The Library of America celebrates the publication of Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories by posting audio recordings of nine famous writers reading ten of Anderson’s famous works. Hop on over to hear readings by Charles Baxter, Siri Hustvedt, Ben Marcus, Rick Moody, and Patricia Hempl.
Sherwood Anderson Read by the Greats
Madame Bovary Trailer Released
Just released: a trailer for an upcoming film adaptation of Madame Bovary starring Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre?). Pair with our review of Lydia Davis‘s 2010 translation of Flaubert‘s classic.
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“The point is not satisfaction”
“The peace may be holding, but the process is faltering,” writes Colum McCann, forty years after the Dublin/Monaghan bombings, in his evaluation of Ireland’s present relationship with the “Troubles.” “It is, of course, naïve to expect total reconciliation,” he continues. “Some grievances are so deep that the people who suffered them will never be satisfied. But the point is not satisfaction — the point is that the present is superior to the past, and it has to be cultivated as such.”
Natural Opposition
Recommended Reading: Michele Filgate’s interview with Leslie Jamison, who participated in Year in Reading this year.
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“The history of sex is also a literary history.”
We knew this day would come. A review of Fifty Shades of Grey appears in The Los Angeles Review of Books. Your move, Robert Silvers.
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High Fantasy
You may have heard that Kazuo Ishiguro recently published his first novel in more than ten years. The Buried Giant, which takes place in Arthurian England, is a departure for Ishiguro, a work of overt fantasy. At Slate, our own Mark O’Connell provides his take on the book. You could also read our own Lydia Kiesling’s review.
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“The realization that none of us can ever be free from ourselves”
Mary Ruefle wrote an outstanding essay on her development as a writer. “I remember the first time I realized the world we are born into,” she writes, “is not the one we leave.”
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On the tiny island of La Gomera, the residents had a problem communicating across the ravines. What did they do to resolve this, you ask? Simple: they invented a whistle language. (h/t The Rumpus)
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Grid World
“He is for the most part interested in documenting the sources of our unusual suffering, those initial shocks that brought about the trauma in the first place. Nothing ‘languishes listlessly’ in his music; all those slowly orbiting fragments are drawn back together in furious rotation, sucked inexorably in, towards a volatile core. The mood never stabilizes; madness reigns supreme.” This piece by Tom Regel at The Rumpus on realism in the work of DJ/Producer Flying Lotus is both thorough and convincing.
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