THE COLLECTED STORIESHeinrich Böll
How to Keep Your Volkswagen AliveChristopher Boucher
In a Salon essay Alec Nevala-Lee suggests that a New Yorker profile may actually be a curse for Hollywood’s biggest talent, such that “whenever a New Yorker profile shows a director hard at work in the editing room, the studio should start to worry.” The…
The re-launched Baffler — back from the dead under editor John Summers — carries a 10-page takedown of The Atlantic by Maureen Tkacik. The piece (“Omniscient Gentleman of The Atlantic,” not available online) focuses on changes at the venerable magazine under owner David G. Bradley, who bought The Atlantic…
Last week, the annual VIDA count revealed the continuing gender bias in US journalism and literary criticism. This topic’s attracted significant attention this past year, thanks in large part to bestselling author Jennifer Weiner‘s public commentary, but the results reveal that the situation remains as bleak…
“Each year, the editors of the Believer generate a short list of the novels and story collections they thought were the strongest and most underappreciated of the year,” and this time around they have selected a Melville House book: Lars Iyer’s Spurious. The timing is…
The English historian Ronald Fraser has died. He was the author of a number of books on Spanish history including In Search of a Past and In Hiding, which Arthur Miller reviewed in the New York Times, calling it “So brief and yet so complete, so…
In the Chronicle Review, Mark Bauerlein writes about the issues involving literary scholarship and the hard road ahead for authors trying to be heard in a field awash with theses. He writes, “Because after four decades of mountainous publication, literary studies has reached a saturation…
Spain’s El País newspaper has pronounced a state of crisis in worldwide literary criticism. In an article on Saturday, Winston Manrique Sabogal interviewed some of the foremost names in literary journalism, including literary editor of The Guardian Claire Armitstead; essayist, editor and translator Eliot Weinberger; and…
At the time of writing, a Battle of Ideas is being fought at London’s totally dreamy Free Word Centre. The question: ‘Is it ever valid to judge literature with reference to its nationality, linguistic distinctions aside?’ The event’s blurb doesn’t pull any punches: ‘Are we…
On the 24th of this month Vintage Books is resurrecting a magazine that has been dead since 1937. Originally published by Chatto & Windus, Night and Day was very much respected in its day and famously edited by Graham Greene. The newly reanimated version will…
After taking a swipe at “pretentious” New York, the LAist gives a shout-out to the under-heralded Los Angeles literary scene with a list of the city’s best literary journals. “From the darkly nuanced Black Clock to the quick-witted Swink and ‘slow-lit’ bent of Slake, LA holds its…