Novelist binaries: "Donald Antrim is a push-mower novelist, while Rachel Kushner is a ride-mower novelist; and Jonathan Safran Foer cuts grass with an artisanal scythe, as opposed to a writer like Tao Lin, who eats each blade like a ruminant." At The Millions, after reading MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction, Matt Seidel takes care to delineate other classification systems for fiction writers.
"That'll be $20—or, four Alice Munro pieces." Hector Tobar writes at the Los Angeles Times' Jacket Copy that prose from Munro will appear on a commemorative coin in Canada. Tobar reports that coins will retail for $63 each—which should, perhaps, relegate them to "Serious Collectors Only" status. After all, $63 would also likely buy you a number of Munro's books.
The Munro passage? "And in one of these houses—I can't remember whose—a magic doorstop, a big mother-of-pearl seashell that I recognized as a messenger from near and far, because I could hold it to my ear—when nobody was there to stop me—and discover the tremendous pounding of my own blood, and of the sea." Which takes our mind off our money entirely.
It's bracket season! And we're not (only) talking about college basketball. The Morning News' annual Tournament of Books is underway. John McElwee, Roxane Gay, and The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle have already declared a few winners. Check out the semi-finals and stay tuned for the March 28 championship match.