Cue the collective sigh of relief: Morrissey’s autobiography will be released in the U.S. after all. Only weeks after becoming the fastest-selling music memoir of all time in the UK, the powers-that-be announced that the Moz’s memoir—a Penguin Classic—will go on sale on this side of the Atlantic on Dec. 3.
Amazon is starting a literary magazine. Day One is a weekly digital magazine that features poetry and short stories with a focus on “new and undiscovered” writers. Issues are delivered directly to subscribers’ Kindles, and an annual subscription is $20.
At the Virginia Quarterly Review, Robert Birnbaum reviews a swath of new books about the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington and John Coltrane to Charlies Parker and Mingus.
New York Times Book Review editor, Bookforum contributor, and award-winning critic Parul Sehgal delivers a TED talk praising envy—as the emotion is understood through the works of Proust and Highsmith.
At the New York Times, Adam Kirsch and Anna Holmes take on the question of whether Twitter has changed the role of the literary critic.
Conveying irony in writing is a delicate process. Go too far, and it can come across as over-the-top and mean-spirited. Don’t go far enough, and people won’t be able to tell that you’re kidding. But what if there were punctuation that designated irony? Over the centuries, many attempts have been made to come up with just such a punctuation mark, from the upside-down exclamation point to the one shaped like a Christmas tree to the reversed question mark. The New Statesman surveys the five-hundred-year history of the irony mark.