Ever get furious about a book that was too long for its own good, or about a book that was full of falsehoods, or about a book you thought was great but other people didn’t care for?
Okay, so maybe “rage” is a strong word for today’s lit links, but there’s something of frustration about them all.
First we have author Ian McEwan complaining that very few novels earn their length, and that he prefers shorter works that (aligning with the ethos of Poe) can be read at one sitting. (Good news for those of us who aren’t afraid to write novellas!)
The Atlantic takes on non-fiction publishing with a piece on the lack of rigorous fact-checking, which calls into question whether most non-fiction should be more honestly marketed as fiction.
National Public Radio examines how F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s The Great Gatsby (in the fine American tradition of Moby-Dick) went from flop to The Great American Novel.
Lastly, what if you learned that some of your favorite authors were writing novels that were going to be sealed away in a vault for a hundred years so that you’d be long dead before anyone could read them? Well, it’s happening! Rage on!
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Style guide: Texts, performances, and periodicals (including websites) are italicized. Key persons are in bold.