The VQR‘s last issue, “The Soviet Ghost,” was one of the most heart-wrenching reading experiences I’ve had in a long time. Now it’s got a series of video interviews with Chernobyl workers to seriously depress (and also greatly inform) you all over again.
“It tasted like iron and foam was coming out of our mouths”
Tuesday New Release Day: Rash, Gavin, Hainey
New this week: a pair of highly anticipated collections, Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash and Middle Men by Jim Gavin. Also out is Michael Hainey’s intriguing memoir chronicling his investigation into his father’s mysterious death, After Visiting Friends.
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The Austen Effect
Jane Austen is a rare figure. Acclaimed as one of the most brilliant authors in modern history, she has a popularity that few of her peers can match, as evidenced by her posthumous sales and huge numbers of dedicated fans. How did her work hit the sweet spot of broad appeal and scholarly fame? In the WSJ, Alexander McCall Smith provides a theory. (h/t The Paris Review Daily)
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A Hypothetical Country
You never need an excuse to read new words written by Edwidge Danticat, but in case you did, here’s an excerpt from her introduction to the forthcoming edition of James Baldwin’s classic, semi-autobiographical novel Go Tell It On A Mountain.
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The Blood Countess
Julie Delphy‘s second film as writer/director/actress is released in Europe this month. The subject is 16th century Hungarian/Transylvanian countess Erzsébet Bàthory, known for murdering young girls to bathe in their blood and considered by some the first female serial killer. Judging from the trailer, Delphy’s film doesn’t appear to equal earlier visions of the Bloody Countess (French Surrealist Valentine Penrose‘s hallucinatory biography, for example, or Terry Gilliam‘s Mirror Queen (Monica Bellucci) in The Brothers Grimm).