Where the Wild Things Are author/illustrator Maurice Sendak, 82, wistfully reflects on age, love, and mortality in this interview, after a mural he painted in New York was restored and moved to the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia. (via @BookBench)
Melancholy Maurice Sendak Speaks
Wild Possibilities
“Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons.” Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things To Me, on maintaining hope and resisting defeatism.
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End of an Era
The final installment of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, The Story of the Lost Child, hits shelves next week. Emma Adler at Electric Literature has compiled a helpful Ferrante Study Guide if you’re feeling a bit lost. Cora Currier’s Millions essay on “reading Italy” through Elena Ferrante’s body of work is an ideal complementary read.
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Murakami Controversy
Haruki Murakami‘s Norwegian Wood has been dropped from one New Jersey school’s syllabus due to “some words and language that seemed to be inappropriate as far as the parents and some of the kids were concerned.” His publisher A. A. Knopf has issued a statement in response.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Park Slopers, I’ll be reading tonight at 7 p.m. at The Community Bookstore on 7th Avenue, with our former guest contributor Joshua Henkin and some other folks, in celebration of the long running literary magazine Glimmer Train. It would be lovely to see some familiar faces, or new ones.
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The Beautiful Shame
Recommended Viewing: As this year’s World Cup heats up, take a look at what may lie ahead. E:60’s piece on the shameful set-up for Qatar’s 2022 tournament should be an eye-opener in a lot of ways.
Kuala Lumpur Timelapse
It’s been a while since I’ve linked to a really gorgeous timelapse video, so here’s Rob Whitworth’s wonderful look at Kuala Lumpur.
Vacation Links
We have returned from Los Angeles, where it was so sunny and warm, to Chicago, where it is so cloudy and cold. It actually rained briefly one of the days we were in LA, and we thought it was hilarious that everyone kept apologizing for it. If people apologized for bad weather in Chicago, nobody would have time to talk about anything else. Anyway, I’ve spent the day catching up on e-mails, RSS feeds, blogs and the like, and I thought I’d share the links that caught my eye.Mad Max Perkins, editor and secret-identity blogger, returned from a long hiatus to reveal the title of the novel that he had gotten so excited about editing back when he was a regular blogger. The novel is Dope by Sara Gran, and I have to admit, I’m very intrigued. In the process, Perkins revealed himself to be none other than Dan Conaway of Penguin Putnam, as Sarah at GalleyCat explains.At BookLust, a gorgeous sculpture constructed out of books.Hikikomori, Japan’s epidemic of shut ins. In the New York Times.An oddly terrifying look at all the psychological engineering that goes on in reality shows: The Omarosa Experiment at The Morning News.Hilarious and informative: Outrageous firsts in television history.Jonathan Yardley’s review of Michael D’Antonio’s Hershey gives an interesting snapshot of the chocolate magnate’s life.
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