Oxford University’s Bodleian Library is working to make the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected works, published in 1623 and carrying the physical wear and tear of 17th century readers, online for free.
“while the pages of Romeo and Juliet have been nearly worn to shreds, King John has been left virtually intact.”
Daemon Days
You may have heard (via this site or elsewhere) that Harold Bloom has a new book out. In the Times Sunday Book Review, Cynthia Ozick gives her take, identifying the critic’s use of the phrase “without precedent” as key to understanding his theory. You could also read Matt Hanson on Bloom’s classic The Anatomy of Influence.
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I Am Not a Pre-Existing Condition
“The worst days I’ve ever known could be my future under the American Health Care Act.” For Catapult, Liz Lazzara writes about her history with mental illness and what might happen if the new healthcare legislation passes the Senate. Pair with Gila Lyons in our pages about madness, medication, and the creative instinct.
Tuesday New Release Day: Fowler; Kundera; Swyler; George; Arango; Khalastchi; Makkai
Out this week: Black Glass by Karen Joy Fowler; The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera; The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler; The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George; The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango; Tradition by Daniel Khalastchi; and Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
Everyone Is an Immigrant
Eliza Griswold’s got a great essay up on The Poetry Foundation’s website. It’s about poetry and reportage in Lampedusa, the largest island in the Italian Pelagie chain.
The Summer of Butterflies
In his lifetime, Vladimir Nabokov travelled widely, logging many years each in St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Ithaca, New York, where he wrote Lolita while teaching at Cornell. His peripatetic history explains why few people know he spent a summer in Utah, during which he spent a lot of time chasing butterflies and fishing in the streams. In The American Scholar, an excerpt of Nabokov in America, an upcoming book by Richard Roper. You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor.
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Rise of the Neuronovel
“As young writers in Balzac walk around Paris pitching historical novels with titles like The Archer of Charles IX, in imitation of Walter Scott, today an aspiring novelist might seek his subject matter in a neglected corner or along some new frontier of neurology.” Marco Roth questions the rise of the “neuronovel” at n+1.
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