PEN World Voices, the great annual festival of International Literature, unveils this year’s lineup for the week of April 26, in New York and elsewhere. Highlights include Norman Rush, Patti Smith, László Krasznahorkai, Rodrigo Frésan, and Sherman Alexie‘s “Freedom to Write” lecture.
The PEN World Voices Line-Up
Leftover Links
Some seriously deranged Amazon customer reviews. (via Doc Searls)A year ago “Our Lady of the Underpass” was a Chicago phenomenon. Eric Zorn revisits.Chimney sweeps and flower pots are the stuff of poetry for Sam.Dale Peck’s recent judgment in the Tournament of Books is scarcely worth mentioning, but I did very much enjoy Kevin Guilfoile’s commentary on the topic as well as his tale about meeting Ken Kesey.Kakutani’s reign of terror turns 25.The Literary Saloon points us to Jonathan Franzen’s new book. It’s a memoir, and like Ed, I am disappointed by that.The Rake chats with Charles D’Ambrosio
Dreaming and Writing
Maria Popova writes on Freud’s The Interpretations of Dreams, childhood, and the unconscious. For The Millions, Chloe Benjamin writes about fiction and dreaming.
Atwood and Yeats Together
Lupita Nyong’o + Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie + ‘Americanah’
In book-to-film news, Lupita Nyong’o has signed on to produce and star in an adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s novel Americanah, and we couldn’t be more excited. For more from Adichie, be sure to check out her “Year in Reading” piece for The Millions.
Jesse Ball in Guernica Magazine
Guernica is running Pieter Emily, Jesse Ball’s newest work, in three installments over the next six weeks. The first installment is now available.
“He hasn’t come down since”
According to a new biography of Richard Pryor, the legendary comedian kicked off his career as a teen in Peoria, Illinois, when he starred in a play based on Rumpelstiltskin and “broke the other kids up.” At The Nervous Breakdown, nine choice passages from the book.
Walt Whitman Documents Now Available
A scholar who has uncovered Walt Whitman‘s handwritten documents announced his findings Tuesday at the National Archives. These documents are from Whitman‘s time as a government worker, concerning civil rights, war crimes, treason, and western expansion. View the documents here.
A Little Too Into It
Novels that focus on obsessive characters hinge on persnickety details. The need to depict accurately the mind of an obsessive demands that the novelist overemphasize the trifling and tangential. In The Kenyon Review, Vanessa Blakeslee reviews a new and representative example of the form, The Understory by Pamela Erens. Sample quote: “When the smaller steps of daily life are magnified, does that narrative reach its greatest potential for a unified and powerful resonance?” FYI, Erens has written for us.