The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books
March 2, 2011 8:13 AM   Subscribe

The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books
A year in the making, the book I co-edited is now out! The book includes inventive, thoughtful, and funny pieces in which Jonathan Lethem, Rivka Galchen, Benjamin Kunkel, Joe Meno, Deb Olin Unferth, and many others consider the landscape as the literary world faces a revolution, a sudden change in the way we buy, produce, and read books.

And here's the glorious table of contents, and - special for MeFi, links to the various essays from the book that have been excerpted and are available online. Enjoy!


Introduction by C. Max Magee and Jeff Martin

Rivka Galchen - The Future of Paper
Joe Meno - A Book is a Place
Michael Paul Mason - The Future of Writing is in My Jacket
Clancy Martin - I Miss Books Like I Miss My Bicycle (or, Riding a Horse with Hay Fever)
Owen King - Not Quite as Dire as Having Your Spine Ripped Out, but . . .
John Brandon - The Three-Day Weekend Plan
Benjamin Kunkel - Goodbye to the Graphosphere
Lauren Groff - Modes of Imagining the Writer of the Future
Rudolph Delson - The Best Books Will Be Written Long After You Are Dead
Nancy Jo Sales - Home Word Bound
Katherine Taylor - Survival Tips for Writers (and Books in General): A List
Kyle Beachy - The Extent of Our Decline
Joshua Gaylord - Enduring Literature
Tom Piazza - An Interview with Tom Piazza on the Future of the Book
Garth Risk Hallberg - Why It May Take Me a While to Return Your Email
Sonya Chung - In the Corporeal Age, We Will Know the Names of Trees
Ander Monson - Finallyfast.com and Playing the Book
Victor LaValle - Scribble
Emily St. John Mandel - The Chameleon Machine
Victoria Patterson - Why Bother?
Elizabeth Crane - Spare Us the 3-D
Deb Olin Unferth - The Book
David Gates and Jonathan Lethem - A Kind of Vast Fiction
Marco Roth - The Outskirts of Progress
Reif Larsen - The Crying of Page 45
posted by cmaxmagee (2 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite

I dare say there's some very interesting stuff in the essays, but I have to say that's the ugliest book cover I've ever seen.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:00 PM on March 6, 2011


Paul: Entitled to your opinion of course, but you may be interested to know that the cover designer, Thomas Allen has been featured glowingly (and repeatedly) on the blue. Allen actually physically constructed this ebook sculpture just for the cover. In an artist's note in the book, he talks about the sculpture and the thought process behind it. Take another look, you may find it more intriguing on closer inspection.
posted by cmaxmagee at 1:15 PM on March 6, 2011


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