“In 2006, when I came home all enthusiastic about his work, he still had no UK publisher. ... The view in London was that he was too difficult; no publisher could take the risk.” (The ill-chosen question was at the Edinburgh Book Festival five years later.) - The Guardian
For many ordinary readers, the idea of entering a fictional world constantly teetering on the edge of a revelation that is always imminent but concealed, in which words pace ceaselessly around reference, and whose favored tool is the long, unstopped sentence, one that takes, say, four hundred pages to... - The New Yorker
“Devotees of her cult professed to find her restoring a pristine freshness and rhythm to language. Medical authorities compared her effusions to the rantings of the insane.” - BookForum
Fiona Benson, an editor of Exeter University’s Ukrainian Wartime Poetry Project, was invited to BookForum in Lviv by Arthur Dron’, a poet and war hero. On the second day, a siren sounded, everyone went down into a bomb shelter, and Russian missiles struck. - The Guardian
“The two-page typewritten manuscript signed by Kerouac in green ink is titled ‘The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing’ and is dated 15 April 1957, five months before … On the Road was published. It was discovered last year during the disposal of items owned by (mafia don) Paul Castellano." - The Guardian
My entire future rested on a few essays written in the school hall under a three-hour time constraint? Really? In the nineties, this was what we called “the meritocracy.” - The New Yorker
Given the complicated nature of library wholesaling and its existing position in the market, Ingram is well positioned to pick up a sizable chunk of B&T’s business. - Publishers Weekly
The CEO of Simon & Schuster has some thoughts about what will be going on a decade from now: "I fearlessly predict that the average book will be shorter.” - Boston Globe (Archive Today)
Quiara Alegria Hudes: "I think there is more space for our different communities in literature than in theater. It costs less, and you can get books for free at the library, that makes it easier.” - El País English
“You can’t speed-read a poem,” he explains. “You have to read it, hear the sounds, the rhythms, reread it, not be in a hurry. Slowing down helps us realize that for our speed, we sacrifice things.” - Christian Science Monitor
A library director in Wyoming who was fired two years ago because she refused to remove books with sexual content and L.G.B.T.Q. themes from a library’s children and young adult sections was awarded $700,000 in a settlement on Wednesday. - The New York Times
So: a victory for high literature, for inevitability, for oppositional culture, for men. But for the obsessives who have been attending to the saga of the Nobel Prize in literature over the past decade, it’s also something of a bummer. - The New Republic
A report by charity Inclusive Books for Children found that of the 2,721 books surveyed, only 51 featured a Black main character, down by 21.5% since 2023. - The Guardian
