Sunday Links:

Colleen Mondor discusses John Lauritsen's new book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, which claims that Percy Shelley, and not his wife, is the true author of the classic novel.

Otters holding hands.  [Via Bookslut]

Matt Cheney has provided a list of five stories (all online) which he wishes he had read sooner than he did, in response to a hypothetical "Short Story 101" bunch of lists provided by The Danforth Review.  I won't even try making my own list at this point.  It would take days for me to narrow it down to a list of five stories.

Tim Pratt introduces a new literary movement.

Scott Esposito discusses Michael Chabon's new novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, in relation to other Jewish writers working with alternate history.  One line of his post annoyed me  ("Among contemporary American authors, Chabon is perhaps the novelist most willing to and successful at elevating genre fiction to the level of literature.") but it's an otherwise interesting discussion.

Comments

[Niall]

One line of his post annoyed me

I am intrigued by the implicit assumption that it's the detective story that gives the book a genre lineage (that's the bit that "a proper review" would analyse), and not the fact that it's an alternate history.

[Richard Larson]

Definitely -- especially since the alternate history that is being written here is so unapologetic about its roots as part of the SF genre. The detective story is really beside the point.

And Chabon, while brilliant, is definitely NOT the most successful of contemporary authors at "elevating genre fiction to the level of literature" -- I wonder if Esposito has been reading Kelly Link, or John Crowley, or David Mitchell, etc... I think genre should be a more important element of the work for a statement like that to be made.