The New York Times reports on the launch of Neal Stephenson’s new serialized digital novel, The Mongoliad, complete with video, music, and user-profiles. (via AuthorScoop)
Neal Stephenson’s New Digital Novel
Amis Scoffs at Literary Prizes
Martin Amis told the Hay Festival in Wales that only unenjoyable books win prizes, but the Telegraph's lede implies sour grapes.
Krakow Named Seventh City of Literature
UNESCO announced this week that Krakow has been named the seventh City of Literature. The Polish municipality joins Edinburgh, the first UNESCO City of Literature, and Iowa City, Melbourne, Dublin, Reykjavik and Norwich. The city has been home to such notable authors as Nobel Prize winners Henryk Sienkiewicz, Władysław Stanisław Reymont, Czesław Miłosz, and Wisława Szymborska.
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Traveling like Twain
The Mississippi was integral to Mark Twain's fiction, so David Carkeet traced Twain's path on the river in the new issue of Smithsonian. "What would Samuel Clemens have made of the Riverwalk? He was a grown child who readily took a God’s-eye view of life on earth. He would have loved it." Pair with: Our essay on Twain's travel writing.
Will the Real Philip Roth Please Stand Up?
Breaking news: turns out Philip Roth doesn't actually have a Twitter account.
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“Heathcliff, it’s me, Cathy, I’ve come home”
"Then, about an hour into the newest version, it struck me: it’s Twilight!...That’s how I would have pitched the film, and the fact that I was thinking of it while watching Heathcliff and Catherine break each other’s hearts was an indication of Arnold’s failure to capture a fraction of Brontë’s genius." The impossibility of filming Wuthering Heights.
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Where Words Go
Recommended Reading: Jenny Diski on our lost words. “So I had a thought about writing a book for the elderly, the old. Those who have lost their words more comprehensively than the friends around our lunch table, but haven’t lost themselves entirely. A book about where all the words go, where after a time they find the others and collaborate to make sentences.”