

“Can a woman write the Great American Novel?” With this question in mind, Salon’s Laura Miller reviews Elaine Showalter’s new book, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx: …The bestseller lists, though less intellectually exalted, tend to break down more evenly along gender lines; between J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer alone, the distaff side is more than holding its own in terms of revenue. But when it comes to respect, are women writers getting short shrift? The question is horribly fraught, and has been since the 1970s. Ten years ago, in a much-argued-about […]


Shop Talk |

Mr. Dickens regrets he's unable to lunch today

by Anne Stameshkin

It would be criminal not to link to this great Dickens anecdote, as told on Terry Teachout’s blog; for the whole story, pick up a copy of Jane Smiley’s Charles Dickens (a Penguin Lives Biography). Can anyone think of a kinder way to phrase Dickens’ letter, which justifies breaking a social engagement in order to write? I’ve often longed to say something like this; hell, maybe the key to prolificacy is not worrying about the “kinder” bit. Teachout’s response: I like to think that after firing this off, Dickens burst into tears, then got on the computer and played Web […]


Shop Talk |

recommended reading on Oscars Day

by Anne Stameshkin

Based on my abysmal guesses last year, I can’t provide a reliable cheat sheet for your Oscar pool. But I can provide linkage: an interview with Slumdog Millionaire/Q&A author Vikas Swarup, discussing Simon Beaufoy’s film adaptation of his novel; a thoughtful piece from Garth Risk Hallberg on Revolutionary Road–the book, the film adaptation, and why the latter might not be up for more gold statues; a review of Milk from the New York Review of Books; BookFox’s critique of the adaptation of “New Boy,”one of the live-action short film contenders (FYI, you can download any of the short film nominees […]


Shop Talk |

open letter from Karl Pohrt: How can we save Shaman Drum — and independent bookstores?

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

In the late 1990s, I ran a small, independent bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin, called Canterbury Booksellers. I knew I wanted to be a writer at the time, but I had no idea how to go about the process. Working at the store gave me not only shelter as a writer-in-progress, but also afforded me the opportunity to meet other writers, learn about the publishing industry, and to spend my days surrounded by people who loved nothing more than discussing writing and books. It was, in short, idyllic. But this was also during the era when chain stores were proliferating and […]


Essays |

A Review of One's Own

by Lee Thomas

Over the past decade, book reviews and newspaper book sections have faced, and continue to face, serious danger of extinction. Lee Thomas explores what our culture stands to lose if the edited book review is in jeopardy, positing that book lovers, writers, and critics might yet find a way to profit–rather than suffer from–the sea changes of the publishing industry and online review forums.




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