Yoko Ono has permitted the publication of a book of John Lennon’s personal letters “to his friends, family, strangers, newspapers, organizations, lawyers and the laundry.” The Lennon Letters is due out October 2012, and will be edited by Hunter Davies, author of the authorized biography The Beatles.
“The Lennon Letters” Due Out October 2012
Translated Books Giveaway
Those who donate to The Center for the Art of Translation get a chance to receive books signed by a pair of the top translators working today, Natasha Wimmer and Breon Mitchell.
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Animated Russian Classics
Polish filmmaker Piotr Dumala spent three years working on his half-hour-long expressionistic adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and the result is a “destructive animation” that’s at once unnerving and beautiful. However in case you’re more pressed for time, you can also get your animated Russian literature fix by checking out Natalia Berezovaya and Svetlana Petrova’s two-minute-long animation for Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.
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The Rude Writer
In the September issue of Elle, Lorrie Moore talks about why being a writer means being creepily detached and rude. Redux here at Jezebel.
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Banana Yoshimoto Interview
Banana Yoshimoto, whose novel The Lake was recently shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize, does an interview with Melville House.
The Humanity of Books
“To me a book is not just a particular file. It’s connected with personhood. Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say. And what I’m concerned with is when Silicon Valley looks at books, they often think of them as really differently as just data points that you can mush together. They’re divorcing books from their role in personhood.” Digital pioneer and theorist Jaron Lanier fears that the Internet might be destroying not just literature, but also the middle class.
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Bin Laden Book
As the world digests the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, we offer a recommendation for Lawrence Wright’s masterful book The Looming Tower, which tells the history of Bin Laden and the terrorist movement that led to 9/11.
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