Declan Spring of New Directions, Scott Esposito, and the Economy
Scott Esposito of Conversational Reading is starting a series on how the economic downturn/recession/late-capitalist implosion is impacting smaller, independent presses. As he writes, all the coverage has been focused on Random Reorganizing, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Hijinks, etc., but not much on what’s going on at ...
>
New Hermano Cerdo
For all Spanish readers, the new issue of Hermano Cerdo is now online. In his post about it, Scott Esposito points out this review of a new anthology of fiction by Peruvian women. It would be great if a few more Peruvian women writers made their way into English . . . ...
>
Ready Steady Book's Books of the Year Symposium
Over at Ready Steady Book Mark Thwaite has posted the “Books of the Year 2008 symposium” featuring recommendations from a host of authors, translators, and reviewers, including Scott Esposito (who recommends Adolfo Bioy Casares and others), Charlotte Mandell (who is all about Flann O’Brien), her husband ...
>
New Quarterly Conversation
Issue 14 of The Quarterly Conversation is now available online and features a number of interesting articles and reviews. In terms of reviews, there’s a piece by Scott Esposito on 2666, and one by Scott Bryan Wilson of Attila Bartis’s Tranquility. The “Features” sound really interesting as well, ...
>
Sebald on Stage
Thanks to Conversational Reading (and Vertigo before that) for bringing “i-witness” to our attention. From Wales Online Like most of us, Paul Davies and Fern Smith enjoy immersing themselves in a good book. [Ed. Note: That use of “like most of us” signals that we’re not reading a U.S. ...
>
Quotation Marks and Literature
I completely agree with Scott Esposito, Lionel Shriver’s diatribe against writers who don’t use quotation marks is certifiably batty: Literature is not very popular these days, to put it mildly. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, nearly half of Americans do not read books at all, and those who ...
>
Quarterly Conversation: Issue 13
The new issue of Quarterly Conversation is now online, and, as can be expected, filled with great stuff. One of the lead pieces is Scott Esposito’s article about the similarities in the writings of Adolfo Bioy Casares and Franz Kafka: In his Prologue [to The Invention of Morel, Borges calls on writers of the 20th ...
>