Okay, so the deal with the famed and occasionally disdained New Yorker umlaut on words like “cooperate” is that it is not an umlaut, it is a diaeresis, and they’ll be holding onto it, thank you very much.
The Curse of the Diaeresis
Tala Tubaris
Want to be as brilliant as Jonathan Swift? Try reading Latin for ten hours a day. As this New Statesman review of Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World makes clear, the satirist went through a backbreaking classics regimen at Kilkenny College in Ireland. (There’s also the fact that he wrote constant letters to a sickly female confidante.)
●
●
Writerly Pets, cont.
And now, Writers and Kitties, untrammeled delight. Via The New Yorker Book Bench.
Franzen on HBO’s The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen dishes about the forthcoming HBO adaptation of The Corrections.
●
●
Poets by Post
The United States Post Office is going to debut ten postage stamps in 2012. The theme? Famous poets, of course. In anticipation, they’re encouraging people to share their favorite poems on their Facebook page.
Ghostwriters
What happens when a writer inserts a ghost or monster into a story? At Berfrois, Alexander Stachniak argues that much of our current literature about the uncanny fails to help writers looking to answer this question. (Related: Steve Himmer on his monstrous Mary Poppins dreams.)
●
●
I Actually Don’t Own a TV
“What does the professoriate watch off the clock, in their precious moments of respite?” Because academics need breaks too, Sarah Kessler asks her colleagues what shows they’ll be binge-watching this summer. If you’re one of those weirdos who still prefers books, though, how about binge-reading Henry James?
●
●
Other People Pod: Roxane Gay
PANK co-editor, HTMLGiant contributor, hysterically funny reviewer of award shows and movies, and most recently the author of Ayiti, Roxane Gay, does an Other People Podcast with Brad Listi.
●
●
The Task of the Translators
Pevear and Volokhonsky (first names no longer needed, really…like Madonna or Cher) rap with The Wall Street Journal about their luminous (dare we say definitive?) new translation of Tolstoy‘s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories.