The lineup for the 2013 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature has been announced. The festival will commence on April 29th with a reading “about the notion of bravery” from three writers – including Millions contributor A. Igoni Barrett.
Lineup Announced for 2013 PEN World Voices Festival
Early Dust Jackets!
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Amazon Releases Its Best 100 Books of 2012
Amazon is kicking off the year-end deluge of lists with its 100 best books of 2012.
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Fictitious Abstractions
Recommended Reading: On educating teenagers’ emotions through literature.
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Kafka as Comedy
“When you think Franz Kafka, what comes to mind? Mitteleuropean gloom, perhaps… What you don’t think of is standup comedy.” Two young comedians are staging a new version of Kafka’s The Trial to hit the London stage next month.
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Shelf Help
If you’re struggling with your writing, turn to biographies of famous authors. This is Tom Perrotta’s cure for writer’s block. “It’s inspiring to read about a flawed human being who struggled with his or her demons and afflictions, experienced paralyzing episodes of failure or self-doubt, but somehow managed to do the work anyway, and produce something that enriched the world. That’s my version of self-help,” he said in a New York Times “By the Book” interview.
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The Comedy of Existence
“Can we ever pinpoint a person’s true identity? … How can we point to something in the world with complete accuracy, without also being meaninglessly redundant? Harpo’s answer to ‘who are you?’ is a visual-gag version of the Buddha’s infuriatingly honest answer to the same question. When asked who he was, he would say, gesturing to himself: I am thathagatha (the one who is like this).” On Groucho Marx, nihilism, and the destruction of comedy over at Slate.
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