The fictional museum described by Orhan Pamuk in his novel The Museum of Innocence has been made into a real museum in Istanbul: “…the line between fiction and reality is both highlighted and blurred.” (via Book Bench)
The Museum That Was Written Down
The Book in 2100
Lots of publications -- The Millions included -- have tackled the differences between reading e-books and physical books. It’s hard to know just what these differences mean for the future of literature. In the Chicago Tribune, John Warner proposes a novel argument (registration required) for why physical books will live on.
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Emily Dickinson’s iPhone
Emily Dickinson would be a really annoying texter. At The Toast, Mallory Ortberg imagines what texts you would receive if Emily had your phone number.
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On Negative Book Reviews
"An appeal for the revival of the negative book review, then, is a remonstration against forced and foppish praise, where everything is good and so nothing at all is good." In The Baffler, Rafia Zakaria writes in praise of negative book reviews and decries the "enfeebling of literary criticism." From our archives: our own Emily St. John Mandel writes about bad book reviews.
Brooklyn Was Mine
Paula Fox's ostensible review of L.J. Davis' A Meaningful Life in the current New York Review of Books is really (pace N1BR) a transporting memoir of Brooklyn in the '70s.
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On That F*ckin’ “A”
Members of the Word Reference forum contemplate the etymology and meaning of the “A” in the expression, “Fuckin’ A.” Elsewhere Geoffrey Nunberg, linguist and author of Assholism: The First Sixty Years, shares his take on the ubiquitous “a-word,” which he believes originated during World War II.
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Coetzee Archive to the Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas made headlines when it acquired the David Foster Wallace archives. Now it's added another high profile author to its collection: J. M. Coetzee.
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