“I won’t be a dried-up Oxford don, anyhow. I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.” –Oscar Wilde on rejecting a career as a classics scholar. (via Book Bench)
The Ambitions of Oscar Wilde
The So-Called Elite
n+1 provides a fascinating study of today’s divisive concept of cultural elitism: “Today, though, it’s the bearers of culture rather than the wielders of power who are taxed with elitism. If the term is applied to powerful people, this is strictly for cultural reasons, as the different reputations of the identically powerful Obama and Bush attest. No one would think to call a foul-mouthed four-star general an elitist, even though he commands an army, any more than the term would cover a private equity titan who hires Rod Stewart to serenade his 60th birthday party.”
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Americanah Interview
Last week we mentioned that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s novel Americanah will, all going well, become a movie starring Lupita Nyong’o. We also mentioned that she wrote about her Year in Reading for us last year. But wait, here’s more! The Rumpus has interviewed Adichie about Americanah, and it’s well worth the read.
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Miranda July, Craigslist Reseller
Miranda July’s new project, It Chooses You, is a store based on her new book (published by McSweeney’s) of the same name. The store, at Partner’s and Spade in SoHo, is an exercise in buying belongings from New York-area Craigslist sellers and reselling the contents for the exact same price.
Junot Díaz Cover Art
Junot Díaz’s forthcoming collection This is How You Lose Her now has cover art. It appears to be video game inspired.
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Longlisting Other Languages
PEN America has announced the longlist for its 2017 Translation Prize, including Deborah Smith for Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (see our review here), Carlos Rojas for Yan Lianke’s The Explosion Chronicles, and Victoria Cribb for Sjón‘s Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was. (We profiled Sjón’s work at length a few years back!) The winner will be announced in February of 2017.
Beyond the Mirror
Over at Bookslut, Brian Nicholson follows up our recent piece on Silvina Ocampo’s Thus Were Their Faces with his own review of the book, writing that “She does not need to invent books of infinite pages, for the world of what we know already contains things as strange as mirrors.” The review draws a comparison between her work and that of Borges, her close friend.
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