Good news for Tintinologists, if not guards of political correctness: Tintin in the Congo has been deemed “not racist” by a Belgian judicial adviser.
Tintin Ruling
LA Times Lays Off Reviewers
The Los Angeles Times book review laid off its entire staff of freelance book reviewers.
Writing the Suburban Wild
In a longform piece for The Atlantic Diane Saverin writes about Annie Dillard‘s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the predominantly male tradition of wilderness-writing, and how Dillard found and wrote about the wild while living in suburbia. She also wrestles with the question: “if the author conveys a resonant truth, does it matter what experiences led to the realizations?”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Butler; Lurie; Jemc; Steinke; Jacobson; Rosner; Grannec; Beckett; Oliver
New this week: 300,000,000 by Blake Butler; Quick Kills by Lynn Lurie; A Different Bed Every Time by Jac Jemc; Sister Golden Hair by Darcey Steinke; J by Howard Jacobson; Electric City by Elizabeth Rosner; The Goddess of Small Victories by Yannick Grannec; The Letters of Samuel Beckett; Volume 3; and Blue Horses by Mary Oliver. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
“I hate literature”
Recommended reading: The Guardian reports on Varlam Shalamov, a Russian author who spent 17 years in the harsh camps of the Kolyma gulag, wrote more than 140 short stories, and still claimed ““I hate literature. I do not write memoirs; nor do I write short stories. That is, I try to write not a short story but something that would not be literature.”
Who was the Belgian judicial adviser — King Leopold II?
Oh yes it is!
When my son was young we read all the Tintin books together (well, he was five, I read to him). I’ve read through the Congo book to the best of my French abilities (there’s no English edition, thank god), and it’s utterly appalling.
Good one, Tom–the ghost of King Leopold II must be haunting judicial corridors in Belgium.