After heavy rains exacerbated a mold problem in two dorms and made some students sick, St. Mary’s College of Maryland has 240 students living aboard the Sea Voyager, a cruise ship about the length of a football field now docked at the school’s southern Maryland campus.
Maryland College Books “Cruise”
The Darker Side of Jack London
“The United States has a startling ability to take its most angry, edgy radicals and turn them into cuddly eunuchs.” Johann Hari reviews James L. Haley’s new biography Wolf: The Lives of Jack London, at Slate.
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Bit of Opposition
“A vast human action is going on. Death watches. So if you have some happiness, conceal it. And when your heart is full, keep your mouth shut also.” Saul Bellow saw a bit of resurgence this year with the publication of his collected non-fiction, There Is Simply Too Much to Say. Why do we need him now more than ever? According to Michael Weiss at The Daily Beast, it’s because he has “a bit of the opposition in him.” This essay is exhaustive and thoroughly researched and well worth your time.
His Dark Resignation
Phillip Pullman, author of the much-beloved His Dark Materials series, has resigned as a patron of the Oxford Literary Festival due to the festival’s practice of not paying its guest authors. This move comes only one week after Pullman and the Society of Authors released an open letter to The Publisher’s Association and the Independent Publisher’s Guild, demanding authors receive fair compensation for their work.
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In/Out
“This question of presence seems crucial to Tillman’s project. Her position in a text is tricky—she operates both inside and outside of it, which allows her to thwart distanced critical authority and also perform the aesthetic slippages she admires in others’ work.” On Lynne Tillman’s new story collection.
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The Two Philip Roths
“As time passed, I realized the Philip Roth I’d known before the two documentaries we ended up doing was in the process of transformation. The Roth I’d known for many years was an obsessively committed writer who, in the terrifying limbo between one book and another, could fall victim to a storm of depression or be spent to the point of looking as if his blood had been drained from his veins… This Philip Roth seemed to be discovering new, unexpected pleasures in life, like spending time in bed reading in the morning or inviting friends to his home to share with him the meals prepared each night by his newly hired, young and lovely cook.” Livia Manera Sambuy writes about her friendship with Philip Roth for The Believer. Pair with Gabriel Roth‘s recent guide to “everything you need to know” about the elder Roth’s oeuvre.
I’ll Be Your Unicorn
When job interviews and Tinder combine, what is the outcome? Megan Sawey shows us at The Rumpus. Pair with an essay on day jobs and fiction writing.
Ask Murakami
Can’t get enough Murakami? In the lead-up to the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature, Dan over at “How to Japonese” will post a short, new Murakami translation each week. The translations come from an unpublished (in English) collection of Murakami’s answers to his readers’ questions. This week, Murakami tackles safe sex.
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