Caleb Crain has strong reservations about the New York Public Library’s proposed $350 million remodel, or, in his view, the library’s shift away from “its research mission.” To put his concerns bluntly, he asks, “What problem is the Central Library Plan (CLP) meant to solve?” He then vividly enumerates the problems with the proposal. For those of you wondering what can be accomplished with an essay, there’s this: Mr. Crain’s got him landed on one of the project’s advisory panels as a result.
Remodel At What Cost?
Tuesday New Release Day: Levine; Birch; Wieringa; Boland; Plumly
Out this week: My Lost Poets by Philip Levine; Orphans of the Carnival by Carol Birch; These Are the Names by Tommy Wieringa; A Poet’s Dublin by Eavan Boland; and Against Sunset by Stanley Plumly. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest fiction and nonfiction book previews.
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Write a Turtle Story, Win a Turtle Diary
NYRB Classics just reissued Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary, and in honor of that occasion Levi Stahl is giving away a free copy. All you have to do is write “the best turtle story” in his comments section before June 20th. Are you up to the task?
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Who Needs Music?
Continuing my trend of invoking Outkast’s musical stylings at least once per weekend, I now present to you Big Boi’s isolated vocals from “Bombs Over Baghdad.” (You can check out other isolated vocal tracks unrelated to Outkast over here, but I have to wonder why.)
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How to Finish a Fairy Tale
“I just didn’t see the textual evidence for it. If Mark Twain wanted to make somebody black, he would make them black. He was not shy about dealing with matters of race.” For The New Yorker, Mythili G. Rao on the complicated backstory to the upcoming publication of The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, a “new” children’s book by Mark Twain. See also: our consideration of Twain’s self-deprecating travelogue The Innocents Abroad.
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Young Eliot
There’s a new biography of T.S. Eliot out, and this one concentrates on the poet’s American childhood and his transition from a youthful Tom to the now-famous T.S. (just in case you needed some context for that new writer’s retreat.)
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Tuesday New Release Day: Mitchell, Hadley
It’s a quiet week for new books. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which famously became a blockbuster bestseller after being released as a paperback original, is now available in hardcover for the first time ever in the U.S., thanks to a new Modern Library Edition. Short story master Tessa Hadley has a new collection out, Married Love, (as a paperback original, coincidentally).