The Way the World Works & The Way the World Ends

Philip Roth has decided that enough is enough and the time has come for him to quit.

John Jeremiah Sullivan, that new New Journalism wunderkind, took a look—and you know it’d have to be a close one—at another all around great attention haver and giver, Nicholson Baker, in last week’s NYTBR. You can tell that JJS was having some legitimately deep fun reading and writing about Baker’s How the World Works. And fun is an important—and too often overlooked—part of being a reader—heck, of thinking about the world. And per Lydia Kiesling, it’s one of the reasons James Wood is so good at what he does; even if you don’t agree with him; he makes the most grandfatherly criticism look like very serious fun.

What does “World Literature” even mean?

Liam Callanan once wrote a book called The Cloud Atlas and has some thoughts on how the film adaptation of David Mitchell’s similarly titled novel has affected his life.