Hello.

Christmas has officially come early, as the winter issue of the Quarterly Conversation is now up and so excited and running down the stairs in its pajama-clad feet.

In addition to my review of Sam Lipsyte’s latest novel The Ask, the issue is a stuffed-stocking of reviews and essays. It includes essays on Pynchon’s three California novels, Coetzee’s three post-Nobel autobiographical novels, and the fight/friendship/fictive-philosophical debate between William Gass and John Gardner, those two poles of postwar fiction whom we ideologically scrimmage in between whether we realize it or not.

What’s more, in addition to the standard slate of reviews, there is the epic Translate This Book! panel, where a huge roster of translators, writers, and publishers describe what contemporary works of literature have not yet been–but desperately need to be–translated into English.

See the whole splendid spread here.