The Times of India reports on an eerie library mystery: renovations to the 250-year-old National Library in Kolkata have revealed a secret chamber. The sealed 1000 square foot enclosure on the first floor has no windows, trapdoors, or openings of any kind.
A secret room in a library in India
Treated with Vyvanse
“First, humans domesticated the horse. Then, we invented analgesia for the horses while we got rid of God—eliminating pain while also eliminating pain’s previously greatest meaning. This made a lonely universe. We partially solved loneliness by inventing smartphones, but this also created our now endless distraction—which, fortunately, can be treated with Vyvanse.” Sasha Chapin for Hazlitt on his friend Rachel, who is living with a terminal illness.
The Most Evil Children
From the Telegraph, and only four months early for Halloween, comes a list of the most evil children in literature, from Graham Green‘s Pinkie Brown to John Steinbeck‘s Cathy Ames.
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Spalding Gray’s Secrets
Nell Casay, editor of The Journals of Spalding Gray, takes readers through the tortured life of the famous actor, playwright, and monologuist.
Lingua Donna
In honor of Women in Translation month, The Guardian asks 10 female translators and writers about the work that inspires them, with answers ranging from Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck to Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth, which we reviewed when it came out in the States. Pair with this survey of the work of Argentine writer Leila Guerriero.
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Read what you want.
After last week’s NYT “Room for Debate” feature, ostensibly in answer to the question of why so many adults read YA fiction, Roger Sutton at the Horn Book took umbrage at the panelists’ only partial engagement with the question. In the end though, he makes his own position clear: “I don’t worry about adults reading YA novels. Read what you want.”
Bad Yet Vital
As you may have heard from our own Bill Morris, The Canyons, the new movie starring James Deen and Lindsey Lohan, is a bad film that somehow manages to be worth watching anyway. At the LARB, Naomi Fry agrees with this assessment, arguing that the film is important because it “identifies how desperately many of us still want to believe that the larger-than-life, commodified good life is still available to us.”
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