Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned author Wells Tower hit the campaign trail with presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and his lengthy piece entitled “Desperately Seeking Mitt” is sure to ruffle some red-colored feathers.
Wells Tower on Mitt “Tin Man” Romney
Lob One for Iain
Amidst the tragic news that Iain Banks has cancer, The Telegraph responds with a headline for the ages: “Iain Banks taught me that books can be a hand grenade“
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The Ultimate Cat in the Hat
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins was more than just a Dr. Seuss book but a reality for the writer. Seuss was as fond of hats as he was rhyming and now part of his chapeau collection will be touring the U.S. 26 of his hats will stop in Atlanta, New Orleans, South Lake Tahoe, Tampa, Midlothian, and Northampton. For more Seuss, read our essay on censorship of The Lorax.
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No Wonder They Spend More Time, Then
Are these two statistics linked? According to a Pew Internet Libraries study, 30% of those “who read e-content say they now spend more time reading,” and according to studies cited on CreativePro, people can read printed text read “25% faster than on-screen text.”
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Life and Fate and Life and Fate
Stephen Dodson wasn’t the only one inspired to write about Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate this month. Over at The New Republic, Adam Kirsch calls Grossman’s masterpiece one of the world’s “very greatest Holocaust novels.”
Shock and Auden
A lost journal of W. H. Auden, one of three that the poet is known to have kept, has recently been discovered.
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The Diaries of Roland Barthes
At the Book Bench, slides of Roland Barthes’ diaries from 1977 in their original, hand-written form: “His brilliance, which indelibly influenced literary theory, semiotics, social theory, and post-structuralism, can make him seem as distant as he is renowned. Yet the diary entries… reveal Barthes to be extraordinarily sensitive and relatable.” (via The Rumpus)