It’s been a good few months for my more literary friends. Most recently, an old friend Ben Hale (website, blog) has published his first novel and received very good reviews, including in the New York Times Book Review. I was lucky enough to read The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore in proofs, and that copy is still floating around in Beijing. I’ll let the reviewers give their un-biased view of the thing, but I thought it was fantastic. If you tend to follow the advice of The New Yorker on literary matters, you might find yourself reading it as part of their “book club” this month. Enjoy.
As if to taunt me with the potential glory of literary merit, another good friend from Boulder, Colorado, has published a debut short story in The Paris Review, one that has received favorable rumblings in the literary blogosphere.
Alexandra Kleeman is known to me as a source of originality in insight and wit, and her story gives us some of that depth. I’m with everyone else who patiently awaits her next offerings.
Finally, though it’s not fiction, I recently received a great piece of mail from Beijing via California: the new issue of LEAP 艺术界, a new English–Chinese bilingual magazine on the Chinese art world that has several friends working on it. Among them are Philana Woo (advertising) and Angie Baecker (contributing editor). Angie was the brains behind a co-written article she and I did previewing the Beijing art scene during the olympics, and her insights have only grown. The magazine also has a new website.
My magazine package also included a very cool branded Moleskine notebook, which I will be using to bring order to the chaos of my life in the near future.
Some time I’ll show these kids how great it can be to do more boring serious publishing.
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