Glen David Gold encourages young writers to “cultivate literary friendships”, but he’d like to add one thing: “for Christ’s sake, do not let them become transactional.”
Using Faulkner
The Turnip Princess
We’re all familiar with the Grimm-style fairy tales, with their evil stepmothers and imperiled princesses. But a new collection of 19th century Bavarian folk tales has been discovered, edited, and now released in English for the first time, and they’re darker, dirtier, and involve more gender-bending than the Grimm tales. Salon talks with the tales’ translator, Maria Tatar, about their history, importance, and “the surprising ways they upend our long-standing notions of the roles of heroes and heroines in some of Europe’s oldest and most popular stories.”
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“The Ukraine is Weak!”
Ever wonder why some countries get a fancy “the” in front of their names?
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Scientology Revealed
Janet Reitman, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, spent five years researching Inside Scientology, which is reviewed here by Brook Wilensky-Lanford for The San Francisco Chronicle. Earlier this year, ‘Million Dollar Baby‘-screenwriter Paul Haggis spoke with Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker about L. Ron Hubbard‘s religion.
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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.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Hannaham; Torday; Essbaum; Horack; Rubin; Landau; Hewitt
Out this week: Delicious Foods by James Hannaham; The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday; Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum; The Other Joseph by Skip Horack; The Poser by Jacob Rubin; The Empire of the Senses by Alexis Landau; and The Dynamite Room by Jason Hewitt. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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A New Quarterly Conversation
Another quarter, another Quarterly Conversation. Check out reviews of Kirsty Gunn’s “incantatory prose” in The Big Music, an interview with Lars Iyer, and much more.
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