MICHELLE DEAN | THE GUARDIAN
The editor of Bookslut, which shut down last week, talks to the Guardian about the current state of American literature and its attendant frustrations
A couple of weeks ago, Jessa Crispin shut down her book review site, Bookslut, after 14 years. At a Brooklyn coffee shop last week, she told me she was feeling that she could not keep up the administrative duties required. She was personally exhausted, too.
“There’s only so long that you can be the crank, before that’s just who you are,” Crispin said. “Where you’re wearing eight hats at the same time and three coats, drinking malt and yelling through the window of the Greenlight Bookstore [in Fort Greene, Brooklyn], ‘You’re all a bunch of frauds!’”
Crispin laughed as she said that, self-aware about her reputation. All that week, she’d been getting online aftershocks because she’d been interviewed by New York Magazine’s Vulture website. “I just don’t find American literature interesting,” went one quote. “I find MFA culture terrible” was another. This ruffled some (American and/or MFA-holding) feathers. >>READ MORE
