Scott Esposito interviews Natasha Wimmer, translator of 2666 and The Savage Detectives. They discuss some forthcoming additions to the ever expanding Bolaño oeuvre (which will be potential additions to a future edition of our Bolaño syllabus.)
Wimmer Discusses Forthcoming Bolaño
“The town was called Dayton.”
Recommended Reading: Rachael Maddux’s “Hail Dayton,” which features one of the finest opening paragraphs ever printed.
“Emotion, said the monk, is like a storm”
[Very Quick] Recommended Reading: “Negative Emotions” by Lydia Davis
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A Century of Cheever
Allan Gurganus commemorates the 100th anniversary of his teacher and friend John Cheever’s birth. “Cheever, now unfairly known as the gloomy, sodden satyr of suburbia,” Gurganus writes, “was at least rarely gloomy. Fact is he was more fun per minute than is legal in a nation this Republican.”
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Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer
In a TED Talk, Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel show us how Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer works. You can learn “surprising things” from 500 billion words, a string of characters which put together “would stretch from here to the Moon and back ten times over.”
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On Sexism in Literature
How do you feel about claims that men avoid reading women? Before you answer, consider this piece, which argues that sexism in the lit world is more complicated than it may appear. (For more, go check out our own piece on sexism on the internet, or else take a look at this Harvard Divinity School study on how sexism shapes responses to women’s writing.)
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Stephen Fry’s Culture Shock
Stephen Fry uses the Alabama-Auburn Iron Bowl to summarize the state of America.