The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
Bruce Springsteen is writing a children's book about a bank-robbing baby called Outlaw Pete, based on his song of the same name. "Outlaw Pete is essentially the story of a man trying to outlive and outrun his sins," Springsteen said in a statement. The song "Outlaw Pete" was inspired by the 1950 children's book Brave Cowboy Bill. "When Bruce wrote 'Outlaw Pete' he didn't just write a great song, he created a great character," his co-author, cartoonist Frank Caruso, said in a statement. The book will come out from Simon & Schuster on Nov. 4.
For the Boston Review,Quyen Nguyenhas an interview with Tobias Wolff. Asked about the relationship between literature and politics, Wolff said: "I think it is a political act to force someone to enter the mind, the spirit, the perspective of another human being. We are often resistant to this experience because it forces us to give up all our ideas about other people and actually enter their lives and see through their eyes. That's a radically political act to me."
Ivan Kreilkamp considers the "Against [X]" essay in The New Yorker: " 'Against [X]' is a symptom of a liberal culture's longing to escape its own strictures; it's the desire of thoughtful and nuanced people to shed their inhibitions and issue fearsome dicta. We feel that we must be fair and evenhanded in our prose, but in our titles we can fly a pirate's flag."
The D.C. Public Library has hired a social worker to work with homeless patrons. Mark Jenkins reports in The Washington Post: "Libraries in other cities have addressed homelessness in various ways. Philadelphia has a cafe and Seattle a coffee cart run by workers who were previously homeless; Dallas produces podcasts of interviews with its homeless regulars. But as far as [social worker Jean] Badalamenti knows, D.C. is only the second U.S. city to hire a library social worker, following San Francisco." Badalamenti told thePost,"Because the libraries tend to be gathering places for people without homes, it's important to be part of the citywide conversation about how we're going to address homelessness, health services and moving people out of homelessness."
At Flavorwire, Elisabeth Donnelly makes the case for a more inclusive literary culture: "Lots of people who are professionally writing about books are also snobs, and snobs to the point that they won't even consider what the specific alchemy and magic is that makes something like 50 Shades of Grey save the book industry for a year. ... Ignoring the biggest literary phenomenon of the decade is not good criticism."
For NPR, 2012 National Book Award Finalist Domingo Martinez describes his struggles with getting health care: "Last year, as I sat in a community health clinic, I wondered if I was the only New York Times best-seller who was waiting to get sliding scale treatment from an underfunded community project, so I wouldn't die from an asthma attack or have a stroke."
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