BH Shepherd rounds up five comics (such as Maus and Watchmen) he’d include in the literary canon.
Comicanon
Virtual Poetry Seminar
The University of Iowa’s International Writing House is offering a free 7-week virtual poetry seminar this February. The course will be taught be poet Margaret Ross, and it is open to anyone with an internet connection. Attendance will be capped at 15, however, and the deadline for applications is January 28th. More details can be found here.
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Joyce Carol Oates Explains
Our review of A Widow’s Story took Joyce Carol Oates to task for not mentioning that she had remarried not long after the death of her husband. In the New York Review of Books, Julian Barnes recently made the same point. Responding to the Barnes review, Oates defended her choice, but diplomatically added, “In retrospect I can see that I should have added something like an appendix.”
What Really Happened in the 1980s
Recommended: Meagan Day on Joan Didion’s essay “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” which you can find in Didion’s collection After Henry.
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How Should A Counterpoint Be?
In the LARB, Hannah Tennant-Moore offers up a counterpoint (which our own Emily M. Keeler wrote about on Tumblr) to the raves that greeted How Should A Person Be? when the book came out this year. To hear what the author, Sheila Heti, had to say about the novel, check out our interview from June.
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Election Year Reading
An election year is upon us, and at the Times, John Williams offers up some reading material for the months to come. Among the books mentioned is my favorite, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.
Rest in Power
“Everyone who’s been reading the manuscript is in tears by the second chapter.” Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, parents of Trayvon Martin, have signed a deal to publish a book titled Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin; its release is scheduled for January 31, 2017. Might we also recommend Ismail Muhammad‘s piece from earlier this week on Frank Ocean, “looking again,” and the black male body – you’ll feel more whole for having read it.
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“I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.”
“I never started out as a children’s book artist. What is a children’s-book artist? A moron! Some ugly fat pip-squick of a person who can’t be bothered to grow up. That’s the way we’re treated in the adult world of publishing.” The Believer interviews the late Maurice Sendak, who passed away last May.