The literary it-boys Katie Roiphe described last week in her provocative New York Times essay may say a polite “no, thank you” to sex, but not Legends of the Fall author Jim Harrison. No, sir. His lusty men of all shapes and sizes (octogenarians, clubfooted teens) take second helpings with gusto in his new collection The Farmer’s Daughter.
Jim Harrison
The New Yorker on Flanagan
Recommended reading: The New Yorker‘s Amelia Lester reviews Richard Flanagan‘s “love story set amid horrific historic events,” The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which just won the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
We Read No More
Victor Hugo, when asked about the other parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy that aren’t the widely-read Inferno, had this to say: “The human eye was not made to look upon so much light, and when the poem becomes happy, it becomes boring.” Ouch. Is this why so many of us haven’t even read Dante, despite his being a kind of cultural icon?
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Swimming Across the Island
Hanya Yanagihara, the author of A Little Life, writes on reenacting a version of John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” by swimming across Martha’s Vineyard. As she explains it, “Swimming in the ocean is writing a novel; swimming in a pond is writing in a diary.” Pair with Nick Ripatrazone’s Millions essay on Cheever’s classic story.
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The Secret Space of Diaries
For the New Yorker, Morgan Jerkins reviews Helen Oyeyemi’s What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours and considers what keeping a diary means for “a black woman in a white world.”
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