“Psycho glories in narrative fractures and perverse behavior; it subverts the expectations of an audience already habituated to Hitchcockian suspense by pushing even further, masterfully administering a dose of sheer shock. Hitchcock, on the other hand, struggles to arouse even suspense.” How to watch a film about the master of film.
Behind the Shower Curtain
Riding Trains Across the Heartland
We’re glad to hear that this autobiographical essay from David Biespiel at The Rumpus is only the first in a sequence of autobiographical portraits to be published on Poetry Wire on his upbringing as a poet.
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Lord Byron’s Frankenstein
Revealed: Lord Byron’s personal copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The book will be exhibited at Peter Harrington, Chelsea’s world-renowned rare bookshop, later this month.
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Get Excited For The Belmont!
I’ll Have Another scratched from the Belmont yesterday, which dashed our hopes of seeing the first Triple Crown winner since 1978, but you can still get excited for today’s race by checking out this beautiful passage from John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Blood-Horses.
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Sensible Tourists
Recommended Reading: Over at The Offing, a new story by Joy Williams describes what happens when a sad group of American tourists goes to Cornwall, England.
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Music To My Ears
Oh, to have cows and restaurants named after you: the life of the unusually-named NPR reporter.
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Ahead of His Time
“Adrianne [Lobel] suspects that there’s another dimension to the series’s sustained popularity. Frog and Toad are ‘of the same sex, and they love each other,’ she told me. ‘It was quite ahead of its time in that respect.’ In 1974, four years after the first book in the series was published, [Arnold] Lobel came out to his family as gay.” On love and Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad.
Sainthood Etc.
Need something to complement our profile of Jami Attenberg’s Saint Mazie today? Then try this on for size: Year in Reading alum Emily Gould conducts an interview with the author at The Rumpus. Among other things, they talk about historical fiction, writing quickly and doing research on the Lower East Side.
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