In the most recent New York Magazine, Conner Gorry takes a look some of the economic transitions affecting Havana, Cuba. Meanwhile, for Guernica, Julia Cooke delves into the city’s epicurean black market.
Investigated Havana
Amor Amphibii
We submit that beginning a love story with the lede “I never intended to get a tortoise” pretty much guarantees that the reader will read to the end. In Sunday’s New York Times Style section, Caroline Leavitt puts our theory to the test. (If you like her essay, you might want to pre-order her new novel.)
Miscellany
Bat Segundo’s BEA podcasts continue. Yours truly makes a brief appearance in the latest installment.Elizabeth Crane is discussing George Saunders’ collection In Persuasion Nation at her blog this week.Meant to post this Friday, but luckily I think spelling bee-related links have an indefinite shelf life. Language Hat and his band of commenters provide indispensible commentary on the word that won the National Spelling Bee, “ursprache,” and other Bee topics.
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Writing Without Rain
“We don’t yet know how to make it rain. But increasingly, we may be talking about what to do when the rain doesn’t come.” Anna North writes for The New York Times about literature in the age of drought.
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Anne Carson’s Latest
Anne Carson, author of Nox (reviewed by Jane Alison last year), has a new book out, Antigonick, in which the translator and poet collaborates with an artist and designer to produce an unconventional translation of Antigone. Unfortunately, Amanda Shubert calls it “the first book of Carson’s where … her scholarly impulse barricades textual meanings. Usually it provides a generous way in.” Yet despite its problems, Shubert notes there are still “moments of brilliance,” and indeed the act of “doing Sophocles as a graphic novel … is kind of ingenious.”
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Beer-Hall Brute
Alright, time to fess up – who keeps buying all these Mein Kampfs? This piece from The Daily Beast takes a look at Hitler’s 800-page tome and questions why people continue to buy it despite the fact that “it might be dull as one of those many lunchtime monologues that bored Frau Goebbels cross-eyed.”
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Not Quite a Review
“This is a tricky novel to review. I’m not even sure it is a novel. And I’m not certain as to whether its fragmentary nature belies an organic structure of astutely sewn intention or is merely a disingenuous device to conceal a let’s-get-something-out cobbling together of unpublished material lying around the writer’s desk. What I can tell you is this: I was powerfully engaged and richly entertained by Sergio De La Pava’s Personae.” (Related: our own Garth Risk Hallberg wrote a profile of De La Pava.)
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Alexander Chee on a Life in Restaurants
Alexander Chee remembers his time as a waiter in New York City, particularly when he (almost) met his favorite childhood author.
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An Interactive Diary
The London Review of Books has created an interactive map of their diary entries. Check out where 100 of their authors were writing.