New Directions turned 75 yesterday, so here’s a look back on the history of their colophon. In other birthday news, Iris Murdoch was born on this day in 1919, and tomorrow The Catcher in the Rye turns 60.
Literary Birthdays
The Treasures of Yale Open Courses
Thanks to the Yale Open Courses program, you can watch all 26 of Amy Hungerford’s lectures on “The American Novel Since 1945.” Also from the program, I highly recommend checking out John Rogers’ series of lectures on John Milton and Paradise Lost, as well as Paul H. Fry’s “Introduction to the Theory of Literature.”
The King of Horror’s Poetry
"Perhaps this is why King favors prose—many of his novels and stories confront terror so enormous it transcends poetic language." In Poetry Foundation, an essay about Stephen King's little known literary habit: writing poetry. Pair with: our editor Lydia Kiesling on discovering America through King's novels.
Hate: Is It In You?
Meghan Daum's written the longest and best article on "Haterade" you'll read this month. I guarantee it.
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Ishiguro’s Box
The University of Texas at Austin has recently acquired Kazuo Ishiguro’s archive. The collection reveals early drafts, a pulp Western novel that Ishiguro thought had been lost, and his early attempts at songwriting. "For many years," he said, "I've been in the habit of keeping a large cardboard box under my desk into which I throw, more or less indiscriminately, all papers produced during my writing that I don't want to file neatly and take into the next stage of composition: earlier drafts of chapters, rejected pages, scraps of paper with scribbled thoughts, repeated attempts at the same paragraph, etc.”
“Author Loses Leg in Lagoon”
Writing the London Review of Books' "Diary" this week, South African scholar and political activist R.W. Johnson: "Author Loses Leg in Lagoon."
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A Curious Win
The Olivier Awards (aka the London Tonys) went down last night, and a certain theatrical adaptation won a record seven awards. The book that inspired that adaptation? The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
The Fleshy School
It looks like it's a poetry kind of morning. Spring is on its way, and what better way to celebrate than with Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "The Sun's Shame," a poem of death and desire ... and also sunshine: "All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!"