Clive James gives Pauline Kael a serious critical appreciation in The Atlantic. Last year, The Millions also showed Kael some love, in this review of The Age of Movies.
“No real diminishment was possible.”
Encountering an Enfant Terrible
It’s 1957. You’re Truman Capote. Your editor at The New Yorker, inspired in part by an excellent sense of humor, has asked you to write about an upcoming film (based on a novel by James Michener) that stars none other than Marlon Brando. How do you handle it?
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HomeWORK More Like HomeFUN
“Heidi Maier, the new superintendent of the 42,000-student Marion County public school district in Florida, said in an interview that she made the decision based on solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students.” In place of traditional homework, 20,000 elementary school students will spend 20 minutes reading a book of their choice each night, reports The Washington Post. Pair with T.K. Dalton on books, kids, and gender.
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A Bookish Jurassic Park
Recommended reading: before you head to the theaters for the latest Jurassic Park film, make sure you know the series’s bookish roots.
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Italian Researchers Locate World’s Oldest Complete Torah
“The University of Bologna in Italy has found what it says may be the oldest complete scroll of Judaism’s most important text, the Torah.”
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Tragicomic
Recommended Reading: Helen Vendler on John Berryman. You could also read Stephen Akey on Berryman’s collection The Dream Songs.
Dark Thoughts
If you know that Patricia Highsmith wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley, you know that she’s an exceptional authority on the workings of the criminal mind. At The Paris Review Daily, Dan Piepenbring digs up an old interview with the author, in which she describes the act of murder as “the opposite of freedom.” You could also read Tana French on Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train.
More Praise for Alina Bronsky
Following up on our look at the German literary landscape, Three Percent publishes a glowing review of Alina Bronsky‘s Broken Glass Park.
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