Hundreds of Haruki Murakami fans waited overnight outside bookstores in Tokyo to get early copies of his latest novel, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. According to a review in Asahi Shimbun, the novel is about “a man who tries to overcome his sense of loss and isolation.” The Guardian elaborates: “at high school, protagonist Tsukuru Tazaki had four close friends whose names represented different colours. His did not, and at university he was rejected by his friends. Now 36, Tazaki is looking back on his empty, colourless life.”
After visiting the Anne Frank Museum, Justin Bieber wrote in the guest book: “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber.”
After an outcry over the whiteness and maleness and general shortsightedness of the “American Men of Letters” sweepstakes, the Knopf/Vintage Facebook page has removed all traces of the competition, which gave readers the chance to win novels by James Salter, Richard Russo, John Cheever, Richard Ford and Philip Roth. Meanwhile, Riverhead responded with their own contest: the “Global Women of Letters” sweepstakes.
Jack Handey—who in the early ’90s provided Saturday Night Live with its “Deep Thoughts” segments—actually exists, and is an accomplished satirist and poet.
When Dickens didn’t meet Dostoevsky: The Times Literary Supplement digs deep to find the source of a bogus anecdote, and unravels a string of surprisingly elaborate lies to get to the bottom of a string of literary hoaxes.
Yoko Ono is putting out a book of “instructional poetry” called Acorn with OR Books.