Your Inside Voice is a cultural newsletter brought to you by Pragmatic, the IP/literary scouting studio that helps film & tv producers find, acquire, and develop material for the screen.
THE MAIN COURSE
Lázár by Nelio Biedermann (translated by Jamie Bulloch) | Summit Books | April 14
If one were pitching a sweeping historical novel plumbing the depths of all the various folds and crevices that combined to make European history in the first half of the 20th century, you’d probably expect the story to reveal itself leisurely across a doorstopping 600 pages or so.
This month’s book pick does something remarkable, however. It unfurls the contours of early twentieth-century Europe through the eyes of a fading monarchical family in Hungary—and it does it in a brisk ~250 pages. Lázár doesn’t let the grass grow as it bounds ahead, chapter by page-turning chapter, telling the story of a haunted Hungarian dynasty confronting its secrets, desires, and the inexplicable across generations of war, revolution, and all manner and depths of uncanny valleys.
Much has been made of author Nelio Biedermann’s age (twenty-two, and this isn’t his first novel!). Implied in much of the discourse is wide-eyed amazement at a late–Gen Z writer who dares to embrace the sweep of history as his mode of storytelling rather than, say, thinly veiled autofiction. But perhaps it is this author’s fresh face that makes this sweeping historical piece feel so efficient, so fleet, so accessible. And in an era when historical earthquakes pass daily without much notice—one relentless 24-hour news cycle at a time—perhaps it’s useful to recount history in an accessible, contemporary voice.
As the world’s democracies strain under the pressures of a rapidly changing world (save Hungary for the moment—go Buda-pester someone else with your beta-energy authoritarianism, thank you very much), it’s more important than ever to think about the ways our present moment is similar to—and different from—the ones before it. Even if historical fiction isn’t usually your jam, Lázár might just be the right entry point to see the present through the eyes of a too-recent past.
THE CHEESE COURSE
Virginia Chihota // Kutera mutsara / Hearing Inner Lines at Nicola Vassell Gallery
DESSERT
Pizza Hut’s ‘BOOK IT!’ Summer Reading Program Returns | People Magazine
It’s been a confusing few months for book marketing. We’ve been told that podcast appearances don’t sell books (except when they do). And those same podcasts might be responsible for the marked decrease in nonfiction readers. Oh, also? Literacy programs in the UK actually undermine reading. And cell phone bans in schools cause a spike in library checkouts, but also maybe the bans don’t work in some hyper-specific way that sounds alarmist enough to generate a headline.
Indeed, the book marketing takes are hot these days. And pretty useless, tbqh. Because regardless of the headlines constructed to capture eyeballs and perpetuate conveniently learned helplessness when it comes to finding readers where they are, you know what actually moves books? Readers clamoring for stories. And you know who readers are? Humans with time on their hands, intellectual curiosity, and, yes, sometimes, an incentive in the shape of a personal pan pepperoni.
That’s right, Pizza Hut is bringing back the BOOK IT! summer reading program. For those not of the Gen X variety, just imagine Sweetgreen’s rewards program, but instead of now, it’s the 90s, and instead being rewarded with a slop bowl for consuming slop bowls, you’re gifted a piping hot pepperoni pizza for losing yourself in the world of books for a school year.
The genius of the Book It! program was—and hopefully still is—that it attracted kids who loved books on their own terms and would do the reading anyway (ahem) as much as it incentivized kids who might not be naturally inclined to pick up a book instead of a Nintendo (yes, the original one) controller.
The announcement of the return of Book It! was met with cries of joy and jubilation from all corners of the internet (okay, really just a few other corded-telephone-in-the-kitchen-vintage types on a particular algorithmic corner of the internet), with more than one suggesting that Pizza Hut make adults eligible this time around.
And yes, lol, but also…maybe internet discourse has finally stumbled on a good idea? Which is to say, in a world where publishers seem to have become much more comfortable selling books primarily to people who were already going to buy them anyway, perhaps it isn’t the worst idea to think of ways to find and encourage new readers, however old they may be.
If they are to remain relevant in any way, publishers—and literary culture in general—will have to think of their role in the capital-C Culture much more expansively than as vehicles to sell to the already initiated. So why not a Book It! for adults? Or really any other effort to turn consumers into readers?
“Yes, I Do Read Books, But Should I Wear ‘Literary Chic’? | The Times of London
Yes, apparently we’re doing “Literary Chic” now. The photo essay we actually want—the photo essay we deserve—is a look at what actual book lovers and book writers really, actually wear while they’re reading or writing.
DIGESTIF
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