A look at how H. D.‘s interpretation of Helen of Troy differs from the traditional.
Modernist Myth Making
On Writing and “Built-in” Editing
Sergio De La Pava, the once and future king of our list of top ten books, gets the interview treatment at The Believer’s Logger page. Now might be a good time to scroll back to our profile of the author, whose first book, A Naked Singularity, came out in bookstores in June.
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Just Like, “Gross”
“excited to get over you by being obsessed with somebody who doesn’t want me.” Poetic Twitter accounts are all the rage. Over at The New Yorker, Haley Mlotek takes an in-depth look at one account in particular that is toeing the line between dark humor and debilitating sadness, @SoSadToday.
There’s Franco in My McCarthy
Sometime Ph.D candidate, sometime actor, and ubiquitous lit blog all-star James Franco (henceforth known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”) has begun filming an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God in West Virginia, and I’m reminded of that line from W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” — “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
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Introducing The Offing
Trend alert: there’s been a surprising proliferation of literary site spinoffs lately. First The Toast began The Butter, and then Electric Literature started Okey-Panky. Now the Los Angeles Review of Books joins the movement with The Offing, an online lit mag launching later this month.
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Paradoxical Rocket-Science Shit
This review of Paul Murray’s newest novel, The Mark and the Void, praises Murray for his biting, weapons-grade one-liners and calls it “the funniest book ever written about the international banking system.” Here’s a link to our own, particularly hilarious interview with Murray.
The Miami Book Fair International sets its lineup
The Miami Book Fair International has released its full, 300-strong lineup for the 2012 festivities. It should surprise nobody that Tom Wolfe is one of the headliners, but the full, alphabetized list of the other attending authors can be read here.
A Symmetrical but Opposite Study of Darkness and Light
“I was also deeply protective of my father, who at the time of my reading was struggling with illness and other demons. Yet I saw painfully how he could also be a figure of fun. It dawned on me that Cal, supposedly a great friend, might be mocking him—even just by writing about his mockery by others. I registered the first stirrings of an uncertain dislike.” Diantha Parker considers her father’s long friendship with Robert Lowell, immortalized in Lowell’s poem “To Frank Parker.”
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All Stories Are Stories
Last week, I directed you to a piece in The Atlantic by John Yorke on the substance of stories. His argument: that all stories have one thing in common–their plot. Now, Lincoln Michel at Electric Literature suggests that rather it is all story structure models that have one thing in common–and that thing is bullshit.
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