At the Daily Beast, Taylor Antrim analyzes Bret Easton Ellis, Jennifer Egan and the Gen-X midlife crisis: “Sad white guys! The culture’s lousy with them…”
The (Literary) Gen-X Midlife Crisis
What’s Lost
We tend to take it for granted that the world needs more translated works. The dictates of common wisdom state that reading translated works help us understand the reality of foreign cultures. But what if translation, which erases at least some nuance from works of literature, instead “sifts out the foreign or the unsettling in the name of easy consumption”? In The Irish Times, Michael Cronin reviews a recent book by NYU professor Emily Apter.
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Literature and the Workplace
“Poetry is not connected to my professional work – it is my personal world,” says India’s newly-appointed ambassador to Argentina, Amarendra Khatua. Indeed, Khatua’s but the latest high-profile figure in Indian government to turn to creative writing to seek “emotional refuge” and a means of “battl[ing] workplace blues and the stress of decision making.”
Sandusky on Amazon
The latest entity to get sucked into the Jerry Sandusky pedophile scandal that’s engulfed Penn State? Amazon. Users are leaving angry comments on the site’s comment boards about Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story, Sandusky’s unfortunately titled 2001 biography.
Dorothy Parker Loses Her Day Job
Once upon a time, Dorothy Parker was fired from her post as theater critic for Vanity Fair for harsh reviews that upset the magazine's advertisers.
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From the Department of Prehistory
This week in palaeontology: “…how did 30-ton animals larger than four-story buildings have sex?”
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Banana Yoshimoto Interview
Banana Yoshimoto, whose novel The Lake was recently shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize, does an interview with Melville House.
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