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Betrayal and Justice
Not Quite a New Day
Punching Hitler in the Mouth
Do-It-Yourself Spirit
Chapter 16
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Resist the Amazon Scan Scam!

Remember that old recommendation to vote with your pocketbook? This is the election that matters

By Margaret Renkl |

December 9, 2011 Tomorrow, Amazon.com will offer customers a discount of five percent—up to five dollars, total—to go into a local store, scan the barcode with a smartphone, and then go home and order the same product from Amazon. It’s a one-day-only promotion, and it will save customers very little money, probably less than the cost of the gas it takes to drive to the local store and try out that little price-checking app on the iPhone or Android. Consequently it will cost Amazon itself relatively little money, certainly not as much as to costs them to sell the Kindle for less than the price of manufacturing it. But, just as underselling the Kindle is really an effort to drive the market for ebooks, the point of this promotion is not to drive additional online sales on December 10. The point is to get more customers comfortable with a gizmo that will make it even easier for Amazon to drop the local bookstore, and every other kind of store selling nonperishables, onto the dustheap of history. People, please don’t do it.

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Letterpressed

How a Chapter 16 writer’s great-grandmother befriended—and betrayed—J.D. Salinger

By Sarah Norris |

December 8, 2011 Who owns the story of a friendship? A Chapter 16 writer considers her great-grandmother’s decision to sell the letters J.D. Salinger had written during their twenty years of friendship—and the great, reclusive writer’s final letter in response.

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Dictated by Daemons

Madison Smartt Bell’s The Color of Night provoked and enthralled the critics

By Maria Browning |

December 7, 2011 With his novels about both the Haitian Revolution and the Confederate anti-hero Nathan Bedford Forrest, Madison Smartt Bell made an art of writing about violence. His latest novel, The Color of Night, takes that art to a new level with its depiction of a solitary, unrepentant killer who happens to be a woman. The book provoked controversy for its subject matter and for Bell’s unusual creative process. Today Chapter 16 offers a roundup of the discussion, including Bell’s own thoughts about his work.

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“Vivid, Strange, and Reveals Much about Modern Medicine”

Chapter 16 tallies the critical accolades falling to Holly Tucker’s Blood Work

By Michael Ray Taylor |

December 6, 2011 The 1660s saw an intense scientific race between England and France, a rivalry every bit as heated and fervently nationalistic as the race to the moon that occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union three centuries later. This first scientific contest was to demonstrate an understanding of the nature of blood by performing the first successful transfusion involving a human being. The often gruesome experimentation conducted by the eccentric geniuses at the center of this quest is the subject of Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution by Holly Tucker. Soon after publication in March, the book was named a Scientific American Book of the Month, a History Book Club pick, and a Book of the Month Club pick—all fitting choices, as the book offers something to satisfy scientists, historians, and general readers alike. Chapter 16 takes a tour of the book’s critical reception.

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"Completely in Control of His Entrancing Narrative"

Chapter 16 surveys the critical rhapsodies for Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang

By Margaret Renkl |

December 2, 2011 The story of two performance artists, Camille and Caleb Fang, and their adult-but-dysfunctional children, Annie and Buster, Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang is at once a family drama, a series of laugh-out-loud set pieces that parody the self-involvement of artists, a scathing indictment of the culture of celebrity, and a deeply moving examination of the ways in which our families shape (and warp) us. Critics quickly lined up behind the book, which promptly became a New York Times bestseller and ended up in the movie-making hands of Nicole Kidman. No wonder The Guardian called it “an experience, rather than a mere read.” Today Chapter 16 sums up the critical response to Kevin Wilson’s smash hit.

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“Completely in Control of His Entrancing Narrative”

Chapter 16 surveys the critical rhapsodies for Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang

By Margaret Renkl |

December 2, 2011 The story of two performance artists, Camille and Caleb Fang, and their adult-but-dysfunctional children, Annie and Buster, Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang is at once a family drama, a series of laugh-out-loud set pieces that parody the self-involvement of artists, a scathing indictment of the culture of celebrity, and a deeply moving examination of the ways in which our families shape (and warp) us. Critics quickly lined up behind the book, which promptly became a New York Times bestseller and ended up in the movie-making hands of Nicole Kidman. No wonder The Guardian called it “an experience, rather than a mere read.” Today Chapter 16 sums up the critical response to Kevin Wilson’s smash hit.

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