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Book News: At Home with Faulkner, Vampire Love
“I was explicitly told that the bloodletting had come to an end.” Two top editors of the Village Voice resigned yesterday after being told to lay off five staff members.
“Not everyone wants to admit a world in which there is so muchShow More Summary
“Room” and Cleveland
Since the news from Cleveland broke earlier this week, I have been thinking about Emma Donoghue’s novel “Room.” Published in the autumn of 2010, “Room” is narrated by a five-year-old boy named Jack who, along with his twenty-six-year-old mother—“Ma”—is imprisoned in a one-room structure by a man referred to only as Old Nick. Show More Summary
Graphs, Maps, Trees
Somewhere at the intersection between the social sciences and literary criticism we find Franco Moretti’s writing on literature. “The form of any portion of matter, whether it be living or dead,” writes D’Arcy Thompson in his strange wonderful book On Growth and Form, “may in all cases alike be described as dur to the action of force. Show More Summary
E-reading in ... Africa
In the Christian Science Monitor Donna Bryson finds that there's A 'novel' idea for spreading literature in Africa: The cellphone, as: New technology and new thinking are helping African literature leapfrog the high costs of traditional...Show More Summary
Translation in ... Bangladesh
At bdnews24.com they report that Bengali literature needs translation: PM, as: 'Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has laid emphasis on worldwide translation of creative literary work from Bangladesh'. Sounds good... though there's certainly a lot of work to be done.
A Short Tale of Shame review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Bulgarian author Angel Igov's A Short Tale of Shame, coming out from Open Letter.
the May-gate...Thoreau's Journal: 10-May-1853
I proceed down the Turnpike. The masses of the golden willow are seen in the distance on either side of the way, twice as high as the road is wide, conspicuous against the distant, still half-russet hills and forests, for the green grass hardly yet prevails over the dead stubble, and the woods are but just beginning to gray. Show More Summary
Matå’pang, Migration, and The Case of the Stolen Mangos
My favorite season is mango season. Two towering mango tress grew at my grandma’s house on the island of Guåhan. We patiently waited and watched the fruit turn from green, to yellow, to ripe red. I remember afternoons sitting around… Continue reading ?
Lost in Translation?
Last month, Haruki Murakami published a new novel in Japan. Before anyone could read it, the novel broke the country’s Internet pre-order sales record, its publisher announced an advance print run of half a million copies, and TokyoShow More Summary
Darlings of oblivion
Vladimir Nabokov was wont to fall into a reverie over nail clippings, bitten-off cuticles, tufts of lint plucked off a sleeve, bits of food picked from between the teeth and spat out. After disposing of these tiny scraps of human life, no one thinks of them any more. Show More Summary
The Movies Are Dying: A Video Poem
The Movies Are Dying: A Video Poem. (Futzing around, I made a thing.)
Witold Gombrowicz's Kronos
Among the books I've slowly been making my way through but which I haven't reviewed yet is Witold Gombrowicz's Diary, recently re-published in a one-volume edition by Yale University Press; see their publicity page, or get your copyShow More Summary
Books about ... Burma
In The Guardian they have Rory MacLean's top 10 books on Burma; shockingly, not a one is a work of fiction by a Burmese author (no Maurice Collis, for example, either). Several are, however under review at the complete review : The Glass...Show More Summary
Online reading in ... China
The article is based on... online survey (by the China Youth Daily), so don't consider the numbers or findings too reliable, but it's still interesting to hear that, as Xinhua reports, Readers find online literature unsatisfactory: survey. Online...Show More Summary
dandelion...Thoreau's Journal: 09-May-1858
A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself.
Fitzgerald's Lost Souls, or the Infernal Gatsby
If you're trying to analyze F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age novel The Great Gatsby and you're not thinking about Dante's Inferno, you're missing an obvious connection. The connection is easy to spot and hard to dispute, though it rarely comes up in discussion of the book. Show More Summary
All for the $$$
Obviously I get the point of why things like this are necessary, and to the extent that artistic endeavors can make a good argument for themselves in the language of capitalism, good for them. But I do also feel that this sort of thing takes away from the message that the arts should be sending: we’re not capitalism and we don’t want to be. Show More Summary
52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 46: A Marriage of Convenience — The Half-Tone Relief Process
At its core the reproduction of the printed word is usually a process which is based on relief printing. Historically (as things are now different), a cast piece of type [...]
Dutch/Flemish literary prizes
Two of the biggest Dutch-language literary prizes have been announced -- one in the Netherlands, one in Flanders. They've announced that the Libris Literatuur Prijs 2013 voor 'Dit zijn de namen' van Tommy Wieringa; see also the De Bezige...Show More Summary
New PEN Germany president Q & A
At Deutsche Welle Sarah Judith Hofmann has a Q & A with the new PEN Germany president, Austrian author Josef Haslinger, New PEN president calls for literary freedom. One of Haslinger's books is under review at the complete review : Phi Phi Island.
- The New Yorker
- David Foster Wallace
- Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
- The Great Gatsby
- Fifty Shades of Grey
- International Book Fair
- Chinua Achebe
- National Book Award
- Philip Roth
- Nobel Prize for Literature
- Mixed-Up Files of Mrs
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Mo Yan
- South African
- Haruki Murakami
- Finnegans Wake
- Basil E. Frankweiler
- New York Times Magazine
- Hilary Plum
- Colm Tóibín
