Yevgeny Zamyatin

Aug 21, 2024 | countercraft.substack.com | Franz Kafka |Yevgeny Zamyatin |THOMAS MANN |Lincoln Michel

Recently after a literary event, I was hanging out with some other writers and a conversation about older books led to a parlor game. One of us would read the titles of bestselling novels from a few decades ago and everyone else would try to guess the authors’ names. It was hard. Even with hints. We switched to National Book Award finalists, thinking we’d be more likely to remember acclaimed books than merely popular ones. We did marginally better.

Aug 21, 2024 | countercraft.substack.com | Franz Kafka |Yevgeny Zamyatin |THOMAS MANN |Lincoln Michel

Recently after a literary event, I was hanging out with some other writers and a conversation about older books led to a parlor game. One of us would read the titles of bestselling novels from a few decades ago and everyone else would try to guess the authors’ names. It was hard. Even with hints. We switched to National Book Award finalists, thinking we’d be more likely to remember acclaimed books than merely popular ones. We did marginally better.