Kory Stamper, one of the lexicographers responsible for Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, describes the pleasures and poetry to be found in the Third Edition’s “color definitions.” Take vermillion for example, which is listed as “a variable color averaging a vivid reddish orange that is redder, darker, and slightly stronger than chrome orange, redder and darker than golden poppy, and redder and lighter than international orange.” (Related: how colors got their names; who names colors what.)
Colors: Definitions and Names
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Kino
Haruki Murakami, our favorite advice columnist, has a new piece of short fiction in the New Yorker.
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Poetry and Ouija
On life, love, poetry and Ouija: the New Yorker profiles the life and work of James Merrill.
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Lolita Grows Up
Vladimir Nabokov‘s Lolita has gone through many cover transformations over the years. Did you know this one was supposed to be sideways?
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Poetry As Enchantment
“The magical aspect of poetry does not diminish the value of critical scrutiny. Scholarship has clarified the meaning of poetry. The point is rather that an essential part of poetry’s power has little connection to conceptual understanding. Poetry proffers some mysteries that lie beyond paraphrase.” Dana Gioia with a beautiful essay on the enchantment of poetry for The Dark Horse. Check out our extensive On Poetry archive and continue your journey of poetic enchantment.
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Brilliant Friends
“There has been a growth in the literary depiction of a particular type of friendship, one that has in the past found itself vulnerable to dilution and deflection by the ostensibly more powerful imperatives of heterosexuality and motherhood.” On literary female friendships, from Virginia Woolf to Elena Ferrante and Year in Reading alumna Zadie Smith.
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Against “Continental Categories”
“I don’t divide my friendships into continental categories. I don’t think: Today I’ll have lunch with my European friend, and tomorrow I will invite my Asian friend to the park. It would be silly of me to think of the authors I read in those terms. End of topic.” The (still relatively) new Literary Hub interviews Valeria Luiselli about the literary tradition, authors’s names, magical realism and her new novel, The Story of My Teeth.
Reclusive Reading
Emily Dickinson didn’t get out much, so why should we have to in order to read her work? Her open access manuscripts, letters, and envelope scribbles are now available online in the Emily Dickinson Archive. But now there’s controversy over who is the rightful owner of her manuscripts and who should shape the archives — Harvard or Amherst?
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