At Page-Turner, Adelle Waldman reconsiders the traditional novel. It’s “fashionable” to think of it as over, or to suppose that memoir and autobiographical novels are the only way forward. But the form offers possibilities that nonfiction and autobiography do not. Among them, it allows the writer subjects that aren’t herself: “Channeling people other than the author also makes possible the presentation of multiple consciousnesses, enabling novels to capture some of the populous cacophony of real life.”
Raymond Chandler wrote a libretto to a comic opera, The Princess and the Pedlar. The work was registered at the Library of Congress in 1917 and subsequently forgotten about. Now the daughter of a woman Chandler was involved in late in his life wants to produce it. But the estate isn’t interested, it says, in Chandler’s juvenalia.
At the Columbia Journalism Review, a discussion of longform platforms, including Latterly. Launched in November by Ben Wolford and Christina Asencio, Latterly pays contributors $2500 per piece.
Bookslut's Lauren Oyler explains why she dislikes Roxane Gay’s recent book, Bad Feminist: “The problem with Gay’s manipulation of feminism into a 'bad' version, it turns out, is that it’s not so different from no feminism at all; the rejection of ‘unreasonable standards’ for feminism quickly descends into the rejection of standards full-stop.”
Gawker editorial director Joel Johnson has been removed from his position but not from the company. A “V.P.-level” position is available to him if he wants it, Nick Denton said: ”We need Joel’s mind, and we need it free of everyday distractions." In Johnson’s place, Denton will hire an executive editor and a group managing editor.
