Rage against the macheese

"[Burn This Book is] a slim volume, one that can be read in an afternoon, but don't let this fool you into thinking it lacks power. Morrison's—and the book's—central thesis is true, if not necessarily original: 'A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.'

"It's the book's writing quality, itself, that speaks the loudest. Given our Internet world of lazy thinkers, it's almost a shock—certainly, an awesome delight—to read writers of such caliber take on threats to reading's very existence....So Pamuk, also a Nobel Prize winner and Turkish free-speech advocate, chronicles in "Freedom to Write" how shepherding Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter inside Turkey's post-coup 1980s crackdown years helped to infuse his writing with a sense of political angst. Novelist Ed Park, a Web columnist for The Times' book section, rages at book censorship in an odd, futuristic Q & A about Robert Cormier's "I Am the Cheese" (1977), banned in the late 1980s by the school superintendent in Bay County, Fla.

—L.A. Times

The EP rundown

I. Upcoming readings:
Tues., 4/21 Pacific Standard (with Nathaniel Rich)
•Weds., 4/29 Book Culture (with Damion Searls)
Mon., 5/4 Café Arts (talk)
(Click here for more details.)

II. Latest story:
"Untitled," in the debut issue of Gigantic (print only). Features work by and talk with/from Gary Shteyngart, Joe Wenderoth, Deb Olin Unferth, Tao Lin, Malcolm Gladwell, Lauren Spohrer, Doug Elsass, Justin Taylor, and many others.



III. Latest Astral Weeks column:
On Christopher Miller's The Cardboard Universe: A Guide to the World of Phoebus K. Dank

IV. Latest edition of Personal Days
Vintage (UK) paperback, only £7.99!

IV. Upcoming publications:
Read Hard: Five Years of Great Writing From The Believer (McSweeney's, June)

Burn This Book, ed. Toni Morrison (HarperStudio, May)

"The Freud Notebook," in Post Road #17

"This Is the Writing You have Been Waiting for," introductory essay for Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works (UC Press, September)

Suddenly this spring

Ed's piece "The Sudden Sharp Memory," about Robert Cormier's novel I Am the Cheese, will appear in Burn This Book (Harper Studio), edited by Toni Morrison, this May. Contributors include Paul Auster, Russell Banks, Nadine Gordimer, John Updike, and others.