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
Which Wilder?
We've written about the newly published Laura Ingalls Wilder memoir several times, but a new review in the LA Times calls attention to one of the most interesting questions raised by the work: how much influence did Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane, an accomplished author in her own right, have on the final Little House books?
Self-Published, Self-Promoted
Four days ago, The New York Times exposed the practice of purchasing five-star reviews on Amazon. So far, few have offered solutions. A Reddit user explains how to properly read Amazon review graphs through the cloud of purchased hype. Erin Keane calls for independent writers to hold themselves to higher standards.
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.
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Biblio-klepto-mania
"Symptoms included a frenzy for culling and hunting down first editions, rare copies, books of certain sizes or printed on specific paper." Lauren Young writes in Atlas Obscura about the phenomenon of bibliomania, "a dark pseudo-psychological illness" that afflicted upper-class victims in Europe and England during the 1800s. And for a first-hand account of more contemporary book theft, read John Brandon on his high school pastime: "The first time was nerve-racking, a rush, but by the third book I was already settling in."
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Leap Before You Look
Can the art of teaching art actually be exhibited? A new exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston about the one-time Asheville, NC institution Black Mountain College asks just such questions. Black Mountain College was a controversial, short-lived bastion of free-thought and artistic expression which hosted such figures as Josef Albers, John Cage, and Robert Creeley from 1933 to 1957.
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