By Rachel Sugar

“The world may be flat for Thomas Friedman, but it’s a blur for anyone who wanted to read books from around the world in recent years,” says Granta editor (and sometime-Newcity critic) John Freeman. Only three percent of books published annually in the US are works in translation, leaving English-language readers with access to a tiny fraction of world literature. Last fall, though, the Britain-based publication used its “Best of Young Novelists” franchise to attack what Freeman calls this “literary parochialism” head-on: in November, Granta’s “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” issue became the first-ever foreign-language edition of the magazine, published first in Spanish out of Barcelona under the direction of Granta en espanol co-founders and editors Valerie Miles and Aurelio Major, with an English translation of the issue close behind.

This week, Freeman, Miles and a handful of the Spanish literary lights are making their way cross-country for “Building Bridges: Spanish and English Writers in Conversation,” a literary tour cosponsored by the Spain-USA Foundation and the Embassy of Spain. At the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago, the Granta crew—Freeman and Miles, plus contributors Andres Barba, Javier Montes and Alberto Olmos—will be joined by American novelist and “Best European Fiction” series editor Aleksandar Hemon. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: Video at end of story.

By Brian Hieggelke

I came to know John Freeman a few years back as a freelance book critic, where he consistently amazed me with the scope and prolificacy of his output. One day he’d submit an in-depth profile of an author of the likes of John Updike, the next he’d turn out a well-crafted review of an obscure poetry collection. Of course Newcity’s tiny well for book writing couldn’t contain John; he was a contributor to publications across the country including The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times and  The Wall Street Journal. After a stint as president of the National Book Critics Circle, he moved onto Granta, where he created and oversaw the fastest-selling edition in its history, the Chicago issue. He was recently named editor of that publication, on the eve of the publication of his first book. In advance of his visit to Chicago this week, we corresponded. Via email, naturally. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Sometime, this year I think, email started to overwhelm me. While I’ve long been a heavy user of the tool, especially as a receiver—most PR firms pitch stories to me  this way—it was something I managed. Until I recently realized that it was managing me. I could no longer keep up, unless I tended to email at the expense of all other projects, and those other projects seemed to move forward slower and slower. Even worse, it felt like a treadmill: I just read and answered email over and over, while the months and years ticked by. This was not the life I wanted.

Turns out I’m not alone. John Freeman, the Newcity book critic and now editor of Granta, has managed to ignore his @ sign long enough to turn out a fine consideration of “The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox.” It’s an economical book—who has time to read more than 220 pages with all that damn email to tend to, anyway?—that manages to cover the history of human messaging, from mail’s earliest miraculous character and the progressive impact on humanity it’s wrought, leading up to our current information overload, where, as Freeman writes, “The technology that was supposed to set us free to work from anywhere, to check in and clock out on our own time, has now become the longest employee leash ever invented because we can’t seem to log off.” Freeman’s coverage of the evolving character of society this technology is bringing is an important conversation that he manages to make entertaining as well. May even justify shutting off the Blackberry to hear what he has to say. (Brian Hieggelke)

John Freeman discusses “The Tyranny of E-Mail” November 4 at Barnes & Noble, 1441 West Webster, (773)871-3610, at 7:30pm. Free.

Longtime Newcity contributor John Freeman has been named editor of literary magazine Granta; the most recent issue of which is focused on Chicago and is on shelves now. The official press release follows. Read the rest of this entry »

Granta, the literary magazine founded by Cambridge University students in 1889, has a long and storied history of publishing political material as well as the work of several writers. It was relaunched in 1979 as a platform for new writers, and reworked again in 2007 with new editor Jason Cowley. Alex Clark, the magazine’s first female editor, took over for Cowley after he left, and when Smith stepped down, the magazine’s American editor, John Freeman, a frequent Newcity contributor, took her position.

Granta’s fall issue, number 108, is Chicago-themed, and the marvelous collection features entries from Aleksandar Hemon, Alex Kotlowitz, Neil Steinberg, Richard Powers, Sandra Cisneros, Stuart Dybek and more. Don DeLillo offers a brief introductory essay to a Nelson Algren piece, and Chris Ware did the issue’s cover. A photo essay by Camilo Jose Vergara is included and provides an intermission to the text. This collection serves as a packaged insight into what Chicago means—how it feels to live here, be from here, exist within a city sometimes difficult to love yet impossible to resist. I chatted with Freeman over email to get some of his thoughts on the upcoming issue. Read the rest of this entry »