When you think of Shakespeare’s plays, you probably think of the Globe Theatre. Yet for more than twenty years before the Globe was opened, the Curtain Theatre was the first home to such plays as Romeo and Juliet and Henry V. Unfortunately the place was closed and disassembled in the 17th century, and the location was presumed lost. Fast forward 400 years, however, and a team of East London excavators have finally uncovered a few of its sections.
Unearthing the Curtain
Is Korean Literature About to Break Out?
Thanks in part to Dalkey Archive Press’s recently announced Library of Korean Literature, works from Korea are poised to reach a broad and welcoming international audience as never before. Yet the country is still “pin[ing] for its own world-famous writer,” writes Craig Fehrman. Perhaps Kim Seong-kon is just what the doctor ordered.
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Creating Thought Experiments
Recommended (Hip) Reading: On the the pretensions of pop by Dan Fox at Guernica Magazine.
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“Silent and spotless”
At The Nervous Breakdown, an excerpt of Still Writing, the new book by Year in Reading alum Dani Shapiro. The excerpt comes on the heels of one of the site’s trademark self-interviews, in which the author laments of herself as interviewer, “You don’t pull any punches, do you?” (Related: our own Hannah Gersen talked with Shapiro about her book.)
Tuesday New Release Day: Zink; Gates; Gornick; North; Perry; Dimechkie; Leipciger; Swift; Robinson; Kovite
Out this week: Mislaid by Nell Zink; A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me by David Gates; Odd Woman in the City by Vivian Gornick; The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North; The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry; Lifted by the Great Nothing by Karim Dimechkie; The Mountain Can Wait by Sarah Leipciger; England and Other Stories by Graham Swift; and War of the Encyclopaedists by Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan drops today. Our review. Also out recently are Walks With Men, a novella by Ann Beattie, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, a novel from Aimee Bender. This week also sees the long-awaited posthumous publication of Henry Roth's An American Type. Another recent posthumous publication: Robert Walser's mysterious Microscripts.
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Dear Sandy, Hello
A look at Ted Berrigan's letters to his institutionalized wife, collected in Dear Sandy, Hello, at The Poetry Foundation.
A New Whodunit
“They were town men. The sheriff and the other four went into his shack. One of them was Hines, the undertaker. They were in there for some time. They even opened the stove and dug through the ashes.” Stephen King has a story in this week’s New Yorker.
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