Sam Sacks of Open Letters Monthly offers an encomium to Pauline Kael, “one of the best movie critics – or critics of any kind – of the past century.”
“Tough, Funny, and Sophisticated”
City on a Hill
As the lone mental hospital in The Magic Mountain referred to by its real name, the Hotel Schatzalp is a holy site for many Thomas Mann scholars and fans. At Page-Turner, Sally McGrane writes about the modern hotel, which employs a staff trained to deal with the occasional “literary fanatic.” (It also might be a good time to read Matthew Gallaway on Death in Venice.)
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Sheila Heti on Tove Jansson
Sheila Heti takes a closer look at Tove Jansson, who was best known for creating Moomin, but went on to write fiction that wrestled with ideas of happiness.
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How Animals Think
Recommended reading: “Can Fiction Show Us How Animals Think?” Or is the realist novel the wrong form for exploring “the profoundly foreign interior lives of animals?”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Johnson; Moshfegh; Berlin; Barker; Al Aswany; Cobb; Lee; Dirda
Out this week: Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson; Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh; A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin; The Incarnations by Susan Barker; The Automobile Club of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswany; Darkness the Color of Snow by Thomas Cobb; The Investigation by J.M. Lee; and Browsings by the Washington Post critic Michael Dirda. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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Come On, Karma
From Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, here are five of the most annoyingly unpunished characters in all of literature. Can we petition to have Daisy Buchanan (The Great Gatsby) added to this list?
More Adler
It’s turning into Speedboat Week here, so why not spend the weekend with some of Renata Adler‘s most renowned nonfiction? Her controversial reassessment of Pauline Kael (featuring “A Limitless Capacity to Inquire,” one of the best found poems you’ll ever read) is at the NYRB, and her deep dive into l’affaire Lewinski can be found at the L.A. Times. Interestingly, as Sarah Weinman points out, Adler’s 2001 book about the Bilderberg Conferences still hasn’t seen the light of day. (“Who suppresses manuscripts? We do!”)
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Lineup Announced for 2013 PEN World Voices Festival
The lineup for the 2013 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature has been announced. The festival will commence on April 29th with a reading “about the notion of bravery” from three writers – including Millions contributor A. Igoni Barrett.
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