Hefty advances, millennial prudishness, her pen pal Jonathan Franzen—no subject is off-limits for the belated literary upstart.
NELL ZINK HAS AN enviable problem. “I’ve been working hard to find ways to spend money,” she told me a few months ago over risotto in Princeton, New Jersey. Raised in Virginia and living in Germany, the suddenly celebrated 52-year-old novelist had been invited to give her only Stateside reading in the break between her second novel, Mislaid (longlisted for the National Book Award), and her third, Nicotine, which is out this week. Princeton was a pretty good place to spend Ecco’s $425,000 advance. “I blew a hundred bucks at Lululemon”—she wore a stretchy gray shirt with cutouts for the thumbs—“and like 60 bucks on books”—Elif Batuman’s The Possessed, Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class—“and if I did that every day, let me think …” It would have taken seven years to blow it all on paperbacks and athleisure.
In addition to the advance for Nicotine, a careening VW-van ride of a novel occupied by a network of young anarchist squatters in Jersey City, Ecco paid another $25,000 to publish an early pair of novellas under the title Private Novelist (also out this month). Zink got only a $300 advance for her widely praised debut, The Wallcreeper, two short years ago. Most writers are loath to discuss their salaries; Zink clearly isn’t among them.
Denne historien er fra October 3-16, 2016-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra October 3-16, 2016-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
