Looking Ahead to 2023 in Books
plus a great pastrami sandwich, Nell Zink on her new novel, and the pizza slice of 2022
A new year means new books. My “best books of 2023” list already has several titles on it, notably the forthcoming novels from Idra Novey and Elizabeth McKenzie.
So many big names have fiction coming out this year. Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, Bret Easton Ellis, and Margaret Atwood. I am most excited for the new books by Max Porter, Casey Plett, Eleanor Catton, Paul Murray, and Sarah Rose Etter.
Every year so many books surprise me, open my consciousness with their vitality and innovative storytelling. I wish for this with every book I open, every sentence I read.
2023 will be another great year for readers. Thank you to all the writers whose hard work makes this possible, and to the publishers who get the works out.
Thank you to the past week’s new paid subscribers who are helping keep Largehearted Boy moving forward.
Largehearted Likes
THE newsletter for links to personal essays as well as original writing.
“The Art of Reason” aims to help writers write.
Curbed on the MetroCard as canvas for art & advertising
Many of us treat MetroCards as disposable objects, to be recycled or tossed when they run out. Immediately upon their introduction, however, the MTA grasped that the visual blandness of this object also meant that it was a tiny blank canvas, or at least the back of it was.
This TikTok video of dogs getting on a bus to doggie daycare in Alaska
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserFrankel’s Delicatessen’s pastrami on rye with musiard
While my vegan partner was away for the holiday I finally tasted heaven. Frankel’s Delicatessen’s pastrami sandwich is now one of my favorites in New York City, sitting grandly beside offerings from Katz’s and David’s Brisket House.
Pizza slice of the year - Jake’s Supreme Special from Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop
Every slice at Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn is worthwhile, but this year I feasted on the Jake’s Supreme Special most often. Sliced sausage, cherry peppers, and sliced onions add up to pizza perfection.
Fluxblog’s 2022 Musical Survey
Fluxblog’s Matthew Perpetua continually introduces me to new music, especially with his yearly wrap-up playlists.
Hollywood’s Love Affair With Fictional Languages
Commissioning an entirely new language, which felt special for the first Avatar, is becoming a staple for immersive science-fiction and fantasy worlds. We’ve seen the invention of Dothraki and High Valyrian for HBO’s Game of Thrones, spoken and sign languages for the recent Dune remake, and bloodsucker-speak for Vampire Academy, to name only a handful. These languages are as functional as English, with internally consistent rules.
Having a backyard has helped me slow down and appreciate my surroundings. Birdwatching has become a hobby, and I even recognize individual sparrows, bluejays, and cardinals who stop by for a drink or snack. This week our resident Cooper’s hawk came by every morning, which started my day with a smile.
The New Yorker profiled artist Kehinde Wiley
Wiley’s portraits single out ordinary Black people for color-saturated canonization, turning spontaneous encounters on streets across the world into dates with art-historical destiny.
Largehearted Links
Poet Kiran Bhat interviewed by Anjali Enjeti
Anyone who wants to write in another language should let go of their ego and allow themselves to accept help from others. There’s nothing wrong with being corrected, or being led to say what you would like to express more properly from someone who knows the language intuitively.
PEN America on the year in educational censorship
The state of educational censorship continues to worsen. But as any free speech advocate will tell you, efforts to censor often bring unexpected consequences: benign speech gets banned accidentally, laws backfire on their own supporters, and administrators scramble to define the undefinable.
The Past Does Not Exist: An Interview with Peter Milligan
The comics writer talked screenwriting with The Comics Journal.
Robert Caro’s 10 cultural necessities
The New York Knicks Despite everything.
Nell Zink on her new novel
Was it important to you to write unsatirically about a millennial protagonist?
She’s generation Z, I think, but I don’t think of the struggles of young people without money as amusing enough to satirise. By the standards of most American novelists, I’m from the wrong side of the tracks. Most people doing this job are solidly middle class and they have anxieties that I don’t feel about the kind of disgrace poverty would be. That’s something I could satirise, whereas the struggles of someone like Bran, who’s down and out from the day she’s born, aren’t ready to be skewered.Full Stop’s interview with poet Lindsey Boldt
Oh, I love melody, harmonies, layering tones. It’s my hope that my poems feel pleasurable to read and to hear aloud. I like the idea of a poem’s prosody working on the ear and the body first before the conscious mind can make sense of the poem. The music catches the ear (like you said) and ideally opens the reader up to something they might not have been receptive to otherwise.
Last Week’s Largehearted Boy Features:
John Jodzio's Playlist for His Story Collection "This Is The Decade I Kept Getting Stabbed"