“[M]ore people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art.” Who other than T.S. Eliot could get away with questioning the artistic quality of Hamlet?
The Literary Criticism of T.S. Eliot
The Golden Ticket
“As a rare book collector and head of the English department at Ayer-Shirley Regional High School, Eleanor Capasso said that being sent what she believes could be a first edition of a Jane Austen novel felt a lot like winning the golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.” Find out more about how a teacher received a two-hundred-year-old copy of Persuasion. If you’re looking for rare books, our guide has got you covered.
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More Steve Jobs
In 1985, Steve Jobs was interviewed for Playboy. (Note: link is safe for work)
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Fact-checking Steinbeck
As John Steinbeck’s classic Travels With Charley nears the half-century mark, a writer has retraced the author’s cross-country journey and come to the conclusion that the resulting book was full of inaccuracies and outright fabrications. The journalist Bill Steigerwald, whose article appears in the current issue of the libertarian quarterly Reason, says he didn’t set out to trash the Nobel laureate. “As a libertarian, I kind of liked the old guy,” Steigerwald tells the New York Times. “He liked guns; he liked property rights.”
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Thoughts of a Hand-Wringer
If you were to guess (no cheating) the author of a new essay on hypochondria, who would you guess? Larry David? Calvin Trillin? Or someone a little more… nebbishy?
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Natasha Trethewey Reading
You can listen to U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey read her poem “Enlightenment” for the Virginia Festival of the Book.
Let Us Praise James Agee
“Every sense cleared about three hundred percent and stood up on its hind legs waving its feelers.” Eighty years ago, James Agee got an assignment that entered him into history, though not during his lifetime. Let us now celebrate Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. See also: our essay on famous artist-writer collaborations, like Agee’s with Walker Evans.
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