The Dizzies

nevver:

Artists in Crime by Duncan Hannah

Paul La Farge on Sergio de la Pava’s awesome A NAKED SINGULARITY (the sidebar has books by Gaddis, DFW, and, uh, me!):

Sergio de la Pava’s first novel, A Naked Singularity, is 700 pages long and was originally self-published, but now, thanks to a long slow swell of enthusiasm on the Internet, it is available in a beautifully designed — if not 100 percent copyedited — paperback from the University of Chicago Press, and I strongly encourage you to overcome whatever hesitation the phrase 700-page self-published novel may inspire in you and pick it up. It is a beautiful monster of a book, a novel that left this reviewer, at least, feeling like maybe there’s some point in reading novels — and writing them — after all.

emk-irl:

laphamsquarterly:

Barbara Newhall Follett, the child prodigy who began her first book The House Without Windows at the age of 8, and the subject of Paul Collins’ essay “Vanishing Act.” 

“My dreams are going through their death flurries. I thought they were all safely buried, but sometimes they stir in their grave, making my heartstrings twinge. I mean no particular dream, you understand, but the whole radiant flock of them together — with their rainbow wings, iridescent, bright, soaring, glorious, sublime. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money.”

After I read this essay I had to track down the book (I ended up borrowing it from a university library), and it’s such a surprisingly sweet read. Lyrical. I wish I had a copy.

[link to the blog post I wrote about it]

Prime Burger, in fact and fiction: The 51st St. eatery with the distinctive seats is set to close; here was my (c. 2000) attempt to incorporate them into a novel.