The Believer posts a 2003 essay featuring Donald Barthelme’s reading list, which came secondhand to Kevin Moffett, a self-professed non-reader: “Barthelme’s only guidance, passed on by Padgett Powell, one of Barthelme’s former students at the University of Houston and my teacher at the time, was to attack the books ‘in no particular order, just read them,’ which is exactly what I, in my confident illiteracy, resolved to do.” (via The Paris Review)
Donald Barthelme’s Reading List
The Afterlife of David Foster Wallace
“Wallace’s status has rapidly evolved from marginal writer, noted for long, experimental work, to indispensable reference point for people writing about almost anything—from college football to WikiLeaks.” On the powerful afterlife of David Foster Wallace.
You Can’t Go Home Again (If You Understand What This Means)
The 113th anniversary of Thomas Wolfe’s birthday was last Thursday, but the author lives on in America’s cultural memory thanks to the title of his 1940 novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. Unfortunately, the titular phrase seems to be taken at face value by many people these days, and that can lead to some groan-worthy invocations. A newly-minted Tumblr blog illustrates the point.
●
●
Family Language
Our own Bruna Dantas Lobato reflects on her position living between languages. “I learned English out of necessity and that comes with its own problems—aesthetic and political ones. With childhood in one language and a writing life in the other, I’m standing both inside and outside my mother tongue and my stepmother tongue.” Pair with a piece on the important role of translators in literature.
Reading Retreats
“Why not plan a vacation dedicated exclusively to reading?” asks Salon‘s Laura Miller.
●
●
RapGenius Breaks Down “The Wasteland”
Nineteen intrepid RapGenius users set out to break down the “cultural clusterf*ck and middle finger to the stripped-down simplicity of the Imagists” otherwise known as T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland.”
●
●
Two New Elmore Leonard Stories
Byliner has published two never-before-seen stories by the late Elmore Leonard. The first story, “The Trespassers,” follows a pair of hunters, while the second focuses on a whiskey-swilling priest who gets involved in a showdown in the Wild West. (You should also read our own Bill Morris on the qualities that made Leonard a special writer.)
Maurice Sendak at the Opera
Wallace Ludel explores the imaginative sets Maurice Sendak designed for a dozen operas and ballets, as well as the author's fascination with the stage.
●
●
●
Willa Cather on Mark Twain
An early example of the literary take-down. Willa Cather on Mark Twain: “He is not a reader nor a thinker nor a man who loves art of any kind.”
●
●
One comment: