Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Heavy Is the Crown: George R.R. Martin on His Triumphs and Torments
Martin knows that we know that he knows that we know how profoundly behind he is. It’s not just that Winds of Winter is now 15+ years in the making. It’s all of it. In this Hollywood Reporter piece, the full scope of Martin’s overcommitments are staggering. The crux of the matter seems to be this: Martin is so involved in the non-book parts of the Westerosian industry complex that he can’t focus on writing. And with, I kid you not, another HBO show coming out based on an unfinished series, Martin’s existential missed deadline has blown past the frustrating, around the absurd, over the sorta sad, and into a sort of living myth of creating beyond your means.
A Reading Road Trip
PBS Books and the Library of Congress have teamed up to produce a series of videos about the literary goings-on in each state (and some other territories too apparently, as an episode on the US Virgin Islands is on the schedule). There are seven episodes available now, each running around 30-35 minutes. The snippets I have watched are interesting, if not exactly riveting: I imagine only checking out the episodes for states I have some personal connection. Each episode is available to stream for free on the Library of Congress Center for the Book website.
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“My Life Is Filled With Guilt and Shame”:Karl Ove Knausgård, by Jeremy Strong
I am not really an Knausgård guy. And you do not need to be to find his interview/conversation/therapy session with the actor Jeremy Strong riveting. I can’t tell if I want Jeremy Strong to do every writer interview or exactly zero more.
A snippet:
STRONG: So I have a little bit of a different voice right now, so you’ll have to just bear with me. I have lots of questions for you. And I have to say—I think you know this—there is almost no one on Earth that I am more honored and genuinely thrilled to be doing this with. You can see me smiling, and I never smile. You probably don’t remember this, but we met for the first time in 2015 at the Louisiana Literature Festival. You were giving a reading and I finagled somehow to say hello to you. It was the day before my wedding.
KNAUSGÅRD: Oh, really?
STRONG: And I just remember you were smoking, I think, a Chesterfield, and you dropped it on the grass. And it was this moment of, “What do I say to this man?” It was hardly an exchange. And then a few years later, we were driving to the ferry in—is it Ystad?
KNAUSGÅRD: Ystad, yeah.
STRONG: To go to Bornholm. And we drove through Glemmingebro. I remember thinking, “This is where he had ice cream.”