Denis Dutton, founding editor of the esteemed web digest Arts & Letters Daily, passed away today at age 66 after a battle with prostate cancer. We echo the sentiments of Three Quarks Daily that Dutton’s site “set the gold standard that we have aspired to match in our own curating of slightly different intellectual content on the web.”
R.I.P. Denis Dutton, Founder of A&L Daily
A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls
Tasteless and horrifying–nay, even a sign of the apocalypse–or rather excellent advice for college-bound young ladies? You decide: Vice Magazine‘s “A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls.” (A taste: “Here are some pointers for the beginners out there so you can get high without becoming that girl slumped in the corner of the night bus with vomit all over your shoes and lockjaw so bad your teeth have all snapped in half.”)
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New Directions’ Birthday Bash
On a more optimistic note, New Directions, New York City’s inestimable and long struggling (but “long dazzling!”) publishing house, will be throwing itself a 75th birthday party on Thursday, October 27. (They just redesigned their website and colophon, too.)
Atwood Re-tells Shakespeare
Margaret Atwood has signed on to retell Shakespeare’s The Tempest in a new book called Hag-Seed. Check out the cover at The Bookseller. Pair with our interview with Atwood following the release of The Heart Goes Last.
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¡Viva Martí, que está vivo!
This past week, the O, Miami Poetry Festival brought poet and Cuban national hero José Martí back to life. Here are the photos and video to prove it.
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James “Faulkner” Franco
James Franco isn’t done with William Faulkner’s oeuvre just yet. After screening his adaptation of As I Lay Dying (trailer here) at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Franco announced that he plans on bringing The Sound and the Fury to the big screen next.
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Dragged In
Most institutions that become an essential part of a local culture build up a collection of curios over the years. They collect as much evidence as they can of their proximity to major events. At the New York Public Library, for example, you can find a letter opener whose handle is made from the paw of Charles Dickens’s dead cat. (h/t The Paris Review Daily)
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