Larry Rohter at the New York Times relates the darker, more cynical Mark Twain that has emerged through publication of the first volume of his unexpurgated autobiography, a century after his death: “One thing that gets Mark Twain going is his rage and resentment.”
Mark Twain Autobiography
“Our sturdiest atheists”
Recommended Reading: Millions contributor Michelle Huneven on Charles Baxter’s There’s Something I Want You to Do.
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Dōmo arigatō, Charlie Brown
BOOM! Studios will release a graphic novel about Charlie Brown and his friends traveling to Japan entitled It’s Tokyo, Charlie Brown!
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Agreeable Lives
Whether or not you knew that Rose Williams, sister of Tennessee, inspired the character of Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, you’ll probably appreciate this Paris Review elegy, which goes through Rose’s short life and the effect it had on her brother.
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Avian Days
Buying a hawk isn’t the most common grief-coping mechanism, but it worked for Helen Macdonald, who purchased a predatory bird not long after her father passed away. Her new book, H is for Hawk, deals with the experience, in addition to being a falconry manual of sorts. At The Globe and Mail, an interview with the author.
Night Watch
Recommended Reading: Thomas Dylan Eaton on the Austrian writer Peter Handke.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22”
Vanity Fair takes a closer look at Joseph Heller‘s tragicomic novel Catch-22. If you’re in NYC this August, you can supplement this reading with McNally Jackson’s “Ask Me About…” series.
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Remarks on Color
Recommended Reading: On Walter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. “They have many things in common, but where they connect most strikingly is in their shared suspicion of theory and their emphasis on the visual.”