Chinese poet Su Hui composed an 841-character array in the fourth century that can be read forward, backward, horizontally, diagonally, and vertically. The poem, entitled “Xuanji Tu,” can be read in 2,848 different ways as a result.
Su Hui’s Masterpiece Palindrome
Tuesday New Release Day: Soli; Zambra; Newman; Tyler; Spindler; Hepworth; Lange; Kushner
Out this week: The Last Good Paradise by Tatjana Soli; My Documents by Alejandro Zambra; The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman; A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler; The First Wife by Erica Spindler; The Secrets of Midwives by Sally Hepworth; Sweet Nothing by Richard Lange; and The Strange Case of Rachel K by Millions 2013 Year in Reading favorite Rachel Kushner. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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Kafka’s Century
Kafka‘s The Metamorphosis has officially hit the century mark, and over at The Guardian Richard T. Kelly celebrates with “100 thoughts for 100 years.” Pair with our own Matt Seidel‘s thoughts on rereading Kafka’s masterpiece, which you can find here.
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Should We Even Publish This?
Following a recent essay on the value of ambivalence, our own Mark O’Connell explores the nature of confidence in this week’s New York Times Magazine. Perhaps not surprisingly, he writes that this year’s Web Summit convinced him that tech moguls are congenitally more confident than writers.
Faulkner’s Films
Even though William Faulkner once described Hollywood as the “plastic asshole of the world,” he spent two decades writing screenplays there. At Garden & Gun, John Meroney examines Faulkner’s film career, including writing for Howard Hawks and having an affair with his secretary. Pair with: Our essay on Cormac McCarthy’s attempt at screenwriting.