The Onion headline Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger: “In this big dramatic production that didn’t do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud.”
The Onion Remembers Salinger
Un Bon Dia
To begin to translate a book, you need to hone your knowledge of the language in which it’s written. To write a great essay about translating a book, you need a backstory, an interesting format and two or three foreign parables. At The Rumpus, Brian Oliu writes about translating his grandfather’s book from the Catalan.
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NowTrends Now Digital
Karl Taro Greenfeld‘s story collection, NowTrends, is out this week. For a sample of Greenfeld’s writing, I recommend checking out “Tincture — Part One” at Five Chapters. It’s also worth noting that several other Short Flight / Long Drive books, such as Adam Novy‘s excellent Avian Gospels, are now available as e-books for the first time.
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The Best of Gaddis’s Letters
Year In Reading contributor and The End of Oulipo author Scott Esposito has been reading a lot of William Gaddis’s letters recently. Over at his blog, he’s shared his favorite ten passages from Gaddis’s collected correspondence.
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What your next-beach-umbrella neighbor is reading
Yes, but what’s everyone else reading this summer? Bookstores in beach towns know better than to stock “business, personal finance, or diet” books–though poetry does pretty well–but they are looking forward to these bestsellers. The print-disinclined can take heart that there are even a fair number of literary movies coming out soon. (Related: our own recommended summer reading list, also blessedly personal finance-free.)
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A to Z of the Shortest Book Titles
From Andy Warhol’s A to Vassilis Vassilikos’ Z (and now Tom McCarthy’s C), AbeBooks lists the shortest book titles.
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