The Evergreen Review, the legendary literary publication that is currently being revived by Dale Peck and John Oakes, is throwing a party at Le Poisson Rouge on November 2. The event will be emceed by Peck, and will feature Heather Abel, Calvin Baker, Alex Chee, Mark Doten, and John Keene. There will be “literary outrages, parodies of beloved icons, and a performance/happening.” They are making it clear that this will be no ordinary literary event: “No readings!”
The New York Times reports that David Lynch will write, with the help of journalist Kristine McKenna, a memoir-biography hybrid titled Life and Work, tentatively scheduled to be released by Grand Central in 2017. “I want to get all the right information in one place,” Mr. Lynch says, “so if someone wants to know something, they can find it here.” The Guardian presents a slightly more contentious side of the story: Lynch has said through his British publisher, Canongate, that “There’s a lot of bullshit out there about me, in books and all over the Internet.” He continues: “I wouldn’t do it with anyone other than Kristine; she and I go way back, and she gets it right.”
Donald Trump and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter have long history of antagonism, dating back to the years when Carter was an editor at Spy, which ran a series of pieces skewering the real-estate tycoon, calling him, most famously, a “short-fingered vulgarian.” Apparently the hard feelings persist: On Friday evening, Trump Tweeted that there are rumors that Carter is about to be fired from Vanity Fair.
As Ben Carson prepares to take a break from the campaign to promote his new book, A More Perfect Union, Philip Bump at the Washington Post notes that since the year 2000, presidential candidates have written at least 172 books. But while running for president might help book sales, a book doesn’t often help one’s chances when running for president: “Very few authors actually go on to win.”
Sports columnist T. J. Simmers is suing the Los Angeles Times for discrimination, and according to Politico, his legal team includes the famously discredited New Republic writer Stephen Glass. (In other Glass news, the ex-journalist has reportedly paid Harper’s $10,000 for a now-discredited article he published in that magazine in 1998.)
Garth Greenwell—a student at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop whose What Belongs to You will be published by FSG in January—writes about his experience of selling a novel while he’s still getting his MFA. Were his fellow students resentful of his success? “There was some of that, some of it painful,” Greenwell states, but mostly there was generosity: “I’m not sure how I would have weathered the anxiety of edits, the anxiety of marketing and promotion, the anxiety of waiting for reviews, without my circle of friends here.” Has the book deal given him more confidence as a writer? No. “I think I had a fantasy, maybe many writers do, that once the book found a home there would be some fundamental assuaging of the anxiety I suppose all artists feel, the constant buzz of doubt inherent in making things with no obvious purpose or sure measure of success. But of course that hasn’t happened.”
