Writing for The Dublin Review of Books, Kevin Stevens reviews Saul Bellow: Letters, the collected correspondence of “Wise Guy” Saul Bellow, “one of America’s best writers and most interesting men.”
Saul Bellow, “Wise Guy”
Finding Frances
Recommended Reading: Laura Van Prooyen's poem at The Missouri Review “Location: Frances.” "When I say Frances, I mean a woman. I mean/a place. The dead cling to the land."
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The Price of Debt
“I lived alone for three years in Brooklyn, paying $1,700 a month ($61,200 all told) for a pretty but small one-bedroom within eyeshot of the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway. I also spent $400 a month on health insurance. At one point I thought I would find another full-time job after finishing the book, but then I must have convinced myself that teaching yoga part time would better enable my writing.” Emily Gould on poverty and the writing life.
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“Godfather? Me?”
Recommended Reading: "The Loneliness of Certain American States" by Catherine Lacey.
Oldest-Ever Quran Unearthed
A Yemeni man claims to have unearthed the oldest copy of the Quran in the world. An inscription engraved on the manuscript’s first page indicates that it dates back to 815 AD.
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Conferenceness
"Can a conference really transcend its essential conferenceness?" For a conference on Geoff Dyer, that's the essential question, and the Los Angeles Review of Books has an answer. Pair with Dyer's Year in Reading and Janet Potter's review of Another Great Day at Sea.
The Publishing World of Tomorrow
"Porn, Cyberterrorism, The Russian Mob and the Future of Literature" A piece exploring the coming insurrection: digitization - and thus democratization - of books.
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