Carlos Fuentes, public intellectual and pivotal literary figure in not only Latin American but all of literature, passed away yesterday at the age of 83. Publisher’s Weekly recently interviewed the author about his forthcoming novel, Vlad.
Carlos Fuentes Passes Away
‘Best American’ on the Cheap
Pretty good deal on Amazon today: All the e-book versions of the “Best American” books are $1.99.
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New Quarterly Conversation
In the new Quarterly Conversation, among other pieces, Jordan Soyka endeavors to answer the question, “How do we decide who owns the right to write about Hurricane Katrina?”
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Fears of a Nation
Recommended Reading: this loving tribute to James Baldwin in the NYRB.
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Old Saws
We’ve written before about the By the Book series, in which the Times invites well-known authors to talk about their favorite books. This weekend, they interviewed the historian James M. McPherson, who recalled his childhood reading habits and cited his favorite examples of Civil War literature. Pair with: Darryl Campbell on the Civil War series by Ken Burns.
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Happy (?) Birthday, Franz
Franz Kafka’s birthday was a couple of days ago — the celebration (which would surely have been a subdued affair) would have been his 133rd. Celebrate yourself by taking look at this helpful animation which explains the woefully misused term “Kafkaesque.”
Drinking JJS While Reading JJS
One of the best parts of last month’s Cullman Center discussion between John Jeremiah Sullivan and Wells Tower was watching JJS carry on the conversation while sipping from a highball glass of whiskey. The essayist’s Southern roots and Irish ancestry of course make him no stranger to potent potables, which is why Danny Nowell’s “John Jeremiah Sullivan” cocktail is so appropriate.
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Not I
John Clare, “the peasant poet,” wrote wide-ranging poems on rural themes, distinguishing himself from his peers in the 19th-century literary scene in England. In 1830, in the midst of an episode of depression, he wrote a long polemic against the first-person pronoun, in the form of a letter to his friend Eliza Emmerson. In The Paris Review Daily, an excerpt of the letter.
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