The list, care of Elle.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
What Makes a Book a Classic?
Salon discusses it, here.
From the piece...
But there are a few places where deciding whether a book is a classic or not has real consequences. One is, obviously, classrooms, but the other is bookstores, as Elizabeth Bluemle of the Flying Pig Bookstore in Vermont let on recently in the blog Shelf Talker. One of the store’s staff members recently asked her if he should shelve Seamus Heaney’s translation of “Beowulf” with poetry or classics. After some discussion, they went with classics, but as Bluemle explains, “Neither is wrong; like many bookstore decisions, it’s booksellers’ choice, which mainly boils down to thinking about where customers are most likely to go looking for a title.”
The incident prompted Bluemle to observe that books by some authors seem to be “migrating” (presumably reshelved by junior staffers or customers) from the fiction to the classics section, particularly books by P.G. Wodehouse and Kurt Vonnegut. She’s not sure either one belongs there (“yet,” in the case of Vonnegut), but she also finds herself wondering why “The Count of Monte Cristo” is shelved in classics while Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” remains in fiction. The comparison is subtle but shrewd, as both are well-written novels with potboiler and gothic elements and both were viewed primarily as entertainments when first published.
The cliché people most often cite when defining a classic is “the test of time.” “The Count of Monte Cristo” (1844) is a lot older than “Rebecca” (1938), but my completely unempirical gut feeling is that they’re of about the same literary quality.
Writing the Lake Shore Limited
The Paris Review discusses the act of writing on trains.
From the piece...
These reasons are all undergirded by a sense of safety, borne of boundaries. I’ve always been a claustrophile, and I think that explains some of the appeal—the train is bounded, compartmentalized, and cozily small, like a carrel in a college library. Everything has its place. The towel goes on the ledge beneath the mirror; the sink goes into its hole in the wall; during the day, the bed, which slides down from overhead, slides up into a high pocket of space. There is comfort in the certainty of these arrangements. The journey is bounded, too: I know when it will end. Train time is found time. My main job is to be transported; any reading or writing is extracurricular. The looming pressure of expectation dissolves. And the movement of a train conjures the ultimate sense of protection—being a baby, rocked in a bassinet.
Writing requires a dip into the subconscious. The lockbox, at times kept tightly latched in our daily lives, is pried open, and things leak onto the page that we only half knew were there. Boundaries help to contain this fearful experience, thereby allowing it to occur. Looking around at my fellow passengers gives me an anchor to the world: my fantasies, my secret desires, aren’t going to get anyone killed. We’re all okay here; we’re all here, here.
Monday, February 24, 2014
The Rainy Literature of England
It's discussed in the Guardian.
From the piece...
The waters are out in Lincolnshire. And Somerset and Oxfordshire and Kent. The river Severn laps at the edges of Worcester. The Itchen makes inroads into Winchester across the meadows Keats walked in calmer days. There are wet books in the Thames Valley this weekend, books hastily piled in top-floor rooms, books heavy with damp that will dry on wrinkled pages, tide-marked by 2014.
Some of these books began their lives in water: English literature has for centuries courted the rain. The Canterbury Tales, the first great epic of English daily life, starts out with the sweet showers of April which bathe the dry land. This first shower is an alluringly sensual one, piercing the earth, finding its way into every bodily "veyne" of plants and people alike. If Mediterranean writers found their hot dry climate conducive to love songs, the English were not going to miss out on the competing erotic potential of rain. For Edmund Spenser, too, launching The Faerie Queene from a standing start as Una and the Redcrosse Knight go gently "pricking on the plain", rain is the beginning of narrative. Weather breaks into the stillness: "The day with clouds was sudden overcast, / And angry Jove a hideous storm of rain / Did pour." The change has been made; the action begun. Moving to shelter, the protagonists find themselves in Faerieland, with adventure springing up around them. These rainy beginnings loosen language and storytelling into life. Rain, being rained on, and finding shelter will become central subjects and structuring principles of British writing.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
Friday, February 14, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Monday, February 10, 2014
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Friday, February 07, 2014
Thursday, February 06, 2014
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
Monday, February 03, 2014
New Sappho Poems Discovered
Only a few poems of the Greek poetess Sappho’s work have survived but thanks to a leading scholar’s investigation two new works have just been recovered—and gives experts hope to find more.
From a piece in the Daily Beast...
The two poems came to light when the owner of an ancient papyrus, dating to the 3rd century A.D., consulted an Oxford classicist, Dirk Obbink, about the Greek writing on the tattered scrap. Dr. Obbink, a MacArthur fellow and world-renowned papyrologist, quickly realized the importance of what the papyrus contained and asked its owner for permission to publish it. His article, which includes a transcription of the fragmentary poems, will appear in a scholarly journal this spring, but an on-line version has already been released.
Despite Sappho’s fame in antiquity and huge literary output, only one complete poem of hers survives today, along with substantial portions of four others. One of those four was substantially recovered only in 2004, also from a scrap of papyrus. Dr. Obbink’s new find adds a precious sixth poem to the body of Sappho’s surviving work and inspires hope that more such recoveries lie ahead.
Sunday, February 02, 2014
Friday, January 31, 2014
Adventures of a Medieval Manuscripts Expert
Adventures, indeed!
From a piece in the Boston Globe...
In Reno, she found a 15th-century French prayer book with gold leaf once owned by a Welsh actor-turned-missionary. In South Dakota, she discovered a 600-year-old leaf from another book with a prayer meditating on the final seven statements uttered by Jesus.
And in Boulder, Colo., she found a rare image of the martyrdom of St. Eustace, who was boiled in a hollow bronze idol shaped like a calf.
Lisa Fagin Davis has written about each of these hand-written medieval manuscripts in university libraries as part of her virtual road trip around the country, examining ancient European texts found in unexpected places in the United States. Davis, who lives in Newton, is an authority on medieval manuscripts and recently started blogging about her finds.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
The Peculiar Underworld of Rare Book Thieves
Their world discussed on Paste.
From the piece...
Nearly as shocking was the barbarian behind it all: the library’s own director, Marino Massimo de Caro. A politically wired, self-taught book expert, De Caro and his cronies—allegedly including a lawyer and a priest—looted the library and destroyed its card catalogue to cover their tracks. De Caro even commissioned master forgeries of an ancient book by Galileo so he could swap them for the real thing at other libraries.
In the peculiar underworld of rare-book theft, De Caro joins a rogue’s gallery that features flamboyant eccentrics, disgruntled employees, corrupt academics—even a serial killer.
While the criminal personalities vary, according to the elite detectives who hunt book thieves, they all share something in common: base greed and a knack for gaining insider access to the cozy, exclusive world of rare-book collecting.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
Friday, January 17, 2014
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Have Blockbuster Movies Been Good to Comic Books?
It looked like another good year for the marriage—movie franchises based on comic book superheroes raked in billions of dollars more for Hollywood. Celluloid success, however, hasn’t rescued the comics industry from its death throes. What will?
From a piece in Hazlitt...
But diehard comics fans, who are vital to the art form’s survival and pick up new issues of their favourite series every Wednesday, often have a vexed relationship with the films. Jordan and his friends have a theory: at every movie studio, “There’s this guy who’s a big comic book fan, and once they’re ready to start filming, they ask him: ‘Can you throw something into this movie that’s really going to piss off regular comic book readers?’ ‘Oh, OK—sure. Instead of web shooters, let’s have the webs come out of Spiderman’s hands.’ For comic readers, this is an excruciating detail. It’s an agonizing affront.”
He has a litany of examples: the fact that Deadpool, known as “The Merc with the Mouth” in comics, doesn’t talk in X-Men Origins: Wolverine; the transformation of Galactus in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer from a planet-eating giant to a cloud; the significant shrinking of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises …
Monday, January 13, 2014
Friday, January 10, 2014
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