Roundup: Tomas Transtromer, Justin Torres, “Why We Need Long Critical Essays,” and more

by Mark Athitakis | Oct-10-2011

David L. Ulin looks at the poetry of Tomas Transtromer, winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature, at the Los Angeles Times.

Scott Esposito, founder of the literary website the Quarterly Conversation (see the Critical Mass Q&A with him), has launched a new series of ebooks dedicated to longform literary criticism. The first entry in the series, to be published October 17, features essays by Esposito and Barrett Hathcock on Nicholson Baker and Javier Marias. Esposito explains more about the project in “Why We Need Long Critical Essays.”

How did Jonathan Franzen, Mary Karr, David Foster Wallace, and Jeffrey Eugenides become America’s literary vanguard? Evan Hughes investigates the matter in New York magazine.

Julia M. Klein reviews two books on the impact of the recession, Don Peck’s Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It and Colby Buzzell’s Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey, for the Columbia Journalism Review.

David Duhr reviews Chuck Klosterman’s novel The Visible Man for the Dallas Morning News.

Craig Morgan Teicher's poem "Money Time" appears in the October 10 edition of the New Yorker.

Rigoberto Gonzalez reviews Justin Torres’ novel We the Animals for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Laura Lippman’s The Most Dangerous Thing for the Washington Post.

Joseph Peschel reviews The Best American Short Stories 2011 for the Boston Globe and Richard Burgin’s collection Shadow Traffic for the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Adam Kirsch reviews Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Stranger’s Child for the Wall Street Journal.

David Haglund looks into what the bankruptcy filing of the Friendly’s restaurant chain means for Nicholson Baker.

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