The world’s great literature as comics and visuals. Though, as Steven Heller points out in The Atlantic, defining the canon is a contentious task, comics or no.
Canonical Comics
Messes of Contradiction
Clare Beams reflects on her impressions of Little Women as a child and an adult at Ploughshares. A piece of her essay: “Of course, none of the real Alcott sisters could have fit into the spaces Little Women carved out for them. No real person could…. Real-life girls are messes of contradiction.” You could also read Deena Drewis’s essay on the perception of women’s writing and gender bias in publishing.
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Tom Hanks, Fiction Writer
Tom Hanks’s debut collection of short stories is due out in October. “The theme of the collection will be typewriters,” reports The Guardian, “with each tale involving one of these more and more scarce machines.”
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Born in New Orleans, raised in New Orleans
Recommended Reading: The Oxford American just unlocked David Ramsey’s 2008 piece on “How Lil Wayne helped me survive my first year teaching in New Orleans.”
I am throwing up in my hat.
So, not only does The Paris Review now have a “booty call” tag on their blog, but certain of their editors can be seen dishing out fashion advice in the fiction issue of VICE. Party on, Paris Review. Party on.
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You Can’t Go Home Again
“When I go back to Bogotá, I like to share my knowledge of the car bombs that went off in the city in the ’80s and ’90s. I helpfully point out the gory details to cab drivers and friends. I press my finger on the window and point at corners, ‘That’s the spot where an ATM blew up, seven dead.’” From Bogatá to Tel Aviv — here are ten writers on the places they immigrated from, returned to, remember, and call home.
Supplementing Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous releases may rival Tupac’s in quantity. Indeed, the author “sustains an interest in Latin American literature all by himself,” writes Robert Birnbaum. But what if you want to broaden your survey of Latin and South American literature? Well, luckily, Birnbaum’s got some recommendations for you.
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