Do I need to hype this one up? I shouldn’t. John Jeremiah Sullivan writes about William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, or what some call the “greatest Southern novel ever written.”
John Jeremiah Sullivan on William Faulkner
Why Criticism Matters
“We live in the age of opinion — offered instantly, effusively and in increasingly strident tones. Much of it goes by the name of criticism, and in the most superficial sense this is accurate.” The New York Times approached six accomplished critics, Stephen Burns, Katie Roiphe, Pankaj Mishra, Adam Kirsch, Sam Anderson, and Elif Batuman to explain, in the spirit of Alfred Kazin, “what it is they do, why they do it and why it matters.”
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“Good evening.”
While you wait around for Hitchcock to hit theaters, you’ve got plenty of time to check out this online record of thirteen storyboards from the English director’s classic films.
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You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next
If you’re looking for some great poetry, check out these classic poems that will change your life, from Robert Frost’s “This Man Stops By Woods On a Snowy Eve… You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!” to Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool… and You Can Be Too After These 5 Easy Tricks.” Pair with this Millions piece on poetry for people who hate poetry.
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Into Her Own
Hollywood Notebook by Wendy Ortiz is both a book of poetry and a memoir. Composed of several prose poems, the book depicts her evolution into a poet in her early thirties, following up where her previous memoir Excavation left off. At The Rumpus, Lesley Heiser analyses the book, with references to Phil Klay’s Redeployment and Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf.
“David Shields = Canada”
At HTML Giant, Catherine Lacey interviews David Shields, who says that his new book, How Literature Saved My Life, drew material from his stated identity as a “highly self-conscious lab rat.” For more, you can read our own Mark O’Connell’s review of his book in the Times.
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Table 4 Grants
The Table 4 Writers Foundation, which was established in the honor of Elaine Kaufman, will award $2,000 grants for never-before-published works of fiction and non-fiction. The deadline for submissions is October 15. (h/t Bill Morris, who has written about the foundation and grant program before.)