“Much of what passes for advanced literary scholarship these days is dreadful twaddle — incoherent, emotionally empty, deeply illiterate,” says Terry Castle in a recent interview with Salon about her new book of essays, The Professor. You can also catch Castle in the most recent issue of The New York Times Magazine.
The Great Terry Castle
Supine and Blind
At The Rumpus, Greg Hunter talks with John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, whose debut novel, Wolf in White Van, came out last month. In the past few weeks, I’ve recommended former Millions-er Emily M. Keeler’s review of the book, as well as a video interview with Darnielle.
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Putin’s Call for a Russian Canon
The process of “Russification” is almost as old as Russia itself, yet to see it take shape in the present day can be quite distressing. In particular, Vladimir Putin’s recent proposal in Nezavisimaya Gazeta — in which the prime minister called for a “Russian canon” of literary works — has some people worried about its insidious potential for propaganda. Count Alexander Nazaryan among that group.
Poet Plunder
Poor Robert Frost can’t catch a break. Last month, we wrote about the Kansas man who stole a bronze bust of the poet. Now, a Vermont man has been charged with stealing Frost’s personal letters and Christmas cards that were left in a desk donated to the non-profit where he worked. He also sold them for $25,000 but only has to pay an $100 fine.
Monkeys and Donkeys
Yann Martel’s anticipated follow-up to Life of Pi, Beatrice and Virgil, now has a cover. Yes, that’s a monkey riding a donkey.
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New Murakami in 2014
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My Backward People
“Our literary culture has distended and warped by focusing so much power in a singular place, by crowding the gatekeepers into a small ditch of commerce. A review in the Times trumps everything else. You can’t tell me that this doesn’t affect what is, finally, bound into books, marketed, and sold. Which designates what can be said and how one says it. Why do we cede American letters to a handful of corporations that exist on a single concrete patch?” This piece by Matthew Neill Null at The Literary Hub raises a lot of extremely important questions about what gets published and why.
Not Halloween, Halloween-ish
At The Hairpin, Edith Zimmerman tries her hand at spooky short fiction.
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Tales of a Onetime Construction Worker
Last week, Emily Gould recommended Nell Zink in her Year of Reading piece, extolling Zink’s novel The Wallcreepers as a “funny, profane, [and] deeply weird book.” At The Paris Review Daily, Matthew Jakubowski interviews the author, who talks about living in Germany, reading too much Kafka and writing for Jonathan Franzen.